Tamagozake – Traditional Recipe

Tamagozake
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Tamagozake

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: Japanese
Servings

1

servings
Calories

332

kcal
ABV

13%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a tamagozake.

Ingredients

  • 1 Whole Egg

  • 1/2 oz Simple Syrup

  • 5 oz Hot Sake

Directions

  • Technique: Stove-Top Prepared
  • In a bowl, crack a whole egg and add simple syrup.
  • Whisk together until the egg runs thin.
  • Warm the sake (113f/45c) and slowly pour the warmed sake into the egg mixture while whisking continuously.
  • Pour the final mixture into a glass and serve.

Notes

Featured Video

What Does The Tamagozake Taste Like?

The Tamagozake is a Japanese cold remedy drink like how the hot toddy is in the United States. While I love hot toddies, I’m not the biggest fan of this drink. It’s both sweet and quite tart, and the flavor is not to my liking. I tried making this several times with slightly different proportions, and this is the best I could come up with. Maybe it’s because I’m not the biggest fan of sake, and this drink would taste better with another wine or spirit, but it’s an acquired taste. Don’t get me wrong; I bet if I was sick and a sweet little Japanese grandma made me this, it would be amazing. Unfortunately, as a man in his mid-30s, I do not possess that level of supreme skill yet, but it does give me a new cocktail to practice getting better with. I will provide what I believe to be the standard traditional recipe. No one can cook as well as a grandma.

How To Prepare A Tamagozake Properly.

To make this cocktail, you should be familiar with tempering, and you must have a whisk and a heat-proof container with a handle (a basic coffee mug works). Tempering combines two ingredients of different temperatures, where the colder ingredient cooks at a low temperature. The goal is to combine the two without cooking the colder ingredient. In this case, you are adding hot sake to cold eggs to gradually increase the temperature of the eggs without cooking them. You do that by having one hand whisk, the other hand slowly pour, the bowl staying in place.

  1. Whisk the egg and sugar till the mixture has thinned out and runs loose. Like a really well-mixed egg for scrambled eggs.
  2. While whisking very slowly pour the hot sake into the egg mix.
  3. Continue pouring at a constant rate till the sake and egg are mixed together.
  4. The final result should be a light semi-opaque yellow with a small foam on top. Like the photo.

You can’t add a hot liquid to eggs without cooking them. The egg parts the liquid first touches will absorb most of that heat, but constantly agitating the mixture prevents the cooked egg proteins from bonding together and forming clumps.

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Prairie Oyster – Classic Recipe & History

Prairie Oyster
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Quick Step-By-Step Prairie Oyster Recipe Video

Prairie Oyster

5 from 1 vote Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

78

kcal
ABV

0%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a prairie oyster.

Ingredients

  • 1 Egg Yolk

  • 1 tsp Malt Vinegar

  • 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

  • 1/2 tsp Horseradish

  • 1 Dash Salt

  • 1 Dash Black Pepper

Directions

  • Technique: Build In Glass
  • Crack and separate an egg yolk into a lowball glass.
  • Add malt vinegar, worcestershire sauce, horseradish.
  • Add a dash of salt and black pepper.
  • Consume the prairie oyster in a single gulp.

Recipe Video

Notes

Is The Prairie Oyster Good and What Does It Taste Like?

The prairie oyster doesn’t taste bad; it’s pretty good. You can barely taste the egg yolk. Mostly you taste the funky Worcestershire sauce and spices, which I think taste pretty good, and then the egg yolk pops and then goes down. I know that description is not very persuasive to trying it, but it’s surprisingly good. You will most likely like this if you like throwing back raw oysters, as it’s not too far off. The first prairie oyster you eat is for sure the hardest. You stare at it, and the drink stares back. Eventually, you realize you have no choice but to drink it.

Truth be told, I love this drink, and my family is disgusted by me eating them. Egg yolk is pretty mild, but the Worcestershire sauce and vinegar are what hit you. Optional toppings are either ketchup, hot sauce, or horseradish. I like the horseradish as it sends a good quick burn up the sinuses. So it’s a nice funk and burns.

The History Of The Prairie Oyster.

The prairie oyster starts to pop up in books around the end of the 19th century beginning of the 20th century. However, the prairie oyster appears to be a take on an authentic oyster dish. Like ordering a shrimp cocktail at the bar today, the oyster cocktail was an excellent go-to during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many books had oyster cocktails among their recipes, and the small bar bite typically was 5 or 6 shucked oysters in a glass, mixed with vinegar, lemon juice, hot sauce or ketchup, and salt and pepper. Serve with a spoon and let the patron dig in. In the 1891 book Boothby’s American bar, I also found a cocktail called the pick me up. The cocktail is Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, black coffee, and salt. The earliest example of the prairie oyster I could find is in the 1895 book “Drinks of All Kinds For All Seasons” by John Hogg of London. He presents the origin story that a few Texans were out camping when one fell ill and demanded oysters to heal him. They didn’t have oysters, but they had eggs. So they fixed up a drink of it similar to an oyster cocktail, handed it to their friend, and he suddenly got better. That story is not true (all the ones that fit together perfectly usually are not.), but it does offer a connection that the prairie oyster is based on a regular oyster cocktail. While there may be no definitive origin for the prairie oyster, it was probably invented around the 1890s.

Does The Prairie Oyster Actually Cure Hangovers?

No, of course not, but what it does do is it forces you to focus and get it together. The drink isn’t that bad, but most people will have to psych themselves out before throwing it back. It’s that few seconds you spend staring down at that funk-covered egg yolk, building up the resolve to do it, that perks you up. It’s jumping into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed. Just try it. I bet you have all the ingredients for it right now.

Is It Safe To Drink Raw Eggs?

As a word of warning, use pasteurized eggs if you can. Pasteurized eggs are still raw like a regular egg but with all the germs killed off. The FDA guesstimates that 1 in every 40,000 eggs has salmonella, which is super rare. For reference, there is a 1 in 8000 chance of dying in a plane crash, 1 in 5000 die from choking, and around 1% of sushi test positive for salmonella. I got these numbers from the FDA and the Wall Street journal. Pasteurized eggs are hard to find, so you can pasteurize them yourself or roll the dice. If you have one of those fancy sous vide devices, it’s straightforward to pasteurize them yourself. As someone who has had Salmonella poisoning before, it is one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. It feels like your intestines are possessed by the devil and fed into a paper shredder. About a day or 2 in, you start to think that you will die, and you hope for death to come quickly to end it. Again 1 in every 40,000. So incredibly rare, and if you get Salmonella, you’re much more likely to get it the same way I did, by eating food somewhere with no running water, where people don’t wash their hands. I’ve eaten countless raw eggs and have never gotten sick from raw eggs once.

Why You Should Try The Weird Stuff.

Nature loves courage, and always remember that no matter how weird or gross something is to you (be it food, drinks, clothing, music, entertainment, or anything), it’s somebody’s favorite thing in the world. You have to find out why. During your life, you will be presented with something (and I’m talking about objects and experiences) that you either find gross or strange (like the Prairie Oyster), and your first reaction is typically to make a face and reject it but don’t. Whatever it is you’re making a repulsed face at is somebody’s favorite thing in the world, and it is that happiness you should try and channel when experiencing anything new. It doesn’t mean you have to end up liking it, but you should always approach new experiences looking to find their joys. So take the risk and try something strange. I learned this from Anthony Bourdain. I remember watching No Reservations in college and hearing him say before he eats anything new that he “remembers this is someone’s favorite dish in the whole world, and my job is to find out why.”

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