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Telur Balado - Indonesian Spicy Eggs
Telur balado is a great dish to upgrade plain old hard-boiled eggs. These eggs have a crispy outer layer coated with bold sweet, sour, and spicy flavors.
Easter means plenty of eggs, especially if you have kiddies joining egg hunting events. This telur balado - Indonesian spicy eggs recipe is a foolproof way of turning an abundant of hard-boiled eggs into a delicious dish. So you know what you need to do this Sunday right?
Give your eggs a fried skin
If you want a flavorful egg dish where the sauce penetrates all the way into the inside of your eggs, then you really want to develop a fried skin to your eggs.
First, prick each of the hard-boiled eggs all over with a fork. Next, heat a pot of oil for deep frying. Finally, once the oil is hot (~ 175 Celsius / 350 Fahrenheit), fry the eggs for about 30 seconds to 1 minute just until a lovely golden brown skin appears.
Easy balado sauce
Balado sauce ranges from simple versions to more complicated ones. What I have here is probably at its simplest incarnation.
You need tomatoes, red chilies (any variety), shallot (or onion), and garlic. Salt and sugar are all the seasonings you need.
For extra flavor, I add 5 kaffir lime leaves at the end of cooking time, but this is optional. Or, you can substitute with the zest of 1 lime.
Telur Balado - Indonesian Spicy Eggs
Ingredients
- Fried hard-boiled eggs
- 12 peeled hard-boiled eggs
- enough oil for deep frying
- Balado sauce
- 2 tomatoes
- 3-10 red chilies (any variety, I typically use bird eye chilies)
- 75-gram shallot (or onion)
- 4 cloves garlic
- 3 tablespoon oil
- 1/2 tablespoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 cup water
- 5 kaffir lime leaves, or the zest of 1 lime (optional)
Instructions
- Fried hard-boiled eggs
- Use a fork to prick the eggs all over.
- Heat a pot of oil for deep frying, and once the oil is hot (~ 175 Celsius/350 Fahrenheit), fry the eggs for 30 seconds to 1 minutes, or until a golden brown skin develop on each egg.
- Set the eggs aside over a strainer to remove excess oil.
- Balado sauce
- Puree together tomatoes, red chilies, shallot, and garlic in a food processor/blender.
- Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Sauté tomato sauce until fragrant, about 3 minutes.
- Return fried eggs to frying pan, and season with salt and sugar. Stir to mix.
- Add water to the pan, mix well, and bring to a boil.
- Reduce heat to a simmer and continue cooking until the sauce is dry and clings to the eggs.
- Add kaffir lime leaves, or lime zest (if using), and toss for 30 seconds.
- Turn off heat and transfer the eggs to a serving platter. Serve immediately with steamed white rice.
Comments
I tried it and it’s very tasty! Thank you for the recipe!
Thank you for giving it a try Jack :)
You can never go wrong with this Indonesian dish, delicious!
So true. Whenever I need to bring something for pot luck parties where I know people will be comfortable with rice and spicy food, I make sure to bring this. :)
What a fun and unique recipe! I haven't made this before, but you've inspired me to give it a try; looks delicious!
These eggs look incredible with that fried skin! Such a wonderful combination of flavors. Beautiful photos too
It's an added step to fry the eggs to get crispy skin, but it is so worth it. :)
wow, this dish looks wonderful. I have never had it but planning on making it this week. I am so thrilled!
Never thought of frying hard boiled eggs to a crisp! These look fantastic and love the spicy sauce! Can't wait to try these!
The fried skin makes sure the delicious spicy sauce clings to the eggs, I'm sure people will appreciate the extra work Kristina. :)
Can i use bell pepper for this or no?
You can if you wish, but it won't be spicy at all which is what most want in their balado. :)
I first used this recipe while in Spain last month. I used it because I had very few ingredients and this sounded good. Now I’m home and used it again because it’s easy and so good. The only thing I don’t do is fry the boiled eggs. I think It toughens them. Maybe I’m doing it wrong but still it’s some good stuff.
I'm happy you like this recipe, Siggy. It is okay to skip frying the eggs, I do it half the time I prepare telur balado too when I'm lazy. :)
I'm hoping to bring these to a potluck, is there a good way to keep them warm, or can they be microwaved if they cool off in transit?
Hi RB, it is common to serve telur balado at room temperature. But yes, I have reheated these with a microwave. A quick 30 seconds are usually enough to bring them back to warm.
This sounds so delicious! I have never made fried hard boiled eggs, looking forward to trying them!
Anything spicy and I am THERE!! These eggs are so perfect, I love how simple the ingredients are!!
I love anything spicy! Will try this out today.
This looks so good!! I'm going to try it soon!
Wow, this is interesting. I've never seen or heard of this dish before but I'm tempted to try now and I trust your recipe!
Does it have to be hard boiled egg? Or will it work with medium boil? Thanks.
Hi Magda, hard-boiled egg is the norm, but I don't see why you can't use medium-boiled eggs since the whites are also solid and should pose no problem to be turned into telur balado. :)
Turned out yummy ❤️
I’ll be having this for my side dish.. If I skip frying the eggs, do I still need to fork the boiled eggs before mixing them to the spice sauce??
Hi Charista, you won't need to fork the boiled eggs if you skip frying. :)
Delicious! A little side note, "kaffir" is a very offensive word -- similar to the "N" word in English. Might I suggest "Makrut Lime" instead?
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