Weishan Lake Salted Duck Eggs 微山湖咸鸭蛋

Weishan Lake Salted Duck Eggs (微山湖咸鸭蛋) are salt-cured duck eggs from Weishan Lake (微山湖) in Weishan County (微山县), Jining (济宁), Shandong. The Weishan County government notes that their shells are a blue-green colour, and people in southern Shandong also call them qingpi (青皮, "green skin"). A Shandong Economic Radio (山东经济广播) report describes Weishan Lake duck eggs as a national geographical indication product.

Ingredients

The eggs come from Weishan mottled ducks (微山麻鸭). The Jining agriculture bureau writes that the lake's ducks feed on crayfish and river snails and lay eggs with bigger, oilier yolks. According to the chairman of the Shandong Weishanhu Economic and Trade Industrial Company (山东微山湖经贸实业有限公司), the ducks start laying at about one in the morning; the eggs are gathered before two and must reach the factory by eight, so that they are cured fresh. The company has worked with Shandong Agricultural University (山东农业大学) on cross-breeding the ducks.

How it is made

In the company's curing workshop the eggs are washed, sorted and put into vats, and curing liquid is added. Its Weishanhu-brand cooked salted eggs are cured to the company's own recipe and then sterilised and cooked at high temperature. The county government explains what happens in the shell: during curing part of the protein breaks down into amino acids, and over time the protein separates from the fat in the yolk, which gathers as yolk oil and takes on a red-yellow colour from the yolk's pigments, including carotene. An egg that gives off oil is a sign that it is properly cured.

Flavour and texture

Cut open, a Weishanhu-brand egg has a white described as jade-like and an oily yolk, yellow shading into red. The texture is summed up in six words: loose, sandy, fine, oily, tender and fragrant (松、沙、细、油、嫩、香). The county government describes the yolk of a cured Weishan mottled-duck egg as orange-red and glistening with oil.

Where it comes from

The Weishanhu company, whose brand Shandong Economic Radio names as one of the representative Weishan Lake salted eggs, was founded in 1953 and was in the first group of firms named a China Time-honored Brand (中华老字号) by the Ministry of Commerce. Its eggs sell in Beijing, Tianjin, Xi'an and Nanjing and are exported to countries including the United States, Malaysia and South Korea.