Egg Chaat

Servings16

Time to Cook10 minutes

Time to Prepare20 minutes

Recipe developed for BC Egg by Diversivore

A wonderfully fresh, flavourful, and filling chaat made with tomato and onions tossed with puffed rice, topped with spiced eggs, tamarind chutney, and crunchy sev. Serve it with halved eggs as a snack, or use whole eggs to make a perfect lunch or small meal.

Ingredients

8 medium eggs
2 small green chilies, seeded and minced (about 15 g)
2 medium tomatoes, diced (about 300 g, or 1 3/4 cups)
1/4 medium sweet onion, diced (about 75 g, or 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup cilantro, minced, or mint
1 tsp chaat masala (see note)
1/4 tsp salt, or to taste (see note)
1/4 tsp chili powder or paprika
1/4 tsp ground cumin
pinch ground black pepper
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup puffed rice (available at South Asian grocery stores)
1/4 cup tamarind chutney, to serve (see note)
yogurt or raita, to serve (optional)
sev to serve (see note)

Instructions

Perparation

Bring a large pot of water to a gentle boil. Fill a large bowl with cold water as well and set this aside.
While waiting for the water to boil, chop and combine chilies, tomatoes, onions and cilantro. Set aside.
In a small bowl, combine salt, chaat masala, and remaining spices. Mix well, then add about half of this mixture to the diced vegetables. Stir to combine. Ste the remaining spice mix aside.
Boil eggs for about 6 minutes for semi-set yolks, or 8.5 minutes for fairly firm yolks (see note). Remove eggs from the water with tongs or a slotted spoon and transfer immediately to the bowl of cold water. Let the eggs sit for about 5 minutes.
Carefully peel the eggs. If you’ve fully set the yolks, cut the eggs in half. If you’ve made semi-set yolks, leave the eggs whole.

For Individual Snack-sized Servings

Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the remaining spice mix to the oil and stir to combine. Add the eggs cut-side down. Fry until a little golden and crispy (about 1 minute), then flip and fry the other side for an additional minute or so.
Remove the eggs from the pan and place them, yolk-side up, on a large serving plate.
Add a spoonful of tamarind chutney over each egg.
Stir the puffed rice into the vegetable mix. Spoon a generous portion over each egg. Top with a dollop of yogurt or raita and a bit of crumbled sev. Serve as soon as possible.

For 4 Meal-sized Servings

Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the remaining spice mix to the oil and stir to combine. Add the eggs. Fry until a little golden and crispy (about 1.5 minutes), then turn them and fry the other side for an additional minute or so.
Stir the puffed rice into the vegetable mix, then portion this mixture into four bowls.
Add two eggs to each bowl, then pour a generous helping of tamarind chutney on top. Gently break or tear the eggs to allow the semi-set yolk to mingle with all of the other flavours. Top with a large dollop of yogurt, sev, and a little extra chaat masala (if you like). Serve immediately.

Notes

Tamarind (Imli) Chutney – you can substitute any other sweet-and-sour chutney here if you like. Homemade or store-bought chutneys are both fine.

Chaat Masala – this spice blend can generally be found at well-stocked Indian grocery stores. The key ingredient is kala namak (black salt), which contributes a distinctively pungent ‘egg-y’ odour. If you can’t find chaat masala, you can make your own blend fairly easily. This recipe from Serious Eats is a great place to start. Feel free to adapt it to your liking.

Sev – These crunchy gram flour (chickpea) noodles are easily found at most Indian/South Asian grocery stores. Look for them in the snack section, rather than with the noodles. If you can’t find sev, you can substitute a crunchy dried noodle (e.g. instant ramen or fried rice vermicelli). Sev isn’t the healthiest stuff in the world, so you can also omit it, or swap in something else textural like nuts.

Salt – Chaat masala already contains quite a bit of salt, so you don’t want to add too much extra salt without doing a bit of a taste-test first.

Egg Timing – If making this as a snack, I like to cook the eggs until they’re just set, but not chalky. They’ll fry more in the pan, so there’s no sense in overdoing them at this stage. If you like a somewhat runny yolk (which I do), the shorter cook time and and the meal-style serving is great, as it allows you to cut open the fried eggs at the table and let the yolk run into the veggie base. Note that the cook times here are for medium eggs – large or jumbo eggs will need to cook longer.