Chinese Tomato Egg Recipe

Every Chinese make tomato egg stir fry slightly differently.

Therefore, there could be 1.402 billion methods to make this dish! No matter how you cook it, the combination of tomato and egg is always so easy, cheap, delicious, and healthy.

We are talking about my NO.1 comfort food – Chinese tomato egg stir fry!

If it is your first time learning how to cook Chinese food and don’t know where to start, this easy but delicious recipe will be your best bet – just find some tomatoes and eggs in your fridge and stir-fry them together!

Tomato egg stir fry was also the very first recipe I tried when I started learning how to cook.

There is a reason why this recipe is so popular among first starters – it is very difficult to mess up this dish given the simplicity of the recipe.

However, being simple doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to make your dish better than others! Here are some pro tips:

Peel the Tomato Skin

The tomato skin may be good for you (it contains all four major carotenoids), but personally, I don’t like the texture of tomato skin which is very similar to grape skin.

If your teeth are like mine, just peel off the tomato skin before you cook them. But it’s also fine to leave the skin on if it doesn’t bother you or you feel too lazy for the extra steps.

I have an easy method – see instructions below – to peel tomato skins in an AMSR way. I always feels so pleasurable when I peel off a whole piece of tomato skin smoothly. 

Egg First or Tomato First?

Believe it or not, people debate all the time whether you should cook the eggs first or tomatoes first, the outcome will be different!

If you cook the eggs first, the eggs will smell better, form into scrambled eggs, but may be a little over-cooked because they are heated all the way through.

But if you cook the tomatoes first and add eggs later, the eggs will remain at “liquid-ish”/paste form because the tomatoes absorb vegetable oil and release water, which leaves the eggs with not enough oil to be stir-fried through.

However, some people love their eggs this way since the “liquid-ish” eggs go very well on top of a bowl of rice! 

What are my two cents though?

I prefer to cook the eggs first with just a few seconds on very high heat, and leave them in a plate half-cooked.

Then I casually clean up my pan/wok and stir-fry the tomatoes with vegetable oil again with high heat. And lastly I let the half-cooked eggs re-join the pan/wok with tomatoes to wrap up the cooking.

In this way, my eggs are not over-cooked and are served in their best condition in my opinion! But again, it has the extra steps so many people just skip them.

Optional Ingredients:

There are a few ingredients that different people have different preferences.

For example, you can use ginger to substitute the garlic in my recipe; you can also use chopped cilantros as the “food makeups” to substitute the green onions.

Some people would also skip the ketchup and soy sauce, and add some MSG… that’s why there are a millions way to be creative about this easy recipe!

How to Make Tomato Egg Stir Fry

– EQUIPMENT

• 1 medium pot
  
• 1 wok
  

– INGREDIENTS

• 4 tomatoes (medium sized.)
• 4 eggs (Mr He is an egg lover, so I often put 5 eggs. But I think 4 eggs should pair with 4 tomatoes perfectly.)
• 5 tbsp cooking oil (3 tbsp for frying the eggs, 2 tbsp for frying the tomatoes.)
• 1 green onion (highly recommended but optional; you can use 1 tbsp of chopped onion to substitute.)
• 1 garlic clove (optional; you can also use ginger if you like.)
• 2 tbsp ketchup (optional.)
• 1 tsp salt (½ tsp salt in eggs, ½ tsp salt in tomatoes.)
• 1 tbsp soy sauce (optional, if you skip the soy sauce, add a little bit more salt to your taste.)
• ½ tbsp sugar

How to peel Tomatoes:

1. Cut a shallow “X” in the bottom of each tomato. Prepare a large bowl of iced water.

2. In a pot, boil enough water to completely submerge the tomatoes. Bring water to a boil.

3. Add tomatoes to the pot, boil over high heat for 30 seconds.

4. Immediately put the tomatoes into the ice bath.

5. Once the tomatoes are completely cooled, peel off the skin easily.

Let’s start cooking Chinese tomato egg stir fry

1. Cut tomatoes into halves, cut off the steam, then cut into wedges. I personally prefer small bite-sized tomatoes, so I’d cut the wedges in half again.

2. Mince 1 garlic clove. Cut 1 green onion into thin pieces, separate the white parts and the green parts. Set aside.

3. Crack 4-5 eggs into a bowl, add ½ tsp of salt, whisk thoroughly.

4. Add 2 tbsps. of cooking oil to a wok, heat up the oil over high heat for about 1 minute until you can feel the hot air above the wok. (The oil need to be hot enough to make the scrambled eggs fluffy and tender.)

5. Add in the beaten eggs to stir fry over high heat for 30 seconds.

6. Get the eggs out immediately after 30 seconds. They should be half cooked. You should be able to see some liquid egg in the middle. Set aside.

7. The wok should be still hot now. Turn heat to medium high. Add 2 tbsps of cooking oil to the wok.

8. Stir fry chopped garlic and the white part of a green onion for about 10 seconds until the garlic turns slightly yellow.

9. Add in the tomato chunks. Mix all the ingredients well.

10. Add in ½ tbsp of salt, 1 tbsp of light soy sauce, 2 tbsp of ketchup, 1/2 tbsp of sugar. If your tomatoes are not very juice and there’s basically no sauce in the wok, you can optionally add in ¼ cup of vegetable stock or water. Mix all the ingredients well and let them boil for about 1 minutes.

11. Add in the scrambled eggs. Break up large egg pieces into bite-size pieces. Stir fry for 30 seconds to let the eggs to absorb tomato soup.

12. Turn off heat, plate, and garnish with the green part of a green onion.

13. Enjoy with steamed rice.

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