Better Egg Foo Yung Sauce Recipe

This is as close to canned mushroom soup as it gets in
my kitchen.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2012.

Someone pointed me to a recipe for Egg Foo Yung sauce that consisted of mixing one can of mushroom soup with 3 tablespoons of soy sauce and then heating the mixture. I was appalled. In my kitchen, that doesn't qualify as a recipe, as cooking, or as egg foo yung sauce. I took it as a personal challenge, and came up with the following egg foo yung sauce recipe.

First, let's get the spelling out of the way. I've seen this dish referred to as egg foo yung, egg fu yong, egg foo young and all possible permutations of fu, foo, yong, yung, and young. You can use whichever you prefer since it is simply someone's best judgment as to which sounds more like the original Chinese words from which the name is derived. For consistency, I'll use egg foo yung, throughout this blog.

Egg foo yung is traditionally an egg dish containing vegetables and meats and fried in oil. It is accompanied by a thick brown sauce or gravy (again call it whichever you prefer, I say sauce). For my taste, the egg portion is a bit on the plain side, although it can be made better or worse in many different ways which I may detail in a later post. Egg foo yung sauce, however, adds a rich, earthy taste that supplies the real flavor to the dish.

This recipe will most likely differ from anything you find in take-out restaurants (I hope), or anywhere else for that matter. it will certainly beat the pants off of anything made with canned mushroom soup. If your guests are used to ordinary egg foo yung, you should impress them thoroughly with this sauce.

Pay attention: this recipe is for the sauce only and can be combined with the egg portion of any other egg foo yung recipe you may have (until I post one or more on this blog).

It should take about 15-20 minutes to make egg foo yung sauce by this recipe depending upon your skill with the knife. For some it may take a little longer to keep one's fingers completely intact while mincing the mushrooms as finely as possible. --Take the extra time; safety comes first.

Without further ado, then, here is my egg foo yung sauce recipe:

Makes four servings

Ingredients:
8 Baby Bella Mushrooms
1-1/4 cups chicken stock (homemade preferred)
2 tablespoons butter (sweet, salted)
1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons good quality soy sauce
approximately 2 tablespoons corn starch (as needed to thicken)

Equipment Required:
Chopping knife
Cutting board
Medium frying pan
Stirring spoon (bamboo preferred)
(optional) Serving bowl and serving spoon for the dinner table - or complete the plating in the kitchen before bringing the dishes to the table
(optional - see additional comments)Hand Blender

Notes: Although this recipe is for the sauce only, it should be cooked concurrently with egg foo yung itself.

1) Using the cutting board and chopping knife, finely mince all the mushrooms. You want to end up with uniformly sized pieces of approximately 1/16 inch (about 2 mm) in size.

2) In medium frying pan over low heat, melt the butter.

3) Sprinkle brown sugar into melted butter. mix until fully dissolved.

4) Increase heat to medium. When first bubbles appear in butter, immediately add all of the minced mushrooms. Stir to cover mushrooms with butter and sugar mixture. Continue stirring to keep mixture from burning. Cook until mushroom bits are uniformly darkened and coated with the butter and sugar. Do not let the butter scorch, but make sure the mushrooms are fully cooked. Note: This is where the rich flavor of the sauce comes from; get this part right!

5) Stir soy sauce into frying pan.

6) Add 1 cup chicken stock, reserve 1/4 cup. Use bamboo stirring spoon to scrape up any residue of butter and sugar mixture from the bottom of the pan, if any. This should redissolve in the chicken stock adding its flavor back into the mix. Bring stock up to simmering temperature.

7) Stir 1.5 tablespoons of corn starch into the remaining 1/4 cup of chicken stock until fully dissolved. Add to mushroom mix in skillet. Stir in well. reduce heat slightly to allow mixture to simmer lightly and thicken. Sauce should have the consistency of  very thick brown gravy (with bits of mushrooms). If necessary, add small additional amounts of corn starch to thicken, but remember that it takes a few minutes of simmering for the corn starch to take effect and start to thicken the sauce; do not add too much prematurely.

8) Remove from heat when sauce achieves desired consistency. Serve as quickly as possible after removing from heat to avoid a thick film developing over the top of the sauce.

Serving suggestion: Spoon one quarter of mixture over each egg foo yung portion, covering the entire portion with egg foo yung sauce.

Additional comments:
You may be used to a smoother, silkier egg foo yung sauce. I prefer to add a little texture to the sauce with the minced mushrooms. You can, however, use a Hand Blender to reduce the mushrooms even further and make a smoother sauce if you prefer.

Why bamboo utensils?
I prefer to use bamboo cooking utensils because they do not scratch or scrape up pots and pans leaving the food relatively free of metallic leavings (or black non-stick chemical coatings if you aren't using seasoned cast iron or stainless steel cookware yet). They are generally shaped with one corner and one rounded edge so you can get every part of the pan as you stir or deglaze regardless of the type of pan being used.

Clean-up tip:
Immediately after serving, add warm water to the frying pan and wipe it down with a sponge. It will clean very easily and only takes 15-30 seconds. Utensils should be thoroughly rinsed in water immediately upon completion for the same reason. If you wait until the sauce dries in place, clean-up is much harder. Either way, wash all items completely with dish soap and hot water before drying them and putting them away.