金沙南瓜 | Salted Egg Yolk Coated Pumpkin Chips (air-fried)

November 19, 2020

I think first time I had this was when I visited a friend in Shenzhen, China in 2019 summer, the thick, buttery coating, the invasion of salted egg yolk taste AND the sweetness of pumpkin spread on my tongue. I never forgot that unique taste and texture but was hesitate to replicate because I found out that the pumpkin slices are usually DEEP-FRIED… But now I have an PINK air fryer (cannot emphasize the color enough haha), I tried to adopt, slightly improvise on the deep-fried menu to air-fried. Hope you enjoy this simple, unique dish!

TAKEAWAYS

do not overcook/boil pumpkin, to keep structure intact for air-fry and stir fry
might not need to coat pumpkin with corn starch, which is the step for deep-fried pumpkin. I will try without cornstarch coat next time!
cook grated salted egg yolk over low-middle heat till bubbles foams up. If high temperature, salted egg yolk might tastes bitter!

RECIPE

(super simple) Ingredients:

1/2 kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) / pumpkin/ butter squash
4 salted egg yolks
salt

Step 1: slice pumpkin and boil for 3mins, dry for ~20mins

over boiling will make pumpkin super soft and fragile and might break apart during stir frying with salted egg yolk

(Optional step: coating pumpkin slices with corn starch, minimum coating)

coat and dust off extra! too much coating will result in very powdery pumpkin slices out of air fryer

Iffffff, too much coating of corn starch, the chips will be coated with corn starch powder! Wrong example below:

Step 2: Air-fry pumpkin slices @365-375F for around 15mins, before having too many burnt spots; let them sit/ cool down for crispy texture

Step 3: grate/smash cooked salted egg yolk to very small pieces

I used cheese grater! surprisingly handy! (than using the back of the knife to smash)

Step 4: under low-middle heat, cook, stir salted egg yolk with oil till they completely blend in each other. Sign: salted egg yolk foaming up bubbles~~