No joke cured yolk

Chef Wesley Randles of The Shortmarket Club in Cape Town, cures his yolks in caramelised miso and leaves them intact, served alongside beef carpaccio, Angus sirloin, goat's-millk ricotta, pickled shimeji mushrooms and burnt onion powder. Chef Adam Demaris, of hipster wine bar-slash-restaurant, The Four Horsemen in Brooklyn, New York put their regualr staff dinners of rice grits with pecorino and cured egg yolk on the brunch menu, because the they liked it so much. At Singapore's Operation Dagger - a bar so niche, it doesn't believe in revealing which of its house-distilled spirits star in its cocktails- executive bartender Luke Whearty's The Egg contains a yolk, cured overnight in house-made rum, vanilla, caramel and sea salt. Kind of like egg nog, but not. Chef Lucas Carsten's from Stellenbosch's Makaron creates a trifecta of umami in his baby marrow risotto with not only a grating of Parm and drizzle of truffle oil, but a good microplaning of salt-cured yolk, too.

How to make a classic cured yolk

• Mix 1 1/2 cups each white sugar and sea salt and place 3/4 of the mixture n a glass dish.
• Using something round and small, like a lime, make evenly spaced indentations in the mixture. Fill each well with a free-range egg yolk, making sure that any bits of egg white are removed from the yolk.
• Sprinkle over the remaining salt-and-sugar mixture. Cover with clingwrap and chill for 4-6 days.
• Carefully remove the yolks and off the cure. The eggs can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. To speed up the curing process, you can dry out the yolks in a low oven (about 120°C) for 2 hours.

Cook's Tip: Go the classic route with equal parts of sugar and salt until you've mastered the technique (keeping yolks intact is a feat itself), then up the flavour ante of your cure with herbs, citrus zest, dried garlic or even smoked chilli.

See more recipes featuring in our recipe egg guide here.