Salted duck egg substitutes

The closest thing you can make yourself, and much faster than a full brine cure because you are curing separated yolks rather than whole eggs in the shell.

Best for

salted egg yolk sauce, grated over rice or pasta, mooncakes and pastries, salted egg fried chicken

Make a bed of equal parts fine salt and sugar in a small dish, nestle each raw yolk into a hollow, cover completely, and refrigerate three to four days until the yolk is firm enough to pick up. Rinse gently, pat dry, then dry them in a 120C oven for about ten minutes. Chicken yolks give a paler, smaller, less fatty result than duck, and the flavour is clean and salty rather than deeply cured, so add a few drops of fish sauce to the sauce if it tastes thin. Keep the cure refrigerated throughout, always cook the yolks before eating, and do not cut the salt, since the salt is what preserves them.

Sold in Asian shops for exactly the salted egg yolk sauce trend, and by far the easiest route to that flavour if a sauce is what you are after.

Best for

salted egg yolk sauce for chicken, prawns or crab, salted egg cookies and pastries, seasoning fried snacks, salted egg butter for corn

The flavour is genuinely right, salty and savoury with the characteristic cured-yolk aroma, and it dissolves smoothly. What is missing is the sandy, granular texture of a real mashed yolk, which is a large part of the appeal in a sauce that is supposed to look and feel like crumbled sand in butter. Bloom the powder in melted butter over low heat for a minute before adding anything liquid, or it clumps. It cannot stand in for a whole yolk in a mooncake, where you need a physical sphere.

The fastest option, using what is already in the fridge, and honest about being an approximation rather than a match.

Best for

salted egg yolk sauce in a hurry, ensaladang talong, rice toppings, crumbled garnishes

It gets the crumbly texture and the yellow-orange colour right and the salt level can be dialled in exactly, which is more than most swaps manage. What it does not have is the cured funk: the flavour reads as clean, ordinary boiled egg rather than the slightly oily, faintly fishy depth of a real salted yolk. A quarter teaspoon of fish sauce per yolk closes a surprising amount of that gap. Press the yolks through a sieve for a finer, sandier crumb.

Salt-cured pressed fish roe, which is dense, orange, granular and intensely savoury, and therefore an unexpectedly precise match for what a salted yolk contributes to a sauce.

Best for

salted egg yolk pasta and rice, sauces, grating over vegetables, when you want the effect and not the authenticity

It is more marine and more insistently savoury than a salted yolk, so a little goes a long way, and it costs considerably more. In return you get exactly the right combination of salt, fat, colour and grit. Grate it fine and add it off the heat, since bottarga turns bitter if you fry it. Not suitable for mooncakes or anywhere the whole intact yolk is the point.

A swap for the job rather than the ingredient, and a good one specifically where the egg appears as salty crumbled bites on a plate.

Best for

ensaladang talong (grilled eggplant salad), tomato and onion salads, cold vegetable plates

It is salty, crumbly and creamy in roughly the same way, and on a plate of charred eggplant with tomato it does the same work of punctuating each bite with salt and richness. It obviously tastes of cheese rather than egg, so the salad reads Mediterranean rather than Filipino. Rinse feta briefly if it is very salty, and do not use it anywhere the egg is cooked into a sauce.

The white of a salted egg is doing almost nothing except delivering salt, so replacing it with salt is not a compromise at all.

Best for

recipes that call for chopped whole salted egg, salads and rice dishes, seasoning a filling

You lose the firm rubbery cubes of white and a little visual contrast, and nothing else. Where the egg is the whole point, such as a mooncake or a salted egg yolk sauce, salt on its own gives you a salty dish and none of the richness, so pair it with butter and a mashed boiled yolk. This is the swap to reach for when you only need the seasoning and not the spectacle.