• 6 hard-boiled eggs See recipe post for how to cook them. Preferably cook them till they have runny yolks (not firm yolks) but don't stress too much. If you want to make more eggs, you'll need to increase the sauce quantities too.

Braising sauce ingredients (this sauce recipe is for eggs that will be left overnight in the marinade. For eggs that you want to eat immediately, refer to the notes.)

• 3 star anise Substitute: you can replace the star anise and cinnamon stick with 5-spice powder.
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 Cups water Reduce this to 1 Cup of water if you want to eat the eggs immediately. You'll only be able to cook 3 eggs in this case. All the other braising sauce ingredient quantities are kept the same. (Alternatively, keep it as 2 Cups of water and 6 eggs but double the quantities of the rest of the sauce.) If you do this, don't store the eggs in the undiluted marinade or they'll be too salty!
• ¼ Cup light soy sauce Not the same as sweet soy sauce, dark soy sauce or thick soy sauce. (You can add 1 Tablespoon of sweet soy sauce or 1 Tablespoon of dark soy sauce to the recipe if you are making the eggs to eat immediately.)
• 1 Tablespoon sugar You can omit this but we all know some sugar makes everything taste a bit better! Rock sugar is traditional but I use white sugar when I'm out of the former.
• 1 pinch salt Optional. If you want to eat the eggs immediately, instead of leaving them in the braising liquid overnight to develop the flavor, you'll need a stronger marinade (so that the eggs can take on the flavor in a shorter period of time.) In this case, I recommend the salt.
• Garlic, dried shiitake stems, oyster sauce, chicken stock powder Optional. I add them if I have them on hand. For oyster sauce, 1 Tablespoon is good. For chicken stock powder, ½-1 teaspoon is good.