Sweet, sour, savoury and saucy. This simple and comforting home-style stir fry is a quick and easy dinner that goes perfectly with a steaming bowl of rice.

Time: 2/5
Cooks in less time than it takes to make rice!

Effort: 2/5
Not that I’d want to, but I can do this drunk

Mom’s Cooking

My SO is out in town on a girl’s night out, and I’m all alone at home looking at some tomatoes left over from a hot pot party last week and a month-old carton of eggs. And a guy left alone at night gets ideas.

A tomato and egg stir fry is one of those wonderfully simple Cantonese dishes that come together real quick to make a great low-effort weeknight dinner. It’s for a good reason that this is a staple in the Cantonese housewife’s repertoire, cementing its status as mom’s cooking par excellence in the collective subconscious of several generations.

Perhaps I exaggerate. But I still want you to give this recipe a try because unlike the other stir fries I have written about on the blog, this one is actually pretty beginner friendly. Even if you’re a seasoned pro, this effort to reward ratio is hard to ignore.

However, the fact that it’s simple to make doesn’t mean it’s simple in taste. While the predominant notes are sweet and sour, you also get plenty of umami from the tomatoes that we’re going to stew in soy sauce.

And, since there aren’t many ingredients going into this stir fry, the aroma of the spring onions and ginger really come through. Add to that some silky scrambled eggs, and you have a recipe for a wonderful sauce to consume with copious amounts of rice.

And you would absolutely want to load up on the rice! Since half of the dish is tomatoes and eggs aren’t that calorically dense, this stir fry is also great for people who are looking to eat a large volume of food (which is always fun) for relatively few calories. Because it’s such a light dish on its own, you can either serve this alongside other food, or load up on the rice guilt-free.

As a bonus, this recipe is incidentally vegetarian! If you or someone you love wants to learn to like vegetables, this tomato and egg stir fry is a good place to begin. Call it Carnivore Rehab – I have a whole series of recipes for this purpose. With all the juicy savouriness going on, you’d forget that what you’re eating is half tomato. Of course, exactly how egg-forward or tomato-heavy you make it is entirely up to you.

What I am showing here is just one of several variations of tomato and egg stir fry. This style is what I call the Saucy Stir Fry version, where the egg and tomatoes are distinct components held together by a thick sauce. Another variation is the pseudo-omelette, where the eggs are added after the tomatoes and the whole thing sets into a few big sheets. But this version is my favourite, and it’s the one I want you to try.

Dramatis Personae

Eggs – 3 to 4 per person

Play around with the ratio of egg to tomato. You might want almost all egg, almost all tomatoes or anything in between. As for how many eggs you cook per portion, that depends on several things. How hungry are you? How much do you like eggs? Are you serving anything else for dinner, or is this the main protein? It’s time to ask those hard questions about yourself.

Tomatoes – 2 to 3 per person

Again, how many tomatoes you use and how you cut them depends entirely on where you want to take this dish. However, here I will make a suggestion to cut them into relatively large wedges so that they keep their shape and some texture after cooking. This keeps the dish from being one big goopy mess.

Aromatics

Technically optional, but I think one or two slices of ginger and the white parts of some scallion make a big difference. You don’t have to peel the ginger if you don’t want to, and the green parts of the scallions will make for a nice garnish. A pop of colour really brightens up the appearance of the dish.

Sauce

At its most basic, the sauce we simmer the tomatoes in is made of roughly a teaspoon each of light soy, dark soy and sugar. Optionally, you can choose to thicken the sauce as much or as little as you like with a cornstarch slurry.

But since you’re not here for just the basics, I’ll let you in on the (not so) secret ingredient that turns a good tomato and egg stir fry into a great tomato and egg stir fry – ketchup! A dollop of ketchup adds a layer of tomato flavour that you’ll never get from fresh tomatoes, and it adds a nice degree of acidity and sweetness that brings complexity to the sauce.

Vegetables – about 1lb of kangkong

Always eat your veggies! This time I have some 通菜/空心菜 (tung choi / kong xin cai; literally, hollow vegetable). You know this as water spinach, morning glory or kangkong. Why tung choi? They were going for cheap at the market, which is how I decide what to cook half the time.

Read on for tips on how to prepare and cook water spinach!

Executive summary

1. Get rice cooking.
2. Prepare, wash and cook the vegetables.
3. Prepare aromatics and sauce ingredients. Wash and cut tomatoes. Beat the eggs.
4. On medium heat, scramble eggs until almost completely set, then reserve.
5. Stay on medium heat. Stir fry aromatics in oil until fragrant, then add tomatoes.
6. Add sauce ingredients, then simmer for a few minutes.
7. Return eggs to pan, toss to combine, and serve.

Play by Play

Last things first. I like to give my vegetables a rinse, to get rid of any dirt and residual pesticides. To make that easier, I grab the whole bunch at the middle and twist the leaves off of the stems.

Now that the stems are separated from the leaves, I can give them a head start in the wok since the stems take longer to cook. Follow with the leaves a few minutes later – these only take a minute or two to wilt.

The tomatoes were already prepared for the hotpot party, so I wasn’t able to show the process here. Basically, I quartered them before lying each quarter flat against the cutting board to trim the white bit off. Each quarter got halved again, to make relatively large wedges.

Beating three eggs with a bit of salt, since they won’t pick up too much flavour from the sauce. As for the ginger, I’m making big slices because I want to be able to pick them out easily.

Oil in pan, medium heat. Don’t blink! Things will happen quick. Stir fry until eggs are about 80% of the way to where you want them to be. They will continue to cook as you dilly-dally to get them out of the wok, as they sit with their residual heat, and when you toss them to combine with the tomatoes.

Gimme a minute as I give the wok a quick rinse to get rid of the residual bits of egg. These have turned dry and over-cooked against the sides of the pan, and will give an unpleasant grittiness to the otherwise silky smooth texture of the dish.

Back on medium heat. Lightly brown the aromatics in some oil, then give the tomatoes a quick toss. Revel in how delicious fried ginger smells.

Now is when the magic happens. Light soy, dark soy, sugar. If you want a saucier result while keeping the tomatoes relatively firm, add a bit of water at this stage. Otherwise, the tomatoes will give off plenty of water as you stew them.

Here are things a couple minutes later. The sauce has reduced to my liking without needing a corn starch slurry (although yours might not – adjust as you see fit). Eggs go back in, mix mix mix.

Dinner is served! Plate up, and sprinkle on a bit of scallion greens for garnish.

Saucy eggs and tart tomatoes, over plenty of rice – all is right with the world.

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