KO EN Colombian Soup⏱ 25 minEdit history

Changua (Eggs Poached in a Salted Milk Broth)

Name: Changua (Eggs Poached in a Salted Milk Broth)
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Colombian
Ingredients: 500 ml Milk; 500 ml Water; 1 tsp Salt; 1 Spring onion; 1 tbsp Butter; 4 Eggs; 4 slices Dry bread; 1 handful Coriander

Colombia's breakfast soup: milk and water in equal parts, salted and brought up to heat, with eggs cracked in whole and poached, and dry bread left to soften in the bowl. The two usual aids to poaching an egg — vinegar in the water, and no salt — are both closed to this pot: it is the soup, so it has to be seasoned, and it is milk, so vinegar would curdle it. It gets away with that because whatever white strays is still in the bowl.

Ingredients

4servings

The broth
Milk · ordinary whole milk500 ml
Water500 ml
Salt · more to taste1 tsp
Spring onion · white and green parts sliced separately1
Butter · optional1 tbsp
The eggs
Eggs · fresh, each cracked into its own small cup4
In the bowl
Dry bread · day-old white bread toasted hard; in Colombia, calado4 slices
Coriander · roughly chopped1 handful

Steps

Slice the white and green parts of the spring onion separately and chop the coriander. Crack the eggs one at a time into small cups — a piece of shell dropped into hot milk cannot be fished out, and against a white broth you will not even see it.
⏲ 5 min
Pour the milk and the water into a wide pan in equal amounts, add the salt, the white of the spring onion and the butter, and warm it over a medium heat, scraping the base as it comes up.
⏲ 8 min
When small bubbles ring the edge and the surface starts to swell, turn it down to low at once and keep it only trembling. Milk that reaches the boil goes over the side in seconds.
⏲ 1 min
Slide the eggs in one at a time from just above the surface, spaced apart. Cover and leave 3-4 minutes, until the whites are opaque and the yolks still wobble. Do not let it boil.
⏲ 3 min 30 sec
Taste and adjust the salt. Put the dry bread in the bowls, lift an egg into each with a ladle, and pour the broth over. Scatter the green of the spring onion and the coriander and serve at once.

Tips & Variations

Variations

With cheese: cubes of fresh white cheese (queso campesino) go into the bowl with the bread before the broth. They soften at the surface without running.
With an arepa: the one on the side plate in the photograph is an arepa. It is eaten alongside, not dropped in.
Late at night, or the morning after: a breakfast dish that is also eaten late at night and as a hangover cure. The method does not change.
Bouillabaisse borgne: the Provençal version with no fish, eggs poached in a garlic and saffron broth. It is the same move — cook the eggs in the soup and serve them in it — but that broth is water, so none of the constraints below that come from milk apply to it.
Beside lablabi: another breakfast soup poured hot over dry bread laid in the bowl first. There the egg goes on in each bowl rather than into the pot.

Tips

This pot can use neither of the usual aids to poaching an egg. Eggs Benedict puts both in one line: "Vinegar sets the white faster; salt does the opposite and loosens the protein so it spreads". So it poaches in unsalted water with vinegar. Changua's water is the soup, so it has to be seasoned, and it is milk, so the vinegar is out. Dairy and heat gives the reason: "Add tomato or lemon to a milk-based sauce and it curdles".
It gets away with that because what those aids protect is not needed here. Benedict holds the white together because a white that spreads is thrown away, and it removes the loose part before it starts: "Sit each egg in a sieve, let the watery white run off, and poach what is left: you get a clean oval". On a plate a straying white is a loss. In changua the poaching liquid is the dish, so whatever strays is still in the bowl. The threads of white drifting through the broth are not a failure; they are part of what you eat.
One rule survives, and two pages point at it for different reasons. Keep it below the boil. Benedict gives the egg's reason: "A rolling boil tears the white apart". Umm ali gives the milk's: "boiled, it skins and catches". Which is why step 3 turns the heat down the moment the edge swells, and why it does not boil after the eggs go in either. Everything else in the recipe forgives a lapse; this does not.
The lid cooks the top instead of the flame. The eggs sit half under a white broth with their tops in the air, and turning the heat up to set those tops boils the milk first. Shakshuka solves the same problem the same way: "The lid then finishes the top of the white, which is exposed to air, without having to raise the heat under the pan".
The salt goes in at the start. Dairy and heat heads its milk section "Milk is vulnerable to acid and salt", but the section itself only discusses acid. Where the same page lists salt as a cause of cream splitting, it pairs it with time: "Salt plus prolonged heat". Changua is in the bowl about fifteen minutes after the pan goes on. The warning belongs to a pot that simmers for an hour; it does not reach this one.
Cutting the milk with water helps in the same direction. What catches on the base is the milk, and equal water means less of it against the metal. A lighter breakfast soup is a side effect. Keep scraping the base in step 2 all the same.
The bread has to be dry. Soft bread falls apart the moment it meets the broth and turns to porridge. Hard-toasted bread takes time to drink the broth, and that time overlaps with the eating — which is why it is served the moment the broth is poured.
Coriander and the green of the onion go on off the heat. Simmered in the pot they lose their aroma and turn khaki (fresh herbs).