How do I properly escape quotes inside HTML attributes?

I have a drop down on a web page which is breaking when the value string contains a quote.

The value is "asd, but in the DOM it always appears as an empty string.

I have tried every way I know to escape the string properly, but to no avail.

<option value=""asd">test</option>
<option value="\"asd">test</option>
<option value="&quot;asd">test</option>
<option value="&#34;asd">test</option>

How do I render this on the page so the postback message contains the correct value?