Thursday, November 03, 2011

The perfect boiled egg


That's right! I have perfected the process of the boiled egg. The secret is that you really need to pay close attention to the temperature of the water and timing. Here it is in it's simplest form:

  • Bring water to a boil (w/o eggs in the pot).
  • Put eggs in pot. Use a spoon to put them in gently to avoid cracking.
  • Set a timer immediately after eggs are in the pot for desired result (no less than 6 minutes).
  • Pay attention to the boiling water. Do not reduce the heat on the burner too much. You want the water to be bubbly the whole time. This is the key part.
  • Once the timer goes off, take the eggs out immediately with a spoon and place in a bowl.
  • That's it in a shell of a nut :-P

More deets:

I've gone through many trial runs to get this down. I haven't found anyone on the internet that has devoted any type of detailed effort or explanation of how to get the egg to a the perfect specific desired result, so this is my contribution.

I prefer my boiled egg to be soft and I have perfected this specific result. Here it is with WAY more detail:

  • Bring water in a pot to a boil (w/o eggs in the pot) - You want to see the water bubbling. Not the kind of bubbling where you see little bubbles the size of BB's sticking to the pot and 5 or 6 of them float up to the surface every 2 seconds. Not the kind of bubbling where it starts to get foamy on the surface either. You want the perfect medium between the two. The kind of bubbling where about 5 bubbles/second rise to the surface about the size of an eyeball.
  • Put eggs in pot. Use a spoon to put them in gently to avoid cracking.
  • Set a timer immediately after eggs are in the pot for 6 minutes. No more, no less!
  • Pay attention to the boiling water. Make sure it is bubbling to where about 5 bubbles/second rise to the surface relatively the size of an eyeball. You can reduce the heat a little, but not too much. You want to make sure that the water is still at a very steady state of boil. You just need to make sure the water is bubbly/boily the whole time. This is the key part. If your egg comes out not cooked enough, I would not increase the boiling time the next time you try, I would increase the flame during this state on your next batch/attempt.
  • Once the timer goes off, take the eggs out immediately with a spoon and place in a bowl. If you eat one right away, the yoke should ooze out and be perfect like a over medium breakfast egg fried in a pan cooked just right. I usually eat one right after the boiling process and let the rest of them cool down to room temp and put them in the fridge. Say you eat one the next day - the yoke will be solid, but really soft and the outside of the yoke will be colored yellow and not greenish darkish yellow.
I have never had a hard time peeling my boiled eggs when following the above directions (exactly).

If you want the eggs to be cooked a bit more, I've found that anything over 10 minutes is too long/much. An 8 minute boil time is good amount.

Please give me feedback and I will make necessary adjustments.


1 comment:

  1. Dr. T, IMHO, you are kind of a genius <3

    ReplyDelete