• Perfect Boiled Eggs Means: Perfect Doneness Every Time And A Cinch To Peel Every Time
• Let’s Science The F*ck Out Of This Thing — The Inferior Methods And Why (Here are the methods I’ve used and failed at some annoying percentage of the time)
• So What’s The Consistent Quick And Easy Solution That Beats All Others?

Perfect Boiled Eggs Means: Perfect Doneness Every Time And A Cinch To Peel Every Time

I didn’t even think to do this as a post, total Sunday morning afterthought. I shot the 1-minute video you’ll watch later for my girl who, with her perfectly manicured nails is an expert at peeling eggs even when they’re a total bitch and the membrane sticks to the white relentlessly and when finished, you have an egg that looks more like the surface of the moon. She manages minimal damage and does it quickly.

You may not know this, but Thais eat more eggs than any population I’ve ever observed, by far. Put that in your cholesterol calculators all you plump and fat “dietitians.”

They have them for breakfast most days, they’re in many soups (along with meat and often, a cubed chicken-liver pâté specifically crafted for lots of their soups), omelets a lot, offered as sides, eaten as a snack, etc. I’d say average consumption for even your 100-pounder small women is 2-4 per day in various ways, in various meals.

Here’s the short story of how I have used every damn method in the book and Google over years and years, but a couple of months ago finally found the ideal one that is 100% every time. Best of all, it’s the easiest, quick, and cleanest method for soft, medium, and hard-boiled eggs of all of the others.

Let’s Science The F*ck Out Of This Thing — The Inferior Methods And Why

Here are the methods I’ve used and failed at some annoying percentage of the time:

Standard water boiling. Total hit and miss on both the fronts of perfect doneness and peeling. Get them perfectly done, or have a moonscape upon peeling. Rarely do you get both, and never every single time. Easiest is for runny, warm, soft boiled because the easiest eating method for those is to just quickly dunk them in cold water so you can hold them, slice in half with a knife—shell & all—then scoop out with a spoon. This must be done pretty quickly because tepid or cold runny egg yolks are less than palatable.

Another—better and more precise—is to bring the water to a boil, take off the heat, cover, and let sit for a specified amount of time for doneness before killing the cooking. Many sources say that you want an ice-bath shock to kill the cooking and that keeps the membrane from clinging to the white. I swear this must be how they invented super-glue. It’s derived from the membranes of chicken eggs.

This method works sometimes, not all the time. It’s also said that the age of the eggs makes a difference. In Thailand, eggs are fresh, predominantly free range, and typically not refrigerated. Most eggs you get here, even at 7/11, have deep orange and not yellow yolks. Still, always hit and miss.

Still another method is microwaving them. Yes. But they will explode, right? Sure, if you do it wrong. The way around that is you wrap the eggs tightly in aluminum foil and then submerge them in water. The water keeps the microwaves from arching with the foil and the foil keeps the microwaves from exciting the water molecules inside the shell. It’s a bit more precise for level of doneness because it boils quickly and you can time it. My mother has used this method for her morning soft-boiled egg for years. For soft-boiled, it’s not bad, since you can scoop out the egg with a spoon.

Now, while on this particular warpath, I found a variation on this. You don’t need the foil and the egg won’t explode. 1 teaspoon of table salt per egg in your water. The salt, which is a mineral, acts as some sort of buffer or shield from the microwaves exploding the eggs. I’ve used this a half dozen times for 2-3 soft-boiled eggs and it’s quick, easy, and reliable—but then again, I’m scooping out with a spoon. As I recall, I begin with water just boiled in the electric kettle, pour slowly over the eggs and salt so the shells don’t crack, and it was 4-5 minutes on high for 2-3 eggs for a nice soft-boiled on toast.

The last foray before ending up on my final solution was the silicone egg cups which I saw incessantly advertised on social media. I checked Lazada and because they’re made in China, of course, a set was like the equivalent of $5. LOL. The videos featured perfectly done eggs you don’t even have to peel at all, popping out to a little bounce on the plate.

Seemed perfect. Well, you end up with eggs where the yolk is done but the whites are runny if trying to do soft or medium, and it doesn’t matter whether you coat the cups with oil, butter, or bacon fat: the whites stick to the silicon just as if you had cooked them on a course, unseasoned cast iron skillet with no oil. You have to scrape them out in pieces and bits.

That brings us to the last sciency part before moving on to the final solution. Back when I got one of the first few dozen of Mike Eades’ Sous Vide Supreme water ovens to roll off the assembly line and had played with it plenty enough, I thought wow, this will be great for doing medium-boiled eggs. I especially thought that after he’d invited me up to San Francisco for one of his unveiling events with Chef Heston Blumenthal. One of the demonstration dishes was white-truffle scrambled eggs.

I should have known something was up when I saw the sous-chefs removing the bags of scrambled eggs multiple times during the cooking process to break them up as the proteins were firming up—ending up with something I liken to “scrambled-egg pudding.” The idea, of course—just as in my low & slow fry method, bain marie, or even Gordon Ramsay’s fast method—is to have completely done whites and warm to hot yolk, not runny but not solid.

So then I learned the science. You really can’t do a soft or medium-boiled egg sous vide, since the whole idea of SV is that you bring it up to the precise temperature that you want your dish. This is why it’s so perfect for meats of all sorts. Very easy to get a perfect level of doneness every single time without going even 1 degree over. Plus, being able to hold it there longer tenderizes the proteins with no chance of overcooking them or drying them out. Personally, I think it excels at pork chops/steaks and chicken the most. Yes, you can do beef perfectly, but I still like flame grilled often enough.

So here’s the catch. About half of the protein in an egg is in the white, half in the yolk. That’s not all. Proteins solidify at different temperatures and it turns out that the ones predominant in the yolk solidify at a lower temperature than the ones predominant in the white. So, think that through. You could set a sous vide to the precise temperature where the yolk begins to congeal—a perfect medium-boiled egg. And the white will be mostly runny snot no matter how long you leave it in, since the SV method is about precise temperature and time is far less of any consideration. You have to get the temperature up to the point where the whites get hard and unless you’re going to try misusing the SV by timing, primarily, you’ll end up with a hard-boiled egg. Might as well just stove-top it.

Cooking an egg in its shell seems to be somewhat of an art. Part of that art is that you’re heating it from the outside-in, with sufficient heat to cook the yolk—but only to the level desired: soft, medium, or hard. But since the heat to do that can only get there by going through the white, it doesn’t even start cooking the yolk until the white is sufficiently hot to get firm. Then, the trick is to kill the cooking at the point you want the yolk without being able to check it.

So What’s The Consistent Quick And Easy Solution That Beats All Others?

In a word: steaming. Yea, I know it has been around for a while and I seem to recall having an egg steamer once but didn’t notice much of a difference. I think I know why. The one(s) I had previously had a timer. So, you’re right back into figuring out how much time, and the inconsistency of results just seems just too much.

In my quest I decided to try one again, they’re damn cheap. What I noticed this time is that it has no timer. Rather, it uses water volume and switches off and beeps as soon as the prescribed water volume has completely steamed off, causing a quick temperature rise n the heating surface, which triggers the shut-off.

The appliance takes 1-6 eggs. Notice how the more eggs at leach level—from soft to medium to hard—takes less water. That might be counter-intuitive but think about it. In the enclosed space, the eggs take up volume which is air, and this is what the steam displaces. Less air volume because of more eggs, less need for displacement, less need for water. I have found through doing a few dozen large-size eggs that my best medium-boiled eggs are achieved with 6 eggs at the volume for 1-2 eggs, soft boiled. It’s ridiculously easy, clean, and quick. Eggs, water, cover, turn it on…and in about 10 minutes it beeps, the water is gone, and I lift it over to the sink which I’ve stopped up and filled with water. I just lower the rack in, done. I can eat a couple warm, place the rest in the refrigerator. I’ve taken to eating a fair amount of eggs. 3-4 per day, average. My favorite is to cut in half, season with salt and cayenne pepper.

I prefer cayenne since for some applications I’m not fond of the vinegar element in hot sauces (in some, yes).

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OK, here’s the 1-Minute demo you’ve been waiting for.