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The Hard Truth About Boiled Eggs (2014) (seriouseats.com)
244 points by MrJagil on Nov 5, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 112 comments



Tangentially, I recently bought Kenji's new book [1], and my friends and I have been having tremendous fun reading through and trying out the recipes therein. Kenji's empirical approach and attention to the science behind cooking (not to mention sassy writing) really appeals to our inner geeks.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Food-Lab-Cooking-Through/dp/039308...


Got this book as well, it's fun to read through and I can impress friends with simple yet tasty recipes. Bought it mostly because I'm a huge fan of seriouseats and Kenji's posts especially, so I try to show my support.


I really hope that the book uses metric units. I recently read "The Science of Good Cooking", which was interesting but unfortunately used US units throughout, which makes it quite unscientific in my opinion.

"On Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee is another great book about the chemistry of cooking, and I especially like it since it doesn't try hard to be hip or cool as opposed to some other books about cooking chemistry I could name.


The units have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not something is scientific.


When you add salt to bread, and the recipe calls for one teaspoon, a teaspoon of kosher salt is not the same as table salt or sea salt. So how much is it? (It's significantly different.)

When something calls for three cups of flour, and it's a humid day, or a dry day, does that affect the quantity? Yes it does. Significantly enough to affect bread.

Both of the above reasons are why bread bakers weigh all their ingredients, including water.


You can weigh things with either metric or imperial units. Measuring volume when you want to know mass is a mistake you can make regardless of what units you're using.

I don't see how weighing the flour will help. A given volume of moist flour will weigh more than dry flour because of the water in it, so you'd still have a problem on humid days.


You can't weigh things with Imperial units because they are British units of volume. You weigh things with avoirdupois units.


Age and storage conditions of the flour have much more to do with the moisture content than the humidity of the individual day.

But yes, measure by weight.

pounds vs kilograms isn't particularly important (as long as you keep them straight!)


Real cooks would never use table salt. Its almost always sea salt or kosher salt. Would you rather have something nature made or something made by a chemical process in a plant?

I own a lot of Grilling/BBQ books and normal recipe books, almost everyone says to never use table salt somewhere in the book.

My Himalayan salt is quite good for seasoning and was deposited millions of years ago. Compare that to Morton's table salt with iodine my grandmother used to use.


Iodized salt is responsible for raising the average IQ of billions of people around the world because iodine deficiency leads to intellectual and developmental disabilities. It's not some sinister additive that people need to avoid. It's one of the most successful public health efforts ever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodised_salt


I'm sure I would get the recommended Iodine dose from any sort of processed foods I eat or from any cheaper restaurants I frequent that use table salt.

There are many people that dont cook at home and I doubt their Iodine levels are low.

Also I never said it was some sinister corporation spreading false info.


This is very true.

Given that you have enough iodine in your diet though, avoiding it in seasoning is sensible.


They are very different - table salt conforms to a quality standard while the others have varying trace contaminants. They may add to flavor, but not in any reliable predictable way. And the major active ingredient of both is sodium.

Its fun to play with cool, colorful salts. By the time the cooking is done, I'd bet cash money no one can tell the difference.


   By the time the cooking is done, I'd bet cash money no one can tell the difference.
I suspect you'd lose that bet - informally I've tried many experiments with iodized and non-iodized salts, and the iodine can change flavor.

Besides that, one of the main reasons to use different salts is crystal size which can have significant effect (depends on what you are doing, obviously). For example, koshering salt is called that because of its use in koshering meats, where the large crystal structure helps control absorption. Likewise in "finishing" applications.


If you follow many recipes are use table salt instead of kosher salt I guarantee it will come out salty.

Serious Eats has an article and it really validates a part of both of our points[1]:

>"So long as your salt is going to be dissolved and distributed evenly into the final dish...there's no reason to use kosher salt...Just remember, check your recipes and make sure to compensate for table salt's density when adding it."

If you have access to Good Eats, Alton Brown explains it pretty well.[2]

[1]http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/ask-the-food-lab-do-i-nee...

[2]http://www.thekitchn.com/salt-101-alton-brown-and-the-p-1042...


> Real cooks would never use table salt.

Real cooks use table salt all the time. Other salts are mostly useful as finishing salts (where the subtle distinctions in flavor and texture between different salts, or different sized grinds of the same salt, come out, and where color distinctions can impact presentation) rather than in cooking itself (where they don't.)

> My Himalayan salt is quite good for seasoning and was deposited millions of years ago. Compare that to Morton's table salt with iodine my grandmother used to use.

...and, what? Both are good for seasoning, the table salt with iodine is better for avoiding the (otherwise fairly common) iodine deficiency (conversely, its a good thing to avoid if you are iodine sensitive). I'd rather use the Himalayan salt as a finishing salt for some things.

Also, table salt vs. other salt and iodized salt vs. non-iodized salt are orthogonal distinctions (and table vs. other salt is a different distinction than "made in nature" vs. "made in a chemical process in a plant".)

Kosher, Sea, and some other salts are available iodized, and table salt is available non-iodized.


Not concerned about whether "nature" made it so much as I am about grain size. The bigger crystals in kosher/sea salt are better for a lot of uses.

At the same time, if you're just gonna boil water and dissolve some salt in it, it doesn't really matter so much as the actual amount of salt.


If you are concerned about grain size I doubt the only thing you use salt for is to boil things.


real cooks use butterflies


Since this is getting downvoted a lot by "imperialists":

I do not say that one cannot work scientifically using non-metric units, I'm just saying that it has a non-scientific appeal since even in the US scientific publications normally use SI units (kg, m, s) since they are well defined and easy to calculate with.

Imperial units, on the contrary, are based on the length of body parts and sticks or the volume of some arbitrary measurement cup. Granted, the meter is a bit arbitrary as well (but at least based on the geometry of the planet), but the nice thing about metric units is that they can be converted easily: 100 cm = 1 m, 1000 m = 1 km. 1000 g = 1 kg. Try that with inches, feet, yards and miles.

So I really stay with my assessment that working in non-metric/SI units is contradictory to professional scientific work.


based on the length of body parts and sticks or the volume of some arbitrary measurement cup

Let's not forget the weight of a stone!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)


Good thing he's a professional american cook, not a professional scientist.


Again, I'm not trying to devalue the work of the author here, I just say that his choice of units is non-scientific.


I had a look using Amazon's preview of the book.

It uses "imperial" units, though I assume they're actually "English" units (i.e. American rather than British). This matters for volumes, a British pint is larger ("a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter", as my grandma taught me).

It has a few conversions in the introduction, but with false precision -- an oven temperature of 300F is converted to 149C.

It argues against using volume measures for dry or sticky ingredients, but the only example I see in the preview asks for "2 tablespoons of butter".


Kenji has stated many times on SE when this comes up that he's catering to US home cooks with measurements


I don't have it in front of me but he typically gives us volume and also grams for measurement. That said I fail to see why semantic sugar like units would really skew your opinion here, at the end of the day his book is aimed at a home cook. It's not modernist cuisine


Yes of course, but if you are used to metric units it's pretty hard to develop a good intuition around pounds, cups, inches and ounces, and I find intuition and the ability to clearly visualize proportions pretty important when cooking.


That's orthogonal to whether or not kenji was being scientific in his methods


Yes, while if you have prior experience with cooking in the US (but are still interested in the science), then you are used to pounds, cups, inches, and ounces, and may find it hard to develop a good intuition around liters and grams. (Also, it will be easier to find things like measuring cups and spoons delimited in the former.) They're just units...


  >  They're just units...
Indeed. Units that correlate (1kg water == 1 litre of water) and are intuitive (100C = boiling water).

The fact that the imperial units aren't even common amongst the two remaining countries that use some number of them is just 12oz of icing on the cake. It's frustrating to find an otherwise fine cooking or science book ruined by the prose pandering to some elderly subset of 5% of the population.


I understand the sentiment, but I think you are underestimating the subset of the population that traditional units "pander" to - including, anecdotally, me. I'm 23, far from elderly, and like many of the people on this site, work with computers for a living; I'm not uneducated or anti-intellectual. But I have minimal background in the physical sciences, so never got much exposure to metric units that way, and living in the US, I've never really needed them outside of that. Sure, the metric units are for the most part inherently superior (although I'm a fan of degrees Fahrenheit [1]), while especially for cooking the traditional ones are a mess: e.g. the relationship between tablespoons and teaspoons and the two types of ounces is something which, since I haven't invested that much time in cooking either (I'm working on it), I still haven't memorized. Yet the traditional ones are still what I and many others have been almost exclusively exposed to.

Sure, I could go out of my way to buy utensils and look up measurements in metric. On one hand, it would be a bit more forward thinking, especially since I want to try living in Japan at some point and there would be one less change to worry about. On the other, here and now, it would make it harder to talk about recipes with other people.

But mostly I just don't care. They're just units. If units "ruin" a book for you then you should reconsider your standards of evaluation.

[1] http://lolsnaps.com/upload_pic/FahrenheitVsCelsiusVsKelvin-6...


> elderly subset of 5% of the population

He's writing a book for a US audience. The US audience uses US customary units for measurement and has done so since 'forever' basically. The subset of US citizens that knows metric well enough to be comfortable using it for things like cooking is small enough to be irrelevant for his book.

Would it be better to use the metric system for everything in the US? Of course. Will it happen in the next 100 years? Nope.

And I'm really confused about the elderly part of your statement. Do you correlate being young in the US with knowing the metric system? If so you are unfortunately wrong. Actually you are more likely to find metric knowledge in the general populous in the older crowed due to an attempt in the 70's to convert to the metric system. So, outside of areas that use metric internally, the older population is more likely to know metric than the younger ones.


1/20 of the planet's population is not 1/20 of the market's population, particularly when writing in English.


Worst case, you can spend $10 and get a set of measuring cups and spoons.

That's a lot better than the complete clusterfuck that is working on most mechanical equipment - you'll all too often find a bizarre amalgamation of metric & standard hex head, allen, torx and other fasteners, all mixed together - wrenches are nowhere near as inexpensive.


>That's a lot better than the complete clusterfuck that is working on most mechanical equipment //

Wouldn't that largely be fixed by the USA moving to metric.


That doesn't magically replace 100 years of legacy parts and equipment.


Be careful with statistics: In this experiment, 3000 eggs were boiled, showing a difference of 10% versus 12% cracked eggs with/without pricking before cooking.

Statistically, this does not have _any significance_ at all, though: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... (Sorry, that translation is hilarious).


From the article: "Here's the truth: there is no 100% fool-proof method, and anybody who tells you different is selling something. And I do believe I've tried them all, many, many times over. The number of eggs I've boiled over the last several years in carefully controlled circumstances numbers well into the thousands, but despite that, the best boiled egg I cooked this year is no better than the best boiled egg I cooked twelve years ago in that Beacon Hill kitchen."


On the other hand, if you actually bother to do the math, using the normal approximation you get that a 95% confidence interval around p=0.1 with n=3000 has an upper bound of 0.111, which is well-separated from p'=0.12.

(in fairness, the confidence intervals do overlap each other)


II am a big fan of soft-boiled eggs and I've always thought this was common knowledge since my mom taught me how to prepare them when I was young.

My recipe:

1. Boil water 2. Place eggs in boiling water 3. Cook eggs for 5 minutes 4. Place pot with eggs in the sink and let cold water run to replace the hot water, don't let the water get warm in the pot. 5. Wait for eggs to cool for a few minutes 6. Peel eggs easily now.

Total time: about 15 minutes


I had been experimenting with eggs when this article first came out trying to recreate the results.

A found no difference between bringing eggs to the boil and dropping them in boiling water.

I did find a difference between running cold water into the pot and dropping the eggs in cold water. Putting the eggs straight into cold water gave me rounder eggs that were easier to peel.


Well, the reason to drop them in boiling water is to control the softness on the inside, because you have a consistent starting point at 100C, then you can keep the temperature at 100C and time 5 minutes.

If you use cold water, the time for the water to get to 100C is going to be dependent on the stove and the flame that comes out of the burner, so when the water gets to 100C, in some cases the eggs will be half-ready, in some cases 1/3 ready, so it's more difficult to cook the eggs perfectly. Obviously, if you are always using the same stove and the same flame, you will eventually know how long it takes you to cook the eggs, but then when you switch stoves, you have to re-learn this. For me, dropping the eggs in boiling water is a little easier.

Finally, yes, cold water is used to make the eggs easier to peel.


Don't forget to add a spoonful of salt into a water -- this makes eggs cracking less often.


>Cook eggs for 5 minutes

Thing is, it's difficult to apply a time to the process. Different stoves, different water starting temperature, different pots..these these will all affect how quickly you can cook the eggs.

I think it's a matter of having some idea, some "recipe", and tweaking it. Currently I warm my eggs by running them under tap water, then put them in the water on the stove, set a time for 14 minutes, bring the water to a boil, turn it down to medium, remove from stove when timer elapses.

It works for me. Judging by the article, and the comments, almost no two people do the same thing.


> Different stoves, different water starting temperature, different pots..these these will all affect how quickly you can cook the eggs.

No matter what model of stove or pot or starting temperature you have, water boils at 100C* . If the water is supposed to be boiling the whole time, the 5-minute cook time is completely repeatable.

You understand that it is physically impossible to have liquid water above 100C without applying pressure, yes?

* Depending on atmospheric pressure.


>No matter what model of stove or pot or starting temperature you have, water boils at 100C

And? Does water boil instantly, or are there factors that can affect how long it takes to get water to boil? Things like, say, your stove, pot and starting water temperature.

>You understand that it is physically impossible to have liquid water above 100C without applying pressure, yes?

Wow, thanks for the physics lesson.

I was referring to the OP stating "the process" takes 15 minutes from start to finish. Well, different stoves are going to heat water at different rates. Colder water from the tap will take longer to heat than warmer water from the tap. When I'm the one cooking my eggs, these things matter. Time-from-boil isn't relevant to me when I'm getting ready in the morning.

Learn to tame your nerd-rage and give people the benefit of the doubt that they aren't as stupid as you think.


Your initial reasoning is correct, which is why it's best to first bring the water to boiling temperature, _then_ drop the eggs in the pot.

Think about this for a second: When the water gets to 100C, it stays at 100C as long as there is sufficient fire under the pot, correct? So, your water is stable after it boils. You can then drop the eggs, time 5 minutes, and you're done.

If you don't do this, it would be difficult to apply a time to the process, like you said. But, if you let the water boil first before adding in the eggs, it's always going to be 5 minutes to soft-boiled eggs, so it becomes easy to time the process.


> Different stoves

How different does the temperature of boiling water get from 100? If your little eggs are lowering the temperature of your water at a simmer by that much, you should try bigger pots.


It will be less wasteful and you'll get better results by placing your eggs in some water with ice cubes.

5 minutes appears low, but until reading this article I was starting my eggs in cold water so I don't have any reference.


Kenji is awesome, and probably the best reason to read seriouseats. But for anyone who enjoys food science, you really have to start with Harold McGee's classic "On Food and Cooking":

http://smile.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp...

(Sorry for the enormous URL.)

Also, I binge-listen to Dave Arnold's podcast, "Cooking Issues" on Heritage Radio network. A treasure trove of food science facts, going well beyond eggs: sous vide meat, hydrocolloids, liquid nitrogen cocktails, etc.

http://heritageradionetwork.org/series/cooking-issues/

(You really have to give the show a chance, though -- it's very conversational, and less... polished than your typical show.)

Also, anyone interested in food science should really consider an iSi whipper for booze infusion and other experimentation. No really, please do it, your life will be better (or at least boozier):

http://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=4463.html

(Arnold has progressed the technique a lot since then, but this primer is pretty good nonetheless. The FCI blog is basically dead; the podcast and Twitter are his current outlets.)

But yeah, I screw around in the kitchen a lot (though cook less useful food than my wife does). Pressure cooker, weird enzymes, hydrocolloids... but the iSi whipper booze-infusion technique is my all-time favorite kitchen hack. You can drink toasted hazelnut bourbon in a Manhattan like, six minutes from now! (I hope it's nighttime when you read this.) Four minutes to microwave toast the nuts, plus two minutes to nitrous-infuse them. You might want to chop them in between and filter through a coffee filter after.

Sorry, my nerd is showing. I hate eggs, especially boiled eggs, but this post hit a fun nerve for me.


On Food and Cooking is a great book (and so much cheaper than Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine -- although there's a "light" version of this which is quite good).

Never heard about the iSi infusion technique before now, but am going to try it straight away! Thanks! ;-)


If you're just primarily interested in quick and helpful cooking tips and less interested in the background history, anthropology and science that On Food and Cooking covers, you really should take a look at McGee's other book Keys to Good Cooking. It is a collection of useful techniques and tips broken down by ingredient.

Or to put it in HN terms. If On Food and Cooking as comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of computer science, then Keys to Good Cooking is Javascript: The Good Parts


And which would be an analogue to The Javascript Cookbook?

(I'll show myself out)


> (Sorry for the enormous URL.)

Totally off-topic, but you can shorten an Amazon product URL like so:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684800012


you can url golf it down to just

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0684800012


I've been listening to Cooking Issues for a year or so, but god that show is sometimes annoying. I don't mind it being rough (it's recorded live after all), but there's just so much cringeworthy off-topic banter.


There is one method he didn't mention. Put the egg in a pot. Cover with cold water. Bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and cover. Wait 10 minutes. Shock cool immediately under running water.

I only boil eggs now and again, but I have a 100% success rate on peeling with this method. I also don't do anything special while peeling. Just crack the shell any old way and peel it. Never once had a marred surface. Never once had dimples in the eggs (probably the shock cooling, as he suggested).

Some variables: Gas stove on medium high heat. At sea level (well, technically 4 meters above sea level...). Very fresh eggs (probably only 2-3 days on average). Eggs started at room temperature (although exactly once I started with a cold egg with no perceived difference).

I'd be interested to see if anyone else has used this technique.


This is the best egg toaster, I have this and love it:

http://www.amazon.com/West-Bend-TEM500W-Muffin-Toaster/dp/B0...


I used to do it this way until I read this article a while back -- the hot start method gives me much easier-to-peel eggs than the cold start used to. I start with my eggs from the fridge and usually toward the end of their lifecycle though.


I've used this method many, times (a few hundred, say) and it works fairly well, but definitely not 100% success on peeling. Also some variability on yolk consistency.


I own a hard boil egg maker. Takes less than 20 minutes to make 7 perfect hard boiled eggs. If I am patient enough to wait another 20 minutes after that the eggs peel perfectly and are still warm and delicious.

http://www.amazon.com/KRUPS-F23070-Cooker-Indicator-capacity...


Contraptions that are single-purpose and do their job well are defensible, IMHO, yet I still dislike the space and specialized cleaning requirements of devices like this.


My household hard-cooks all of our eggs in a rice cooker with a steamer tray insert (Zojirushi NHS-10). The cooking time is set by the amount of water you add. We mainly err on the side of overcooked (more water), because nobody likes soft yolks.

The rice cooker and convection/toaster oven have been the two most universally useful appliances in our kitchen, and they are both still operational after an average of 15 years in service. Other gadgets have come and gone, and they remain. They have even outlasted four microwave ovens, three slow-cookers, and one full-sized range-top oven.

A rice cooker is useful enough in every home kitchen that I consider it a dire omission that they didn't even get a mention in the article. Ours can cook a dozen eggs in 15 minutes, most of that time can be spent doing something else, and there's no boiling water to pour out.


Just to add, Zojirushi are top of the line rice cookers and I would expect that they outlast most other appliances.


Try this then: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008LTIYN2 toaster and egg maker in one, and it can synchronize them.


It has the same problem, along with not easily being able to replace 1/2 of it.


I used to have one of those, but a few months ago I switched to the pressure cooker method (electric one, the [Instan Pot][1]):

  - cook the eggs 6 minutes on low pressure.
  - cool down (10 minutes).
  - shock the eggs with iced water.
I know what the article says but in my experience pressure cooked eggs are much, much easy to peel.

[1]: http://instantpot.com/


It takes less time to make 7 (or 3, or 12) perfect boiled eggs in a saucepan, it's trivial to do and to clean! I note your cooker also poaches eggs, though, which is much trickier in a pan (unless you have your own chooks, or a similarly fresh source of eggs).


Does it take less time? I have a similar cooker and it uses ~1 cup of water for completely hard boiled eggs (total capacity 10 eggs[0]). The cooker rings a bell when the water has completely boiled off, which is closer to 10 minutes than 20 minutes for this model. I think total capacity is 10 eggs.

Now, in a saucepan the water doesn't have to boil off completely, but you also have significantly more water.

That isn't to say I use this unitasker all the time, I usually don't remember to have eggs around often enough!

[0]: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61jBthbQW6L._SX425_.jp...


I have a similar egg maker. I like the fact that it is very water and energy efficient. It's also interesting that as you boil more eggs, it requires less water.


Assuming it's 1kg of plastic, manufacturing it cost about 180 litres of water and 80MJ of energy.

I can bring 12 pans of water to boil with that energy, and have lots of water to spare.


I once did a day cooking class with Herve This (the Godfather of Molecular Gastronomy) and he talked of cooking eggs in a 'boiled style' in an oven on low heat.

His comment was that the oven style at low heat allowed a restaurant to cook a large quantity of eggs and have a consistent product which would be good over the course of a few hours.


I eat a lot of boiled eggs, and this is what I've been using for the past 6 months:

Nordic Ware Microwave Egg Boiler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007M2BN0

Works surprisingly well, consistent, etc. it basically steams them.


I have a Betty Crocker cookbook from the sixties that gives exactly the same cooking advice, right down to time, boiling start, and shocking in ice water.


If the pressure cooker is inferior to boiling water, I wonder if that means the optimal temperature is actually below boiling. Perhaps a sous vide setup could be even better. Be a fun experiment for someone to run.

It also occurs to me that there is significant evidence of numerous "cooking myths" that lasted for decades or centuries before falling to the first person to finally put them to the test. Seems like fertile ground for some interesting high school science projects that could get some interesting results.


I highly recommend sousvide (or rather, a temperature controlled water bath) for eggs. For whole eggs, you can get fine-grained control over the texture of both white and yolk (see https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-egg-calculator), and for scrambled eggs you can control the tenderness very well.

Mostly, I just skip the calculator and do in-shell eggs for 40 minutes at 62.5C or 63C. They are soft, have no salmonella concerns, and delicious served on toast or on veggies.

The water bath is also a very convenient way to make pasteurized "raw" eggs at home, so you can make raw-egg recipes with very low risk.


I like this chart better for sous-vide eggs:

http://www.cookingissues.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/eggc...

It's accurate and has served me well. The only downside of making eggs sous-vide is that it takes forever. If I sleep in on a Sunday morning, set up the water bath, then wait 45 minutes for egg equilbrium, it's almost lunch time...


Optimum temperature from TFA:

Egg white:

* At 180 degrees: The main protein in egg whites—ovalbumen—will cross-link and solidify, giving you a totally firm egg white (see the whites of the 7 and 9 minute eggs).

Egg yolks, on the other hand, follow a different set of temperatures:

* At 145 degrees: They begin to thicken and set up.

* At 158 degrees: They become totally firm, but are still bright orange and shiny.

----

A sous vide setup might work, but it probably isn't worth the effort for eggs. You would want to set the temperature to 145..158 degrees, depending on your desired yoke consistency and then drop the egg in boiling water to finish the whites to 180 degrees.

TBD is whether the 145 degree sous vide temperature hurts peel-ability (likely) and how long to cook the egg to finish the whites properly without overcooking the yoke.


Here's the Serious Eats guide to sous vide eggs:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/10/sous-vide-101-all-about-e...

For soft boiled, I've only tried it at 144f for 1 hour, but was a touch softer than I wanted. I think a few degrees higher might fix that. Part of the white was slightly liquid, but it was easy to discard. Peeling was a pain.

165f was good for a hard boiled egg. The texture was softer than normal which I thought was great.


"You would want to set the temperature to 145..158 degrees, depending on your desired yoke consistency and then drop the egg in boiling water to finish the whites to 180 degrees."

I was unclear about what I was thinking. I was thinking using the sous vide hardware to prep water at 200F or 190F and try boiling in that, since trying to maintain that temperature by hand is very hard, or at least, very labor intensive. But my failure to communicate that well produced another interesting strategy from you.

And I have to admit I'm more searching for perfection in the abstract sense than interested in changing how I cook them. If perfect turns out to be "individually microwave the egg for 6 seconds, then cook in sous vide bath at 185F for six minutes, then boil for 3 more, then dump in ice bath immediately"... yeah, I'm not going to do that. But I'm intellectually curious.


The basis of sous vide is to cook the meat to the desired level of "doneness" (directly related to temperature of the inside of the steak) and then sear the outside. Searing the outside is mostly decoupled from the inside cooking because it happens fast and thus only on the very outside layer of the meat.

I mapped this strategy directly to eggs, but it probably would work poorly. With a steak, "sear the outside to your preference" is easy. With an egg, "cook the whites without overcooking the yoke" is likely to be difficult.

Your suggested method of using the bath to maintain the water temperature would probably work well and probably result in less "rubbery" whites, but probably is overkill compared to maintaining the water temperature at 212 degrees (trivial) and control cooking via time per the article (and tradition). Plus you would have to boil 3,000 eggs to scientifically establish the new cook times. ;-)


This is sort of the sous vide experiment. https://youtu.be/vA8YYexlgNs A co-worker sent me that a while back, said it was from the class HarvardX: SPU27x Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science Not so much about hard boiled, but cooking a yolk from raw to hard.


Sous-vide eggs are weeird -- The yolk sets at a lower temperature than the white, so you tend to end up with a set yolk but a jelly-like white.

You might be able to find a good compromise temperature, or even a good temperature-time profile with a sophisticated cooker, but boiling and steaming handily cook the white more than the yolk which is usually what people want.


According to Thomas Keller's sous vide book Under Pressure, 144.5F/62.5C is the ideal sous vide temp. He's not the type to be wrong about this.


I'm lazy to a fault, and I cook eggs by cracking them into a bowl of water and nuking it in the microwave until done. No peeling, no cleaning up the pot, much less waiting.


Strange. Maybe I don't do it that often, but I don't recall having much trouble peeling hard boiled eggs. My method is to boil them for desired time, run cold water over them for a bit, then drop them gently on the bench probably 3-5 times per egg so that the shell is consistently shattered, then peel. Maybe the problem is that I can't get fresh eggs.


On the other hand, getting a perfect soft boiled egg so that the whites are cooked but the yolk is completely runny is something I struggle with. I probably get about 1 in 3 perfect. I use a timer of course, but then the size of the egg seems matter and goodness knows what else.


I've found that steaming them makes this much more consistent: https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/7279-soft-cooked...

Sorry for the paywall (I hate that!), there's an official youtube video you can watch for free, but I can't find it now. (Youtube history doesn't have search!)


There are various apps that let you calculate optimal cooking times depending on egg size, initial temperature, etc. Works quite well in my experience.


What he says about the age of the egg is contrary to my experience. I usually get fresh eggs from the farmers market and they peel easier than the store bought eggs which aren't as fresh. Maybe it's the fact that the eggs here aren't washed - they can be kept at room temperature quite a long time, no refrigeration needed.


The washing is an important and fascinating distinction.

I'm in Australia, and as I understand it the unwashed egg is the default in most parts of the world (certainly here and in the UK, and I think in most of the EU). In the US the default is a washed product.

But (!) this is why the default in the US is to have eggs refrigerated from soon after they leave the farm - and they need to remain refrigerated. IIRC this is because eggs that come from ~3C back to room temperature (~21C) will condense, and on washed eggs this massively increases the risk of pathogens penetrating the eggs.

On non-washed eggs, this is less of a concern - but here we still recommend to not relocate eggs from the fridge to room temperature unless we're about to eat them. The membrane, though, will prevent spoilage of eggs that haven't been washed (or refrigerated) for weeks, if not months, if kept at a reasonable room temperature. (I qualify reasonable as here in AU room temperature in summer can often reach 35C.)


I am originally from the U.S. and when I came to Thailand I was initially taken aback by the sight of eggs being left out for days or weeks at a time. But they don't spoil. I later learned about the washing affect. Also, it's predominately brown eggs over here. Not sure if that makes a difference. At least as far as appearances go, unwashed brown eggs don't look as dirty as unwashed white eggs.


Actually, the easiest way to peel eggs is with a spoon. I use this method on new eggs, old eggs, cold eggs, hot eggs, soft-boiled, medium-boiled and hard-boiled. As long as you push the spoon against the inside of the shell only and move slowly, you can get the whole thing in about 30-60 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV9ytMg_fi4


Of all the egg tutorials, none of them address the amount of water they used in boiling the egg. It is hardly convincing that the amount of boiling water won't affect the final product. The temperature of water might change once the egg is dropped in depending how large the pool is. Would love to see a comparison of using different pool size


That, and the temperature of the egg itself. Did it come from the refrigerator or is it at room temperature? Furthermore, not every egg has the same size or weight.


the temperature has been addressed in that article.


True but I am European and therefore, as mentioned in the article, often store my eggs at room temperature. The hardness of a cooked egg is a function of the size and/or weight of the egg, the cooking time and the temperature of the egg.


his advise is to put the eggs into a steamer... the quantity of water shouldn't make a difference in that case.


I've been using this method [1] successfully for several months now. Instead of cracking the shell and then peeling under water, you take both steps at the same time by cracking the shell in the water!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkWISKfgqZ0


Very funny and useful.

Seems that the scientific method can and should be applied to nearly everything successfully :o).


You would very much enjoy the book, "The Science of Good Cooking" by the same folks who do the show "Americas Test Kitchen"


Big fan of Kenji's food lab work. I like his trial and error methods of finding the facts. From him I've learned to steam my eggs, bash and brine my chicken, and the right way to cook a steak, not that I eat much red meat anymore - too expensive!.


I would just say that for people that love eating eggs, if you have the space get a couple of chickens. They are about as hard to look after as rabbits, and once you have proper, fresh eggs you won't go back to store-bought.



Not really. Cage free vs. caged or organic corn vs. non-organic corn is a feel good thing.

It all depends on what they eat. Both articles actually say this, but bury it for some reason.

Hens in a barnyard eating high quality feed supplemented by insects, etc have a different flavor and texture than hens just fed feed. "Eggland's best" taste different because they are supplemented with flax.

Similar phenomena exists with beef and pork. Grass fed beef tastes different due to more Omega-3 in grass. Danish pork tastes a little different because the pigs eat fish.


They don't "taste" better on their own, but the fact remains that fresh yolk is firmer. Firmer yolks yield better results in some recipes, thus creating a better product, and tasting better. Also, texture wise, fresh eggs are better. Taste involves all the senses.


Interesting, but doesn't match my experience. Even if your own eggs don't taste better, they are also about a month fresher.

Even if you don't believe they taste any different, they're interesting animals and it's a fun hobby.


{much nodding} They're also a great way of recycling your green waste. Quail are meant to be comparably fun & easy to keep too, but no first hand experience on that front.


Our neighbour had quail. They're cute, but very flighty compared to chickens.


>As you can see, not one of them is a perfect hard-cooked egg: the eggs go directly from having slightly translucent centers to having rubbery whites.

This happens when you cut them in half when they're still hot. The trick is to let them sit in the water until it cools down after cooking, or at least don't cut them until they cool down considerably.


>But of course, there's still a lot of eggsplaining to do.

Upvoting this share just because of this pun!


Damn, I read this article a couple of weeks ago when making my own eggs. Little did I know there was so much delicious HN karma to be had. I'll just submit every site I visit in future.




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