I don’t recall posting that but I guess I must have.
I thought I said that:
I achieve the same effects cooking in a $40 1400W Turbo Oven set to the Wash setting.
And I do, for the same reasons that sous-vide works - if the temperature never goes above the desired temperature of the cooked article it comes out the same every time.
Sure with a machine you can do it without paying attention, with the $40 turbo oven you have to look at it once in a while.
How can it be the same effect if you can’t control the temperature? There’s no way you can, for example, cook to a perfect 130 degrees all the way through if the water is 140 degrees, no matter how much attention you give to it. The outside will always be hotter than the inside.
After more thought, I think you’re probably right; pretentious is too stong a word. How about “trendy”? 
OK I give in. Obviously the thermostat on my $40 turbo oven is not as precise as the thermostat on the sous-vide device I am simply pointing out that, with a little care and attention, the same thing can be achieved for very little.
I have cooked every variety of protein in my turbo oven and they all turn out fine, although they don’t look cooked without charring.
My favorite is salmon - it looks like a piece of raw fish but is beautifully cooked and far moister than if it was cooked in any other way.
But it’s not the same thing. I’m not trying to be difficult, and I have no doubt that you can make a damn good bit of fish (or whatever) using the technique you describe. But it’s simply not the same as being able to control the precise temperature for long periods of time, and it’s not the same as true Sous-Vide.
The method I used to use: Bring water to boil. Puncture big end of eggs. Gently set eggs on bottom of pot with a big spoon. Time for 3 1/2 minutes. Run some cold tap water into pot to stop cooking. Done.
These days I do them sous vide. Trendy or not, the method produces eggs that I really like … but there are people who don’t like them. The texture of the white is unusual; my mother (who doesn’t like them) says they are “slippery.” I suspect the OP may feel the same.
I also do most of my meat sous vide these days. It is easy to produce perfect results every time. It is so easy that a nephew in the restaurant business (a $45 per person prix fixe joint) says it is “like cheating.” It is also very convenient in that once the food is cooked it will keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks or in the freezer for months with no noticeable loss of quality.
Back to soft boiled eggs … a couple super geeky links that indicate the OP has not asked a trivial question:
It’s going to depend on the size (weight and shape) of the egg. It will also depend on where you live (Denver vs SF, for example). Using a formula that doesn’t take that into account isn’t going to work.
I think Frank nailed it in the first post. Buy a bunch of eggs in the size you like. Start with a the classic 3 minute egg idea, and try time increments +/-. Find out what works, and use that.
You might be able to do some things but what you can’t do is short ribs cooked at 60C for 48 hours so that it’s medium rare but fork tender.
What is pretentious about wanting my soft boiled eggs to be exactly the way I find them most enjoyable: whites cooked through, yolks hot but liquid? It makes me think you consider wanting anything from one’s food beyond disease free and hot to be pretentious.
Judging from the photos you are exactly right- they look disgusting.
I’ve been making soft boiled eggs for forty years and have never found a foolproof thing that works, that’s why I asked.
Well, it’s all going to vary a little bit depending on the size of your eggs, your altitude, the temperature, that sort of thing. That said, try the recipe that I linked to above. I just made the eggs, having been reminded I haven’t had soft-boiled eggs in a long time, and it worked out just perfectly with jumbo eggs. From start to finish (including boiling time), it took just over 8 minutes.
It’s all about the scientific method. You have to hold all the variables except one constant*, and you have to record your results. It really does work. You can’t trust your memory.
*Unless you want to to do a messy matrix experiment.
I love soft-boiled eggs and make them all the time, and they come out perfectly. Here’s the skinny:
Make sure the egg is at room temperature. You can put chilled eggs into a bowl of warm tap water for ten or fifteen minutes, and that will bring them up to room temp.
While this is going on, bring a saucepan of water to a full boil. Lower the warmed eggs into the boiling water with a spoon, give the water a few seconds to come back to a boil, then lower the flame to low. Now’s a good time to start some toast.
Timing:
Jumbo eggs: 4 minutes
Large eggs: 3.5 minutes
Medium eggs: 3 minutes
Lift the eggs out with a slotted spoon. Peel them or put them into egg cups and serve with buttered toast.
I think the main problem with many soft boiled recipes that start with cold water is that they are dependent on an exact stove, pot, water setup. One setup may take twice as long to get to boiling as another, how can you time them the same way?
My wife uses the boiling water method, like teela and Turble, and I think that is much more consistent between setups. 4.5 minutes for a refrigerator temperature extra large egg. I think you’ll have more issues with the shell cracking, but we’ve had that happen before, and the egg was perfectly fine. You’ll need to tweak the total time for your personal preference, but that’s pretty easy.
I poke holes in the round part of the egg, so it lets water in and heats the white rapidly. Place them in boiling water for exactly 4 minutes. Perfect soft-boiled eggs. Done.
I think this is your answer. Unless you cook the two elements separately, you’ll never find a one-pot/one-egg cooking method that results in both a) solid, set whites and b) liquid but hot yolks. I don’t think any traditional steaming/boiling/soft cooked egg method will ever produce this.
So, you’ll need to start cooking the whites and the yolks separately. I’ve no idea how you’d do this. Maybe some sort of riff off of sous vide. Separately bag them up in baggies and try dropping them into boiling water, the whites sooner than the yolks. (The yolks you might just have to heat up, maybe.) Your presentation will suffer, but I think you’d get the texture you’re looking for.
My sweetie eats these every day, and has his method down perfectly:
Crack, eat, enjoy.