I mentioned this in another thread, but I want a perfect soft-boiled egg. ‘Perfect’ means that the white is completely set, and the yolk is runny. So how do I make them?
We generally have ‘jumbo’ eggs. If we can’t get ‘jumbo’, we get ‘extra large’, Since we’re in the U.S., we keep the eggs in the refrigerator.
I boil eggs by putting them, right out of the fridge, into cold water, and then boiling them. How long do I boil ‘jumbo’ eggs for a ‘perfect’ soft-boiled egg?
You’re making this needlessly complicated. You put the egg in cold water and then bring it to the boil. During this period the egg will partly cook. But the time it takes to bring the water to the boil depends on how much water you have in the pot — the more water, the longer it takes to bring it to the boil, the more part-cooked the egg is by the time the water starts to boil.
So: bring the water to the boil; then add the egg. The time required to cook the egg to the desired consistency does not now depend on the volume of water in the pot. So you have removed a confounding variable.
After that it’s going to be trial and error. Only you really know the consistency that you like. Start with, say, a 6-min boil and then adjust up or down until you find the time that seems to get you the consistency you like.
This isn’t a perfect science. A jumbo egg should weigh 65-70g and, if you’re really being anal about this, you can weigh each egg before you boil it, so you know where in that range it falls. But, even then, the cooking time required to firm up all the white depends on how much white there is in that 65-70g and on how dense the white is, and both of these vary from hen to hen, and also vary with the age of the hen. Unless you have your own hens and you monitor their eggs very carefully indeed, you won’t have any information about volume or density of the white until you open the egg, so you can’t control for it in the cooking time. All you can do is find a cooking time that seems to offer the best chance of getting the consistency you like.
I weighed the five eggs we have, and four of them average 67 g while one outlier is 72 g. I put the eggs into cold water because decades ago I discovered that refrigerated eggs crack when put into boiling water.
I’ll try this experiment: I’ll take the egg out of the fridge. I will boil some water. When the water is at a roiling boil, I’ll put the egg in and boil it for six minutes (per your suggestion). At the end of six minutes, I will remove the egg from the water and peel it.
Hard-boiled eggs are easy. I’ve never had a soft-boiled egg somebody else didn’t cook.
(Incidentally, I’ve ordered some traditional bangers, back bacon, and black pudding. It’s a shame my wife can’t eat that much.)
EDIT: I have a US Divers UDS-1 that I’ve never used. (Bought it used, and the tanks are full.) If you know anyone who wants one, let me know…
I find that, if you always use the same conditions - size of egg, straight out of fridge/unrefrigerated, starting with cold water - one of these things is infallible once you have worked out at what point they are perfect for you:
Not if you poke a tiny hole.
They make egg-piercing thingamajigs that probably aren’t super sanitary, but if you’re gentle, you can also use a thumbtack.
OMG looking up “egg piercer” to give y’all a product link, turns out, there’s a Wikipedia page for it. Of course there is.
I prefer my eggs hardboiled, but hard or soft, once you’ve worked out the conditions you can start with cold water and still get perfect results every time even without that gadget, because with the same stove burner and same amount of water in the same pot it’s all just a matter of timing.
I soft boil eggs regularly. I always plunge them into boiling water, and have found that 7 minutes is more consistent at cooking the white than 6. When you take them off the hob, plunge immediately into cold water (run under the tap) to stop them cooking. Also makes it easier to peel them.
I tried the method as suggested by America’s Test Kitchen, and I’ve never looked back.
Put only 1/2 inch of water in your saucepan. Get it boiling, add eggs, and as soon as it comes back to the boil (which will happen in only a few seconds because there’s so little water), cover the pan and reduce the heat. Set timer at 6 minutes for large eggs, 7 minutes for jumbos.
The reason this is a great method is that an egg right out of the fridge is liable to crack and leak if you plunge it into a full pan of boiling water. The temperature difference is just too great. Only having 1/2 inch of water makes it so that most of the egg is out of the boiling water and I’ve never had one crack doing it this way. You could, I suppose, wait for a cold fridge egg to come to room temp before putting it into a full saucepan of boiling water, but why bother? This ATK method works brilliantly.
I endorse this method, I’ve been using it for perfect soft boiled eggs for years.
How does it know the size of your egg?
Boiling first works best for me.
My wife prefers hers cooked at seven minutes and my daughter likes 8 minutes and 30 seconds.
I take my wife’s out early put it in cold water while waiting for the rest. Then cold water for them.
I use a slotted serving spoon to lower the egg into the boiling water and I have yet to have an egg crack. If I drop the eggs in, then they crack.
It may also be that I reduce the heat a bit before adding the eggs.
I have something similar, only it plays a little tune for each of soft, medium soft, and medium. I use large eggs, and it works nicely. The colored one looks better, both because it probably doesn’t have a battery that will eventually die, and because you have more graduations and can pick what works for your eggs and your fridge.