I don’t know what’s going on, did earth’s magnetic field shift, are chickens making crap eggs? For some reason, my Sunday night ritual of making hard boiled eggs for the week’s breakfast has turned into a nightmare.
I’ve always used Chef Jon’s method of bringing a pan of eggs just to a boil, then shutting off the heat and keeping covered for 17 minutes. That always produced eggs with a creamy yolk.
But lately, that method results with “moon” eggs - cratered monstrosities with the egg stuck to the shell while peeling. At first, it wasn’t so bad, just resulting in ugly eggs. But lately, the egg is tearing right to the yolk, making a deformed mess.
So then I switched to bringing the water to a boil, then putting in the eggs. That worked great at making the shell peel, but the yolk was too hard.
Then today, I did it a bit different and got the water to a boil, dropped in the eggs, left at a boil for 1 minute, then shut off and left covered for 17 minutes.
I let them cool, then cracked one. The white was not cooked, yet the yolk was.
The heck? I’ve never heard of that happening, nor do I know how that can happen. Am going to follow this thread to learn the physics of this. (Chef John is awesome, BTW. Was just talking about him today. That said, I do the steaming method for soft or hard boiled eggs, but there’s many effective ways to skin a cat.)
It was bizarre: I cracked open the egg and the white was just coagulated, but not firm enough to hold shape, yet the yolk was a round, firm little ball of yellow.
And Chef Jon is awesome. Love his drunken mussels recipe.
In my aluminum pot on my gas stove, I boil about 3 quarts water to a rolling boil, set timer for 12 minutes, add 6-8 eggs and cook for 30-60 seconds, lower heat to bare simmer of 180-190 F and cook until timer goes off. Then ice bath. I get pretty custardy yolks and decent peelability 90% of the time.
You could get scientific with your method #2 and test different times (start pulling out eggs earlier)?
You may already know this, but from what I’ve read, when the egg sticks to the shell, this is a sign that you’re using eggs that are too fresh. Eggs that are a little older will separate more easily.
Using older eggs helps if you are starting with cold water, but adding eggs to hot water will get them pealing cleanly just about every time even if they are pretty fresh.
There’s a formula in Peter Barham’s book, The Science of Cooking. It states: -
Given the starting temperature of the egg (T)egg, the temperature of the water (T)water and the desired temperature (T)yolk (all in °C) at the yolk-white boundary*, the cooking time (t) in minutes of an egg with mass (M) in grams is given by:
t = 0.451M ^2/3 In {0.76 x (T egg - T water/ T yolk - T water)}
Or there’s a circumference way that Martin Lersch describes:-
Use a piece of string to measure the c. The cooking time t (in minutes) for an egg with a circumference c (in centimeters) is given by:
t = 0.0152c^2 In {2 x (T water - T egg)/ (T water - T yolk) }
Congratulations, you have made Onsen tamago. This is possible because the yolk solidifies at a slightly lower temperature than the white.
If it is not intentional, it may be an indication that your pan of hot water is cooling too fast. Perhaps you could use a smaller pan (smaller surface area), and/or use more water.
Or you could just enjoy your onsen tamago - serve it with a bit of soy sauce, or better yet, Japanese noodle sauce (made from dashi, soy sauce and mirin, sold in bottles in any Asian market).
So how does that work? Normally, one can get solid egg whites and runny yolk (see: soft boiled eggs). Plus the heat comes from the outside, so the outside should cook and be at a higher temperature before the yolk, no? Ah…unless you very slowly bring it up to temp perhaps, so the temperatures are pretty much even? OK, looking at the Wikipedia link, that does appear to be the case.
You got it. If you heat the egg to a high temperature (e.g. boiling water), it solidifies from the outside in, because the outside is hotter than the center. If you keep it at 150-155 F for a long time (typically >30 min), the whole egg reaches that temperature, at which the yolk solidifies but the white is still runny.
This is tricky to do at home. Unless you have a sous vide, then it’s dead simple - just set t to 152F and throw in a few eggs.
Or go with one of these. Perfect boiled eggs every time, no need to pay any attention to it. Yeah, it feels like cheating. Really, really good cheating, though.
This is uncanny as it is almost the exact equation I came up with.
Take some eggs (se) put them in a pan with some water (sw) turn it on to high heat and bring it to a boil (tiothhabitab). Ok, I’ll stop with the complex math… once it boils take it off the heat cover and let stand for about 10 minutes or so… depends entirely on the cumulative circumference of the eggs as measured by a micrometer, or whenever the next commercial comes on. Put them under running water to cool. They will be ready exactly when the next commercial starts.
