Speaking of Kenji and Serious Eats, I gleaned this nugget from the “long version” of his recipe:
“Thus, for perfect hard-cooked eggs, you want whites that don’t cook much beyond 180°F (82°C) and yolks that have just hit 170°F (77°C) throughout. Cooking relatively gently allows for this, but easy peeling requires a full 212°F blast of heat.”
Kenji’s method starts with cold eggs lowered into already-boiling water. But boiled only for 30 seconds. His theory is that this is strictly to make peeling easier.
Then the boil is broken (either by moving the pot or adding ice cubes), and reducing the heat to a simmer setting for a prescribed time.
Then, if the eggs are to be served cold, they spend at least 15 minutes in an icebath.
This got me thinking. Why not just shock the eggs for the prescribed 30-second boil and then transfer to a sous vide bath set to the ideal finished yolk temperature? In other words, key off the yolk, and rely on the carryover from the boil to set the whites. That way the yolks will never be overcooked no matter how long they’re in the bath, avoiding the green tinge issue. Thence into an icebath if you want.
the problem with long period sous vide cooking for eggs …
the white and the yolk congeal/cook at different temperatures.
bringing the entire egg to one single uniform temperature . . .
. . . depending on how one likes one’s egg, it can be a totally unworkable solution.
Over on CH, Ricepad provided the explanation for why you get different results peeling hard boiled eggs, and Olunia posted it here on H.O., with his permission.
Yes, egg white and yolk congeal at different temperatures. That happens regardless of cooking method.
However and fortunately, they also cook from the outside in, i.e., the heat moves inward by conduction. This is true for all methods, except microwave, which penetrates a limited distance.
If you set your SV bath at 180F (Kenji’s ideal temp for whites), the whites would never overcook. But you would have to be careful with time, and chill the eggs before the yolks overcook and become chalky.
What I was proposing is to utilize the very short boil’s carryover heat (and theoretically a bit longer time in the hot water), and then SV at 170F. Immersion in the SV bath won’t immediately cool the white, and some heat will continue moving inward. But in a 170F bath , the concern over overcooking the yolk is eliminated.
I just put eggs in water, boil for about 5 minutes, turn off and let sit until coolish. I remove eggs and bash the fat end and let sit in cold water. Peel like a glove.
as I am given to understand . . . the big ‘advantage / feature’ of sous vide cooking is
“set the water temp and forget about it”
so . . . using sous vide set at 180’F but having to be careful of the time (180’F yolks are not to everyone’s taste…) defeats the purpose of carefree cooking, no?
and, since water is pretty consistently 212’F when boiling,
and, since one is watching the time anyway,
isn’t that the same version of sous vide at 180’F and watching the time?
You’ve been given to misunderstand. It’s common in SV cookery to have an end time, at which the bag is to be removed. In fact, I’'ve never seen a prep to the effect “forget about it, you can go as long as you want.” Many foods will degrade if you leave them in the bath too long.
And–as we’ve been discussing–whole eggs are a mixed food. You could be making, e.g., succotash or rattatoile , dishes with several different vegetable constituents that optimally cook at different rates and temperatures. If you’re totally anal (like Tom Keller), you do these things separately and differently, then perhaps combine them as a last cooking step. Or add them to cook in a specific order.
Of course you can’t cook white and yolk separately and afterward put Humpty Dumpty back together. So you have to resort to embracing an “outside in” approach.
Nothing about Kenji’s method is carefree to start with. Boil for 30 seconds, then kill the boil with ice cubes (or ladle into already simmering water for the prescribed time. Then an icebath for 15 minutes. What I’m pondering with SV isn’t a lot more additional work.
The problem with “just boiling” is that the temperature is so high that the time window for getting peeling ease and optimum doneness in that binary food becomes very short. Kenji’s method stretches the time by quickly slowing the heat input to better conduct heat into the delicate center of the food, namely the yolk.
it takes a certain amount of heat penetrating at some rate from the outside to the inside of an egg to “make perfect” - a highly subjective state of cooked egg…
the temp of the water - or steam -
the star temp of the egg -
(some diff for size of egg - peewee to jumbo…)
I totally disagree with K-J’s “finding” than a post cook ice shock makes for bad or worser peeling.
can’t really say anything more about it - my personal 50 years+ experience contradicts.
I’m gonna’ stick with what works… out of the fridge, into boiling water for M minutes and S seconds - they make timers for that . . .
the timing depends on (a) the egg temp in the fridge and (b) personal preference.
e.g. my soft boil is 4:45 - but DW is happier at 6:00.
we got a new fridge - the old timings were ‘off’ - adjust time - works as before…
I agree however, a prelim boiling dip followed by a simmer . . . utter nonsense. somebody got off on a side track…
If you have dialed in your own HBE prep to your satisfaction, then by all means stick with it. As this thread demonstrates, however, a lot of people don’t. That wide dissatisfaction* is on display here, and was undoubtedly the reason Kenji did his testing and wrote his articles. If his findings (e.g., the short, rapid boil) help people avoid a bugaboo (in this case, attain easy peeling) in their own cooking, then that’s a good thing. Yes? People who say Kenji doesn’t know his stuff are on pretty thin ice.
Back into the weeds… IMO, Kenji’s method is a refinement of the established HBE variant that has the cook bring the eggs to a boil and then shut off the heat, letting them soak for X minutes as the temp drops. Is this also “utter nonsense”? The refinement is quickly ending the boil (via ice cubes or transfer), and an instant and precise change of heat for the rest of the cooking. You could do that with 2 pans rather than SV, but the second water pan would need to be preheated to the desired temp; a SV circulator makes this effortless, with no thermal cycling in the bath.
BTW, I’m no great fan of SV, mostly because the method adds time, steps, and trouble. But here, having the circulator attain and maintain the desired temp is faster than adjusting a hob. And the whole egg obviates the need for all the work bagging, vacuum sealing and unbagging.
Well, if you’re referring to countdown timers, you have to know what time(s) to set. Or are you referring to the immersible timers–basically a clear faux egg–that give visual signs of the degree of doneness? I have an “Eggsact Eggtimer” which works OK, but your overall result doesn’t help peeling or offer much beyond crude cooking of the yolks.
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