HELP with soft-boiled eggs, plz!

On the counter about 15 minutes but previously in the fridge. It was a large brown.

OK, 15 min prolly didn’t warm it up all that much.

Just the top, large end. Well I guess, unless your eggs are upside down.

1 Like

I thought the narrow part was the top :grimacing:

Quite clearly I’m not a chicken.

1 Like

Who knows, I guess the chicken does. To me the top is the way they are put in the carton. Large end up, narrow end down.

There’s an air space in the larger end, barely poking the shell with a pin won’t rupture the membrane that surrounds the egg, if you pierce the narrow end you may have egg streaming out during cooking

2 Likes

I am learning so much I never knew I didn’t know :smiley:

2 Likes

all kinds of goodie info available . . .

1 Like

Wow! I hope he can channel that into something desirable and profitable. Most of us are more pedestrian about losing our mojo. :wink:

1 Like

I’ve never pierced an egg. Whatever that’s supposed to do, I don’t need it.

1 Like

Then don’t- one thing that the egg-cooking threads have pointed out is “different strokes for different folks”.
It works for me so I thought I’d share it

2 Likes

I guess it’s one of those things I grew up with :woman_shrugging:t3:

My mom used to do this so the eggses wouldn’t ‘splode in the pot (she liked a strong boil).

I only ever make hard-boiled eggs & have perfected that method. No piercing, but that one is a residual heat method.

Soft-boiled seems to be almost as elusive to
me as poached.

2 Likes

I had no idea eggs were prone to exploding, but then I usually simmer mine in an inch of water. And while I’m good at poaching and soft-boiling, my omelet skills are pretty weak. I’m maybe one for four in making a nice folded over one with no browning. I could probably watch this every day for the rest of my life and still never be able to get it right.

4 Likes

My poaching endeavors may have just been some of the most frustrating kitchen experiences. I had a particularly bad combo of shitty poached eggs and totally failed hollandaise, and it kinda killed that for me for the foreseeable future :grimacing:

1 Like

Oh, man, my last hollandaise adventure was a disaster. And I used to make myself an artichoke with blender hollandaise as an after school snack when I was a teen. What the hell happened to me? (kicks wall, stomps off)

3 Likes

I feel your pain. Having literally kicked a wall for messing up food I was looking forward to.

1 Like

As delicious as hollandaise might be, I have come to prefer a buttered muffin, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of salt. Hollandaise has become a now and then lark, and Bernaise has been supplanted by red wine reduction, despite my love of tarragon (or, in Texas, Mexican mint marigold). Speaking of which, a tarragon (or MMM) omelette is wonderful. This puts me of a mind to crumble a bit on a soft boiled egg with a twist of pepper and a pinch of salt. Yum.

3 Likes

Next attempt: 6:30 min. Resulting in both set & spoogy whites, and hard & semi-runny yolks :confused:

Mayhaps I should return to my poaching fails? :crazy_face:

2 Likes

well, I feel your soreness of effort.
here’s the deal . . . it’s called thermodynamics.
according to Kenji Lopez-Alt, the current ‘god of all things cooking’
egg whites:
From 30 to 140°F: As it gets hot, its proteins, which resemble coiled-up balls of yarn, slowly start to uncoil.
At 140°F: Some of these uncoiled proteins—called ovotransferrin—begin to bond with each other, creating a matrix and turning the egg white milky and jelly-like (like the innermost layers of egg white in the three-minute egg above).
At 155°F: The ovotransferrin has formed an opaque solid, though it is still quite soft and moist (see the white of the five-minute egg).
At 180°F: The main protein in egg whites—ovalbumin—will cross-link and solidify, giving you a totally firm egg white (see the whites of the seven- and nine-minute eggs). This is very similar to the gunk that seeps out of the surface of overcooked salmon.
180°F and up: The hotter you get the egg, the tighter these proteins bond, and the firmer, drier, and more rubbery the egg white becomes (see the 11- and 15-minute eggs). Hydrogen sulfide, or “rotten-egg,” aromas begin to develop. Ick.
egg yolks:
At 145°F: They begin to thicken and set up.
At 158°F: They become totally firm, but are still bright orange and shiny.
At 170°F: They become pale yellow and start to turn crumbly.
170°F and up: They dry out and turn chalky. The sulfur in the whites rapidly reacts with the iron in the yolks, creating ferrous sulfide and tinging the yolks.

if you see green around the yolk, the egg is overcooked/overheated - there is zip comma zero comma nadda other reasons for it.

now, keep in mind K-L-A has done the egg peeling experiment(s) several times, and at each trial he has reached difference conclusions - so one has to keep that in mind when finding one’s personal experience is not supported by his “research”
. . . stand by for a raft of counterpoint posts . . .

as I previously mentioned, in USA one stores one eggs in the refridgerator. you don’t, not a problem, but methods may not work…

this impacts what you are doing as follows:
heat moves into ‘objects’ - i.e. ‘the egg’ based on:

  • the temperature difference from outside (boiling/steaming water) to the inside (raw egg white/yolk)
  • and based on a ‘coefficient’ of heat transfer, which changes as egg whites go from liquid to solid…

looking at your pix, I suspect the counter temp eggs are cooking through to the yolk ‘too fast.’
starting at a warmer temperature, the yolk gets enough heat to cook it to ‘non-gooey’ before the whites have fully set.

as an experiment, put the eggs in the fridge and get them cooled down to ~40’F (4’C)
poke a hole in the big end (this prevents an invisibly damaged shell from spewing out the white… no other reason - do or don’t do, makes no difference)
put the egg(s) in boiling water - 4 minutes 45 seconds.
remove from water, crack and eat soft boiled on toast, weich cooked in an egg cup, take your choice.

how is it the 40’F/4’C? this - thermometer in carton:

not a lot of pix of my soft boiled, these from the snap-crack egg opener discussion:

I’m not sure whose soreness you mean, and I don’t know how many people, including Kenji, would agree with that “god of all things cooking” idea, but I won’t let that stop my reading what you wrote.

Looks helpful.