boiling an egg...

come the weekend i like nothing more than starting the day with a couple of soft boiled eggs and a pile of hot buttered toast. and i thought i had the knack for THE perfect soft boiled egg with runny yolk... but sometimes it doesn't work the same, maybe down to varying egg size and shell thickness and who knows what else.

my tried, tested and sometimes failed method is...

always use good, large, free range eggs of course... put eggs in cold water and put pan on the heat til bubbles start to form readily... then time 2 minutes from here for perfecto yolk action.

BUT as i've found, this method is open to error cos "til bubbles start to form readily" is vague and open to interpretation... sometimes you jump the gun cos the excitement of runny boiled eggs for breakfast gets the better of you and you press the timer too early or you give it another 30 seconds til there's no doubt that those bubbles are really forming readily and before you know it you're into "bubbling vigorously" territory...

there's a very fine line between the "my dog has just died" kind of disappointment you get with an un-cooked white and the "what's that doctor? you say i have terminal colon cancer?" induced feeling of a fucking solid egg-yolk. somewhere in the tiny timeframe between these 2 shit-uations is the sheer "i just sexually satisfied my gf like she's never been before and she thinks i'm a walking miracle" type pleasure you get from the perfect runny yolk...

so i ask you watmm, how in the fuck do i cook a perfect orgasm inducing boiled egg with a luxurious runny yolk onto which i can freshly grind fine sea salt before seductively dipping my hot thick buttery toast and devouring? hit me with fool-proof science type shit please!

what about poached eggs? i've never soft-boiled an egg. but after reading your post, soft boiling sounds like a complex way of poaching an egg. i always hard boil them, and if i have time, devil them with whatever herbs and shit i have on hand.

Stick a thermometer in there, you bubble-watching homo erectus

I always use L sized eggs (even cheap ones, whose mother has been tortured all life long), put the water on (alot of water) and wait till the water boils hard (i even sometimes forget the water and let it boil for 10 minutes till i remember i was boiling up water). then put the eggs in (softly with a big spoon so the shell doesnt break) and wait EXACTLY 6:30 min. take the pan to the sink and put the water in the sink and let icecold water on the eggs for about 20-30 seconds (not each egg, all together). now they are perfect. simply perfect.

I put the eggs in (with a spoon) AFTER the water has reached boiling point, then let 'em have it for precisely 3 minutes. An old wife once suggested putting a few drops of vinegar in the water as apparently that will prevent shell crackage.

perfect eggs forever

  On 7/26/2011 at 6:36 PM, LUDD said:

I put the eggs in (with a spoon) AFTER the water has reached boiling point, then let 'em have it for precisely 3 minutes. An old wife once suggested putting a few drops of vinegar in the water as apparently that will prevent shell crackage.

 

perfect eggs forever

the vinegar acutally keeps the contents within the egg shell together in the event of crackage. i'm guessing so because i use vinegar when i poach and it helps keep it together.

  On 7/26/2011 at 6:22 PM, Fred McGriff said:

what about poached eggs?

I'm all about some poached eggs on toasted wheat or multrigrain bread with black pepper on top.

  On 7/26/2011 at 6:40 PM, Fred McGriff said:

  On 7/26/2011 at 6:36 PM, LUDD said:

I put the eggs in (with a spoon) AFTER the water has reached boiling point, then let 'em have it for precisely 3 minutes. An old wife once suggested putting a few drops of vinegar in the water as apparently that will prevent shell crackage.

 

perfect eggs forever

 

the vinegar acutally keeps the contents within the egg shell together in the event of crackage. i'm guessing so because i use vinegar when i poach and it helps keep it together.

Hmmmm... I need to start poaching eggs more often

Yeah, poached is infinitely superior to soft-boiled.

Plus, you can make PETA types extra nervous by saying you poached eggs.

  On 7/26/2011 at 6:44 PM, patternoverlap said:

  On 7/26/2011 at 6:22 PM, Fred McGriff said:

what about poached eggs?

 

I'm all about some poached eggs on toasted wheat or multrigrain bread with black pepper on top.

 

and dont forget the butter!

I'm a pathetic cook so I'm just here to take notes, but if you have the space, get some chickens. My uncle has a few (including a couple of grim looking rescue chickens) and maybe I'm fooling myself but these are the best eggs I've eaten.

  On 7/26/2011 at 6:44 PM, patternoverlap said:

  On 7/26/2011 at 6:22 PM, Fred McGriff said:

what about poached eggs?

 

I'm all about some poached eggs on toasted wheat or multrigrain bread with black pepper on top.

 

Fuck yes... this, some shredded wheat, and banana every morning.

it's 3 minutes to 3 minutes 30. Trust me, I know.

  On 7/26/2011 at 7:20 PM, futuregirlfriend said:

I'm a pathetic cook so I'm just here to take notes, but if you have the space, get some chickens. My uncle has a few (including a couple of grim looking rescue chickens) and maybe I'm fooling myself but these are the best eggs I've eaten.

+1 for real. fresh local eggs make all the difference in the world. nature's great recyclers. you feed them your scraps and they give you eggs. my friend has 5 chickens and i love it when we get eggs from them.

your food talking always so boog watmm. u think ppl who arent ur privaledged white a$$'s got money for bull crap like putting chickens in there house. get real mofos

boog

underprivileged brown people always have chickens in their houses, sup

  On 7/26/2011 at 8:53 PM, sup said:

your food talking always so boog watmm. u think ppl who arent ur privaledged white a$$'s got money for bull crap like putting chickens in there house. get real mofos

chickens are ideal for people without money, child

I've never been able to work it out. It's a shame because I think runny egg yolk is one of the few great, simple, natural pleasures in life. To the point where I'll eat the fuckers even if there's a fair bit of uncooked white.

In contrast, I HATE egg white with a passion, cooked or uncooked. So I rarely have eggs at all because it seems so wasteful. If I'm having breakfast with someone who's happy to eat my egg white, that's even better.

"eat my egg white"

I usually place eggs in cold water, bring it to cook and then let it incubate for ~15min.

...if I had the equipment:

egg sous vide

I boil the water, put in the kimchi spicy noodles, throw in the chopped up green onion, crack in a couple eggs, stir it all gently. That's how I like my eggs.

http://blog.khymos.org/2009/04/09/towards-the-perfect-soft-boiled-egg/

Hmmm. The plot thickens.

I love poached eggs and I can usually turn them out consistenly good but I'm determined to crack (HAHAHAHA) the art of the perfect soft boiled egg. Poached have their place but I can't help dribbling some water on my muffins when dishing up and that's no yolk I will tell you.

Any time I've put the eggs in already boiling water they crack, which isn't the end of the world but not perfect. There's something so rewarding about slicing the top off the perfectly boiled egg to see the trickle of runny yolk. Dip my toast and make it overflow Omg at the weekend I was fucking my egg with a piece of toast.

I'd love to keep chickens but we live 3 floors up. One day maybe.

also lol at coalbucket

pasture raised chickens drop eggs with a radically different fatty acid profile than grain fed

this is also true, if not more so, of the meat. supermarket chicken is loaded with omega 6 fatty acids, far more than the omega 3s marketed on the box.

farm fresh eggs..