This Serious Eats post by J. Kenji-Lopez Alt could well be the DEFINITIVE article on how to properly boil an egg. He’s got all the Alton Brown/Harold McGee food science for you, as well as directions to achieve perfect boiled-ness, both soft and hard (he’s a former Cook’s Illustrated guy, and it shows in his article).
This picture, from the linked post, shows a selection of eggs boiled from 1 to 15 minutes in 2-minute increments. From my own experience with boiling eggs and from this handy guide, I can tell you that my personal preference for boiled eggs is between the 3-minute and 5-minute examples. He says that a 6-minute egg is the “perfect” soft-boiled egg, but in his experiments he actually monitored the temperature of the water (180 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a very low simmer), whereas I am usually nowhere near so exacting — I just bring the water to a boil and put the eggs in — so I am probably waaay over 180, and thus get to my set point faster. But now I am motivated to try it his way.
His discussion on hard-boiled eggs seems to make it a bit more complicated than my experience tells me it is, trying to account for variables such as the temperature of your tap water and the thickness of your pan, but in the end his method is put the egg in cold water, bring the water to a simmer, and let the egg sit for 10 minutes. I have always used the technique of bringing the water to a boil and then adding the egg for 12 minutes, with pretty consistent results I have to say, but, again, I think I will give his method a try.
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Interesting, all the levels of boiledness. I never really thought about this before.
And neither of yours is my “Put eggs in cold water, put on high heat for twenty-five minutes, drain and peel” method. I guess I’ve been wasting time and fuel in my egg-boiling.
By me, the five and seven minute eggs are perfect softboiled eggs (for the sort I want to eat anyway), the thirteen and fifteen minute eggs are perfect hardboiled eggs, and the others are potential dogfood.
That’s a great illustration. Unfortunately I am an 11 to 13 minute person; I could probably force down a 9-minuter. Runniness more than that makes me spew.
True chefs (and foodies) would say that a hard-cooked egg (never call it hard-boiled!) should NOT have any greenish tinge around the yolk. If it does, it has been cooked too long. My mom always called a soft-boiled egg a “three-minute egg,” so I never have any trouble remembering how long to cook it. And although that does the trick for me in real life, if I were to judge by the photos above, I would say that I in fact prefer a 5-minute egg. For hard-cooked, I put the eggs in cold water (having pricked them on the broad ends), bring them to a full boil and turn off the heat as soon as they reach a full boil. i then remove them from the heat and let them sit in the boiled water for about 10-15 minutes, then submerging them in cold water until they are cool enough to peel.
if I were to judge by the photos above, I would say that I in fact prefer a 5-minute egg
Indeed. I am very much looking forward to how my breakfast turns out tomorrow morning when I try his 6-minute egg recipe, since I have always gone with 3 minutes.
The “poke a hole in the end” trick is supposed to work like a charm to prevent the green yolk problem, but I have never tried it.