Update to yesterday’s post about boiled eggs:
The picture at the top is what I got by boiling two eggs in 180-degree-ish water for 6 minutes. Sorry for the so-so photo, I only had my cell phone handy.
The eggs were indeed nicely done. The cooked ring of egg white was consistent in its thickness around the egg, with the texture ranging from firm along the outermost edge to barely set toward the center. The yolk was warm and cooked just enough to maintain its shape. That is indeed EXACTLY how I like a soft-boiled egg (pardon me, Shelley, soft-cooked egg).
But it wasn’t easy finding the sweet spot on my stove burner control to get the water to the right temperature and KEEP it there. Setting the stove directly on “Medium” got the water to 120 degrees. The next mark up took it to 160. One more mark and it shot right past 180 to 200. I ended up letting it go to 200, putting the eggs in the saucepan, and then removing the pan from the heat entirely. The combination of heat loss from adding the cold eggs to the water and moving the pan off the hot burner didn’t seem to over-cool the water. It’s also a pain in the butt to stand there holding a thermometer as close to the center of the water as possible while waiting for the desired temperature. Somebody should really make a set of cookware with built-in temperature sensors; how hard could that be?
So, like Messrs. Savage and Hyneman say, “Myth Confirmed”, but given all the fiddling around I had to do, and given that my totally non-scientific method produces almost the exact same result, I don’t think I would bother making my soft-cooked eggs this way. Chef Jo or anyone else who needs the assuredness of having the exact same result every single time probably should standardize on this method, but it’s not worth the bother for making a little brekkie.
I’ll probably try the hard-cooked recipe some other time. I rarely use hard-boiled eggs and don’t eat them plain, so it will have to wait for some occasion when I’m in need. If any of you regular visitors try it, do let me know.
I’ll stick with over-easy, I think.
Alasdair and I will be attempting that tomorrow along with cooking one in the water bath with the thermal immersion circulator AND attempting to make scrambled eggs in an Isi like this http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2009/09/inspired-by.html (way excited)
I, for one, adore a ‘chucky egg’ so it ill be great to discover a foolproof way to have soft yolk for dipping!
Maybe you could make Julia’s boeuf bourgignon this weekend and tell the nice people how it turns out. :o)