Hard Boiled Egg 101

[Carlovski]

That's such an eGullet answer!Someone will be along with a thermal coefficient vs yolk viscosity graph soon!

[andiesenji]

That's such an eGullet answer!Someone will be along with a thermal coefficient vs yolk viscosity graph soon!

I'm pretty sure Alton Brown did that a few years ago in tandem with Shirley Corriher.

[Lisa Shock]

It is simply a matter of getting the correct temperature for the desired result.

If you have a very accurate oven, you can make perfect eggs in it. But, those of us with less accurate equipment use the water bath to ensure an even accurate temperature. For solidly set hard boiled eggs, you look for the egg to get just to 184° -all the way through. The key is the application of heat for a long enough time to bring the entire inside of the egg up to temperature. You can ensure the result you like by getting a probe thermometer to use in your water bath -and use both the temperature and timer functions. I'd maintain 184° for about 15 minutes, to be safe, but, you can keep them at that temp indefinitely at the desired temp, freeing you up to do other things.

Another factor affecting your method is the temperature of the room you're working in. If her place is colder, the pot of water cools more quickly.

You might enjoy THIS article which has a fairly extensive description of various temperature egg styles.

[Mark Donnelly]

That's such an eGullet answer!Someone will be along with a thermal coefficient vs yolk viscosity graph soon!

I love this. Sooo true.

We could go further. What is the surface temperature of the egg before it goes in the water? Are the two different eggs in different locations the same size?

My advice would be that if you go sticking a thermometer in the water that you boild eggs in, your GF might not stick around that long.

[MollyB]

Also remember that altitude can make a difference, with a lower boiling point as you go higher. I use the same method as Shel_B - bring the eggs in water to a boil, then covering for a certain amount of time. It took me a while to figure out how to get my eggs right when I moved from sea level to Reno at 5,000 ft. The 10 min. that worked at sea level no longer were enough - I'm now at 12 min. Different stoves that bring water to a boil at different speeds also can affect the timing.

[Shalmanese]

Differences in the power of the stove and the quantity of water used will also affect how long it will take to bring eggs to the boil, also changing the consistency of the results.

[Shel_B]

Well, I'll have to play around a little with thermometers and measuring the amount of water in the pots (Mine most likely holds less water). FWIW, our altitude is withing a couple of hundred feet of one another.

[Shel_B]

This morning I compared the two pot. Mine, a 1-quart Simply Calphalon disk-bottomed pot and Toots' no-name, non-stick aluminum pot. I boiled equal amounts of water in both and then measured the temps. The Calphalon held heat a lot longer than the thin aluminum pot. So, perhaps that's the answer, or at least a good part of it.

Edited April 25, 2011 by Shel_B (log)

[Lisa Shock]

Here is definitive information about cooking eggs in the shell and how to cook them to get them out of the shell cleanly, thanks to what must have been hundreds of hours of work by J. Kenji Lòpez-Alt. I just made some and can confirm his findings.

[Anna N]

29 minutes ago, Lisa Shock said:

Here is definitive information about cooking eggs in the shell and how to cook them to get them out of the shell cleanly, thanks to what must have been hundreds of hours of work by J. Kenji Lòpez-Alt. I just made some and can confirm his findings.

Worked for me but not apparently for everyone

 

Click

[pufin3]

My two cents:

We only ever have fresh farm eggs to deal with.

I remove them from the fridge a couple of hours before putting them in room temp. water in the pot. I slowly bring them to just a boil. This takes about ten minutes.

Eggs have protein strands which basically contract and turn to rubber bands when heated to over 212F.

By slowly just bringing to the boil the entire egg is cooked through gradually. Room temp. eggs are going to cook through more evenly.

When eggs are allowed to boil for minutes the egg white cooks first and turns rubbery and the yolk is eventually cooked through. Rubber egg whites. Just cooked yolks.

 Another consideration is as the egg heats up it expands against the shell.

This is something sometimes not considered.

After the water just comes to the boil I pour off the hot water, put a lid on the pot and let the eggs slowly come back to room temperature.

 This method takes time but not a lot of messing about.

Then these very fresh eggs peel perfectly every time.

I was taught this method when I lived in rural France by an old granny.

She had all sorts of chicken breeds and ages running around the yard.

She did select eggs to be soft-boiled according to breed and age of the hen.

 

[blue_dolphin]

5 hours ago, Lisa Shock said:

Here is definitive information about cooking eggs in the shell and how to cook them to get them out of the shell cleanly, thanks to what must have been hundreds of hours of work by J. Kenji Lòpez-Alt. I just made some and can confirm his findings.

 

For "hard boiled," I've been using the steaming/quick chill method that is linked to in that Serious Eats piece:  

For an easier, quicker, and even more fool-proof version, see our newer recipe for steamed eggs. 

The results have been flawless.

Edited April 29, 2016 by blue_dolphin
to fix link (log)

[Martin Fisher]

I also much prefer the steaming method for various reasons—I've been using that technique since back in the '80s.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I seldom cook hard boiled eggs, but the best method I've found so far is the pressure cooker technique developed by @pazzaglia

 

http://www.hippressurecooking.com/cracked-soft-medium-and-hard-boiled-eggs-in-the-pressure-cooker/

 

[JAZ]

19 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I seldom cook hard boiled eggs, but the best method I've found so far is the pressure cooker technique developed by @pazzaglia

 

http://www.hippressurecooking.com/cracked-soft-medium-and-hard-boiled-eggs-in-the-pressure-cooker/

 

 

I've never had consistent results pressure cooking eggs. I really wanted it to work, since I wrote a book on pressure cooking, but I found that although Laura's times and pressure levels were better than other pressure cooking books, they were still unreliable. I reverted to regular steaming (no pressure) and never looked back.

[Lisa Shock]

 

6 hours ago, pufin3 said:

My two cents:

We only ever have fresh farm eggs to deal with.

I remove them from the fridge a couple of hours before putting them in room temp. water in the pot. I slowly bring them to just a boil. This takes about ten minutes.

Eggs have protein strands which basically contract and turn to rubber bands when heated to over 212F.

By slowly just bringing to the boil the entire egg is cooked through gradually. Room temp. eggs are going to cook through more evenly.

When eggs are allowed to boil for minutes the egg white cooks first and turns rubbery and the yolk is eventually cooked through. Rubber egg whites. Just cooked yolks.

 Another consideration is as the egg heats up it expands against the shell.

This is something sometimes not considered.

After the water just comes to the boil I pour off the hot water, put a lid on the pot and let the eggs slowly come back to room temperature.

 This method takes time but not a lot of messing about.

Then these very fresh eggs peel perfectly every time.

I was taught this method when I lived in rural France by an old granny.

She had all sorts of chicken breeds and ages running around the yard.

She did select eggs to be soft-boiled according to breed and age of the hen.

 

 

If you take the time to read Kenji's article, you will see that your method encourages the whites to stick to the membrane inside the shell, and also creates the air-dimple. The article chronicles side by side testing of thousands of eggs; using the same equipment and eggs of the same age.

[jim loellbach]

Cook's Illustrated also recently did an article on hard cooked eggs and sticking shells.  It looks like they totally ripped off seriouseats.com.  Same tests, same results.  I use the seriouseats method: eggs straight out of fridge into an already boiling pot of water or steamer.  Have enough water that it doesn't stop boiling after adding the eggs.  6.5 minutes gives a good soft cooked yolk, 9 minutes gives a still translucent yolk good for ramen, 12 minutes gives a hard cooked yolk.  Into ice water for 15 minutes (or just a minute or so if eating hot), helps to keep the shell from sticking.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

27 minutes ago, jim loellbach said:

Cook's Illustrated also recently did an article on hard cooked eggs and sticking shells.  It looks like they totally ripped off seriouseats.com.  Same tests, same results.  I use the seriouseats method: eggs straight out of fridge into an already boiling pot of water or steamer.  Have enough water that it doesn't stop boiling after adding the eggs.  6.5 minutes gives a good soft cooked yolk, 9 minutes gives a still translucent yolk good for ramen, 12 minutes gives a hard cooked yolk.  Into ice water for 15 minutes (or just a minute or so if eating hot), helps to keep the shell from sticking.

 

Don't forget Lopez-Alt has worked for CI.

[jim loellbach]

Yeah, good point.  The seriouseats article predated the CI one, but who knows when CI did the tests and when they published the article (same with SE).  The rip-off could have worked the other way around!  Or maybe it's like most everything else in cooking, it's all been done before.

[pastryani]

Add a tablespoon of baking soda to the water - loosens them shells right up.  It helps even more if you drop the eggs into already-boiling water, and as others have mentioned, the older ones are easier to peel.

[Martin Fisher]

Yes—FWIW—from On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen By Harold McGee, Page 88:
"Difficult peeling is characteristic of fresh eggs with a relatively low albumen pH, which somehow causes the albumin to adhere to the inner shell membrane more strongly than it coheres to itself. At the pH typical after several days of refrigeration, around 9.2, the shell peels easily. If you end up with a carton of very fresh eggs and need to cook them right away, you can add a half teaspoon of baking soda to a quart of water to make the cooking water alkaline."

[Thanks for the Crepes]

This contradicts advice to add vinegar to the water, but may be based on better science. I don't know, but I do know how to boil eggs successfully without the dreaded green ring around the yolk. If I'm making deviled eggs for a party, I always use older eggs so they don't have any chips out of the white. Any recalcitrant mess ups are, of course, cook's treat. 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2016 by Thanks for the Crepes
not sure how to describe (log)

[AlaMoi]

wonder which came first - the egg or the debate on how to cook one . . .

 

the "add salt / sugar / vinegar / baking soda / baking powder / etc" has one interesting aspect.
supposedly "it" passes through the shell and changes the white, somehow, making it non-stick.

and - cited by many many people is the air sac on the big end.  the resulting dimple, etc...

 

the "air" is actually not "air" - the gas is carbon dioxide which has come out of solution from the egg white, and accumulates at the big end.  the older the egg, the more carbon dioxide accumulates and the larger the air sac.

 

now, as is famously said at cookware demonstrations.... "we all know" gases expand as they are heated.
this means the interior of the egg is "pressurized" - which raises the question of how the liquid solution of water plus  salt / sugar / vinegar / baking soda / baking powder / etc gets through the shell, through not one but _two_ membranes, thence affecting at least some outer depth of the white, making it "non-stick"

 

if you've ever poked a pin hole in the big end and then put the egg in hot-to-boiling water, you've seen the little bubbles coming out of the pin hole.  but WAIT, there's MORE!  putting a pin hole in the egg allows water to enter the egg.  opinions vary as to how / when this happens - on heating (water goes in as bubbles come out) or on cooling (if submerged; the egg shrinks and water is sucked in....)

 

which all works until one carefully peels the big end of a hard cooked egg and finds that the air sac has formed between the shell membrane and the egg membrane - and the egg white is still inside the egg membrane and any water is outside of the egg membrane.

the poke-a-pin-hole practice is aimed at preventing eggs from cracking (more) open in hot water.  

"more open" - yes.  eggs that crack from internal pressure/heat most frequently were cracked / nicked / damaged before they hit the water - which is why not every egg in the batch cracks when it goes into boiling water.

 

so what makes for a sticky egg peeling and results in divots and torn up egg white.....?
what sticks to what?
and conversely, what observable phenomena makes an egg peel easily?
what does not stick to what?

 

my observations:  

 

- it is the egg membrane sticks to the (cooked) egg white.  one has a tedious job carefully peeling the egg membrane off the cooked egg white.

 

- an egg which peels cleanly/easily has a thin layer of water between the cooked egg white and the egg membrane.  this thin water 'coating' lubricates the cooked white allowing the shell to peel easily.  it is a very thin layer of water; if the eggs are still warm, the water very rapidly evaporates and "you'll miss (seeing) it"

 

so where does this thin layer of lubricating / freeing-up water come from?
not thru the pinhole.  
from the inside of the egg - but with a caveat:
if the eggs are  removed from the hot cooking water and immediately plunged into ice water, the continued cooking from the hot interior generates water vapor which wants to escape - and the vapor condenses when it hits the ice cold membrane&shell.

for reliability, use ice water - water with ice cubes floating around in it.
not cold tap water. 

Alaskans have cold tap water,

Floridians have cold tap water -

but the "cold" part isn't the same temperature and yes, it makes a difference.

 

[JAZ]

On 4/29/2016 at 9:34 AM, blue_dolphin said:

 

For "hard boiled," I've been using the steaming/quick chill method that is linked to in that Serious Eats piece:  

For an easier, quicker, and even more fool-proof version, see our newer recipe for steamed eggs. 

The results have been flawless.

 

 

Ever since I first read Kenji's original article, I've been a convert to steamed eggs, but I disagree with his assertion that chilling the eggs for 15 minutes results in "no air space indentation on their fat end." My experience is just the opposite. I just steamed a dozen eggs, and to test his hypothesis, I divided them into two groups after steaming. I placed them all in ice water, then immediately moved half to a bowl of cool tap water and immediately started peeling them. I left the other six eggs in the ice water bath for 15 minutes, then peeled. While none of the eggs had huge indentations, the chilled ones had larger indentations than the ones I took out immediately. Granted, a dozen eggs isn't a huge sample, but this fits in my previous experience. I haven't tested steamed eggs that never touch ice water at all, but I guess that's my next step. 

[blue_dolphin]

5 minutes ago, JAZ said:

Ever since I first read Kenji's original article, I've been a convert to steamed eggs, but I disagree with his assertion that chilling the eggs for 15 minutes results in "no air space indentation on their fat end." My experience is just the opposite...

 

That makes sense to me as the whites in the eggs that got the longer chill have a little more time to firm up around any air pocket that was inside the shell as compared with the eggs that were peeled immediately and can relax more as they cool.    I usually bash the eggs around in ice water enough to crack their shells, then leave them to cool at least a little as I noticed how easily the still hot egg whites deformed (just from contact with a plate or each other - no wonder those cute little egg molds work so well) when I peeled them right away.

Sheesh, how many variables can there be in something as simple as a hard cooked egg !