All about "sous vide" eggs

[Karlos1968]

I tried the vinegar soak in 10% distilled malt, but all I got was bleached eggs! They lost the outer brown skin so the shell would rub white, but the actual shell seemed to be about the same.

Karl

Edited January 26, 2013 by Karlos1968 (log)

[nickrey]

I tried it with white vinegar and it worked well. Perhaps you needed a stronger solution. I'm doing some quail eggs on a few weeks. Will experiment with different concentrations to see what works best.

[seabream]

I don't quite understand the vinegar solution for peeling eggs. I thought that eggs peel better in base environments, which is why old eggs, which have a higher pH, peel better. The vinegar would lower the pH.

Thoughts?

[Martin Fisher]

I use a little baking soda in the cooking water, that aids in ease of peeling.

~Martin

[nickrey]

I don't quite understand the vinegar solution for peeling eggs. I thought that eggs peel better in base environments, which is why old eggs, which have a higher pH, peel better. The vinegar would lower the pH.

Thoughts?

Simple really, the acid eats away the shell.

[Martin Fisher]

The sub-shell membrane clinging to the white often presents the greatest challenge when peeling very fresh eggs.

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."

~Martin

[PedroG]

The 6X°C Egg

According to Vega, César and Mercadé-Prieto, Ruben. 2011. Culinary Biophysics: on the Nature of the 6X°C Egg. Food Biophysics. 12. January 2011, vol.6, p.152-159, www.springerlink.com/content/68q3377u5050031h/fulltext.pdf, 63°C / 2 hours will result in a yolk consistency between cookie icing and Marmite^®.

Pedro, the full text is no longer available for download on the site. I would be grateful if you downloaded a copy you can share...

Fig. 8 of the above article shows "Iso-viscosity lines that relate the holding temperature to the total cooking time needed to develop a characteristic texture in egg yolks"; I determined the holding times in minutes visually from this diagram and made an Excel sheet:

Here it is for download: Total cooking time needed to develop a characteristic texture in egg yolk.pdf

Edited February 7, 2013 by PedroG (log)

[EnriqueB]

Excellent Pedro, as usual!

May I suggest that you include in the document the egg size the experiments were made with, as times may differ for other sizes: "23.3±0.7 mm (95% CI) wide, 31.4±1.9 mm large and of 72.7±3.4 g of weight"

Edited February 8, 2013 by EnriqueB (log)

[PedroG]

Good suggestion, Enrique!

Considering standard measures of eggs, I guess César Vega divided width and length by two to calculate with radii, so I should modify the citation to "46.6±1.4 mm (95% CI) wide, 62.8±3.8 mm large and of 72.7±3.4 g of weight"?

I think with the longer cooking times (maybe 45min up) size of the eggs will not matter much as it comes to equilibrium cooking, not delta-T-cooking.

[Merkinz]

Made some deepfried egg yolks yesterday and they were delicious!

64.5°C for 60 minutes, cool for 10 minutes in cool water (not ice water), remove white, flour, egg wash, crumb, deep fry, salt, devour.

The reciepe came from the seattle food geek site.

[rotuts]

Merkinz

Im very pleased you are using a cooler. I hope you can get a set of them for various applications.

i have three.

best of luck!

Edited February 9, 2013 by rotuts (log)

[PedroG]

Excellent Pedro, as usual!

May I suggest that you include in the document the egg size the experiments were made with, as times may differ for other sizes: "23.3±0.7 mm (95% CI) wide, 31.4±1.9 mm large and of 72.7±3.4 g of weight"

OK, here is a new version with egg size used.

Here it is for download: Total cooking time needed to develop a characteristic texture in egg yolk_2.pdf

[Merkinz]

Im very pleased you are using a cooler. I hope you can get a set of them for various applications.

i have three.

best of luck!

Yeah I only just managed to find the perfect sized cooler. And I cut a nice slice out of the lid:

[PedroG]

Merkinz, wow, what a hole!! Mine is teeny-weeny in comparison, plus two 3.5mm-holes for the skewer:

[FeChef]

I do like how those polyscience units screw onto containers. Whats the overall depth that the heating element drops into a container? My SV rigs element can drop 12 inches.

[rotuts]

those cooler tops can be insulated very nicely with non-expandable Foam-in-a-Can ( make sure its the non expandable kind ! )

wear disposable plastic gloves, if you have not already altered the top, drill a series of holes along each side on the longer edge, insert, foam, pull back: repeat.

clean up the lip very very carefully and place back on the top so you will be sure its fits when 'cured' or better yet, like the bottom lips (s) with cling film as an extra precautions ( new idea, not tested and approved by Me (yet) )

unfortunately the cans are one use. you can fill preciously altered tops after the alternations ( ) just follow the No Stick Rules. unfortunately replacement tops are not available on there own. Fortunately the whole rig does not cost and arm or a leg.

[Robert Jueneman]

Made some deepfried egg yolks yesterday and they were delicious!

64.5°C for 60 minutes, cool for 10 minutes in cool water (not ice water), remove white, flour, egg wash, crumb, deep fry, salt, devour.

The reciepe came from the seattle food geek site.

I looked for that recipe today, but couldn't find it. Do you have the URL?

Failing that, how about a little more detail about each step? You didn't boil the egg first, and then cool it, before cooking it SV?

[nickrey]

Made some deepfried egg yolks yesterday and they were delicious!

64.5°C for 60 minutes, cool for 10 minutes in cool water (not ice water), remove white, flour, egg wash, crumb, deep fry, salt, devour.

The reciepe came from the seattle food geek site.

I looked for that recipe today, but couldn't find it. Do you have the URL?

Failing that, how about a little more detail about each step? You didn't boil the egg first, and then cool it, before cooking it SV?

It's at this link.

The base process is the same as many chefs use to get an egg yolk for presentation on a dish (Rene Redzipi uses this a lot). Then crumbing and deep frying is added.

Edited February 10, 2013 by nickrey (log)

[Robert Jueneman]

Thanks, Nick. I don't know why I could find it. I'm trying it tonight.

[FeChef]

If you boil the eggs straight from fridge for 5 min first then sv, you can retain the egg white. My first attempt was from reading that seatle food geek blog a few years ago and i used large eggs and found just using the yoke to be too small. If i was to use just the joke i would go with jumbo eggs.(which i never buy)

[Merkinz]

Thanks, Nick. I don't know why I could find it. I'm trying it tonight.

Yeah thats the link, however I can't seem to open it here on my work computer... I get a page of eternal loading. Strange.

I'd be interested to hear what you think of the dish. I really love it, I added a little bit of Trisol to my bread crumb mixture (maybe 15 - 20%) for extra crispness.

[nickrey]

I noted a number of people asked upthread about cooking and then reheating.

I don't particularly like the texture of the whites in onsen eggs so I've taken to coking at 63.5C for an hour and then cooling and storing in the fridge. I then reheat in much the same way I'd poach an egg except for a shorter time.

To prepare for serving, I use my egg topper on the large end of the egg to open up a hole. The bottom of the egg normally cracks slightly as well so I push from the hole that appears at the small end of the egg. This allows me to slide the cooked egg onto a plate. I then carefully wash away the loose egg white.

Then into barely simmering water (around 88C) for a few minutes to solidify the white but leave the yolk as it was.

This morning's eggs came out like this:

and cut:

[FeChef]

Again, whats the maximum depth the polyscience can drop into a container?

[Robert Jueneman]

Thanks, Nick. I don't know why I could find it. I'm trying it tonight.

Yeah thats the link, however I can't seem to open it here on my work computer... I get a page of eternal loading. Strange.

I'd be interested to hear what you think of the dish. I really love it, I added a little bit of Trisol to my bread crumb mixture (maybe 15 - 20%) for extra crispness.

I hadn't seen Nick's post before trying the eggs, and as a result I boiled the eggs for 3 minutes, let them cool, and then cooked them SV as recommended. Then I shallow-fried them in rice bran oil at 360F, turning them several times. (Wouldn't it be nice if deep fryers and high-temperature thermometers in the US would adopt the metric scale, like the rest of the civilized world?)

Disappointingly, the eggs were not runny in the center, but nearly solid -- not quite hard-boiled, but close. And a bit too salty, although I didn't measure the amount of salt. And I didn't use the baking soda -- maybe that would have helped. But tasty, nonetheless.

Practice makes perfect, they say. "The only way to avoid making mistakes is through experience. Unfortunately, the only way to gain experience is by making mistakes!"

Maybe tomorrow.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Robert Jueneman (log)

[osultan]

Again, whats the maximum depth the polyscience can drop into a container?

On my Chef's Series, its about 7.5" from the bracket to the bottom of the housing, the bottom of the heating element recessed maybe 1/8" up from the bottom of the housing.

Omar

Edited February 11, 2013 by osultan (log)