Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Still looking for sous vide eggs with whites set. My tests with pics


jaymer

Recommended Posts

I've read most of the SV material available. Even Kyhmos' post references Balwins pics, and they are two years old. Not much in the way of recent info [that I have found] for the perfect SV egg.

I wasn't against the 62.2 egg from Balwin, and I'd like to use those in my restaurant, but the runny white is kinda a putoff - and yes, I've seen the 4 stages of protein temps.

Since I'm cooking a bunch of other stuff at 60C, I thought I'd try to SV eggs at that "standard" temp in my shop, and then boil them to see if I could get some outside heat into them to help set the white.

Here's my results with 5 eggs each boiled at 100C for a period of time after the 90 minute 60C water bath.

eggs.jpg

There was about 45 seconds after removal from the bath until the eggs went into the 100C water. Each egg was about 30 sec intervals.

1st pic (upper left) is the closest to just doing a 62.2 egg to begin with. The main thing I noticed was when opened, there was a thin layer of egg white still stuck inside the shell. It all came off uniformly, so its hard to notice - you can actually see a shiny surface inside the shell, which is the white glistening.

I was happy with the first egg and looking forward to the next ones, until the egg shell started sticking - something I had NEVER experienced doing 62.6 eggs. After the 3rd egg and seeing a set yellow, I was bummed and you can see the 4th and 5th eggs couldn't even have the shells removed properly to be anywhere close to presentable.

In summary, I added my tests to see if a better egg could be made to solve the runny white issue, but to no avail. For now, I'll have to continue to crack open on a side plate and then move to the final presentation to get that yucky ovomucoid off the plate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pedro, I have tried that. Its a real pain, measuring crap every time. And then you have to eat them right away since they keep cooking - kinda tough in a commercial setting, don't you think? Would be easier to cook on a flattop grill.

David, you mean remove them from the egg and dump them into boiling water, right? I'm not sure what that'll buy me if the more liquid white just runs away. I'm not worried about the white that is already set. I have no experience in poaching eggs.

These were NOT fresh eggs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For now, I'll have to continue to crack open on a side plate and then move to the final presentation to get that yucky ovomucoid off the plate.

Can't help you about other cooking methods, but I can tell you how the chef dealt with these eggs during service in a restaurant where I worked. He immersed the egg in water, craked the shell while immersed in water, and used a drilled spoon

http://www.rgmania.com/media/images/superproductimage-picture-cucchiaio-forato-piccolo-lucido-2267_wm_w1_o100_gs0_r0_p-443x-274_s4.jpg

to collect the egg and place it on the plate.

Teo

Teo

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pedro, I have tried that. Its a real pain, measuring crap every time. And then you have to eat them right away since they keep cooking - kinda tough in a commercial setting, don't you think? Would be easier to cook on a flattop grill.

....

You might precook many eggs at 75°C for the required time, then either transfer to your 60°C bath until served, or chill for later use and reheat in the 60°C bath.

Peter F. Gruber aka Pedro

eG Ethics Signatory

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't contribute much to your discussion of setting the egg white but I can help you to get the eggs out easier.

I use one of these egg openers to produce a "lid" on the wider end of the shell that can be easily removed. Once this is done, the cooked sous vide egg slides easily out of the shell.

Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"The Internet is full of false information." Plato
My eG Foodblog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

Since I'm cooking a bunch of other stuff at 60C, I thought I'd try to SV eggs at that "standard" temp in my shop, and then boil them to see if I could get some outside heat into them to help set the white.

Here's my results with 5 eggs each boiled at 100C for a period of time after the 90 minute 60C water bath.

...

There was about 45 seconds after removal from the bath until the eggs went into the 100C water. Each egg was about 30 sec intervals.

...

Pedro, I have tried that. Its a real pain, measuring crap every time. And then you have to eat them right away since they keep cooking - kinda tough in a commercial setting, don't you think? Would be easier to cook on a flattop grill.

....

You might precook many eggs at 75°C for the required time, then either transfer to your 60°C bath until served, or chill for later use and reheat in the 60°C bath.

As a pre-production exercise, I'm not sure why one would wish to go directly from the sv bath to the 'boiling'.

An intermediate hold would seem best suited to production - as with standard poached eggs.

Also, having already 'pre-cooked' the yolk to 60C, I'd expect that chilling the egg would help limit additional yolk-cooking on reheating/white-setting.

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch ... you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DOUGAL

As a pre-production exercise, I'm not sure why one would wish to go directly from the sv bath to the 'boiling'.

Well, we go directly from SV to plate [or SV to torch, then plate] so it seemed a logical test to try to inject some "setting" heat on the outside and see if it helped.

I just wanted to publish my findings while I had a camera and verifiable results.

I'm not a fan of the 75C/measuring method - so in a sense I was already in a intermediate hold at 60C.

I have to say though, one thing not tried is chilling them. Will have to do that and see if a reheat will work - I have no idea how long that will take but won't I be back to the same issue as initial cooking? That is, I have to warm up the yolk so its not ice cold and I don't want it to set, so If I'm in hotter water than my preferred yolk (62.2C per Baldwin) I still have to rely on formulas of time/circum/temp. Given a pasteurized egg pre-cooked, I wonder how long it takes to get back to 62.2C in a 62.2C bath?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you are worried about serving eggs with cool (although ideally cooked through) yolks, then it does make sense to do it Pedro's way round -- cook the whites first (and arrest before the yolk cooks), then heat the whole thing through to yolk-cooking temperature, and hold before service.

If you chill the whole raw egg, you should be able to maximise the cooking of the white while leaving the yolk 'raw' -- which is what you normally try to avoid by specifying room temp eggs for boiling.

It would be ideal to leave as much as possible of the yolk 'raw' because you are going to cook it in stage 2, at 62.5 or whatever you choose.

In stage 1, the thing is to get the white cooked WITHOUT (over) cooking the yolk. But unlike trad 'boiling', you are not trying to 'perfectly' cook the yolk - you actually want to under-cook it. Hence starting from cold should help.

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch ... you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Is the traditional egg shape a must? I've long been thinking about (in a slightly different application) separating the whites and yolks and cooking them separately, then reconstructing the components.

This would require a custom tray mold to SV the whites into some sort of cup form and cooking the yolks separately. Then you just unmold the molded white, fill with cooked yolk, garnish, and serve.

Besides being able come up whimsical shapes (An egg cube? An egg white shot class filled with yolk?), you could individually season the components and completely sidestep the difficult issues involved with managing the temps of two different components in one package.

An egg's shape may be very classical, but is it the most practical shape for plating? I'd think that a flat bottom alone could be a huge plus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is the traditional egg shape a must? I've long been thinking about (in a slightly different application) separating the whites and yolks and cooking them separately, then reconstructing the components.

This would require a custom tray mold to SV the whites into some sort of cup form and cooking the yolks separately. Then you just unmold the molded white, fill with cooked yolk, garnish, and serve.

Besides being able come up whimsical shapes (An egg cube? An egg white shot class filled with yolk?), you could individually season the components and completely sidestep the difficult issues involved with managing the temps of two different components in one package.

An egg's shape may be very classical, but is it the most practical shape for plating? I'd think that a flat bottom alone could be a huge plus.

Very funny, but this would really be an awful lot of trouble. Cooking in-shell eggs in a 75oC water bath for about a quarter of an hour is fast and simple and straightforward.

Peter F. Gruber aka Pedro

eG Ethics Signatory

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Timings for cooking soft eggs courtesy of Neil Perry's "Rockpool Bar and Grill"

First cook eggs for two hours sous vide at 60C.

At this stage, I chilled eggs in cold water and placed in refrigerator overnight.

Rewarm to 60C in sous vide cooker.

Then removed top of egg with this device:

egg topper.jpg

Then tip into ramekin:

soft egg in container.jpg

At this stage, and what I did, was gently slide the egg onto a strainer scoop (see cooked egg picture below) this leaves behind some of the fragmented cooked albumen and makes for a neater cooked egg.

Then slide egg into barely simmering water.

egg in barely simmering water.jpg

Leave it in there for a very brief time (think it was around a minute, maybe less, I did it by eye rather than time).

Remove egg:

cooked egg.jpg

Add to toast. Cut.

cut egg.jpg

I'm sure the process can be used effectively in a commercial kitchen Jaymer. Look forward to hearing how it turns out.

Edited by nickrey (log)

Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"The Internet is full of false information." Plato
My eG Foodblog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cooked the second of the pre-cooked eggs today. This time, I didn't bother bringing back up to temperature. Just removed egg from shell, took away excess albumin then placed the egg directly in the simmering water. Same result, hot enough to eat, one less step.

Should also point out that the temp and time means that these babies are pasteurised. Moreover the egg yolk, while liquid, is not as runny as that of a "normal" poached egg: On the shot above the yolk didn't leak any more than what is shown.

Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"The Internet is full of false information." Plato
My eG Foodblog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...An egg white shot class filled with yolk?...

I, for one, think this is an absolutely brilliant idea and it must be pursued!

These would make it fairly trivial, no?

Uh oh, I think I've stumbled across a foolish new obsession.

Thanks...

PastaMeshugana

"The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd."

"What's hunger got to do with anything?" - My Father

My first Novella: The Curse of Forgetting

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Pedro, I have tried that. Its a real pain, measuring crap every time.

. . .

Maybe this would make measuring easier and faster:

PedroGs Egg cooking ruler_1200px.jpg

Download here:

http://egullet.org/p1840397

(Any suggestions for improvement?)

Another possibility to measure egg diameter using calipers (instead of "circumference measuring crap") was described over at Sous Vide Dash.

Adding diameters to Douglas Baldwin's EggHeatingTable would be easy if desired.

Peter F. Gruber aka Pedro

eG Ethics Signatory

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

In-Shell Egg Heating Times in a 75°C Water Bath Using Circumference or Diameter

Douglas Baldwin made me a nice birthday present, he recalculated the EggHeatingTime table using diameter instead of circumference, with an increment of 1mm diameter instead of 5mm circumference, and restricting the range to chicken eggs, as extrapolating his experimental results from chicken eggs to quail eggs or goose eggs may eventually not be adequate, taking into account that protein composition and geometry might be different. Using calipers to measure diameter instead of measuring circumference might facilitate “measuring crap”.

Measuring egg diameter with calipers.jpg

So here is Douglas’ new table for download:

In-Shell Egg Heating Times in a 75°C Water Bath Using Circumference or Diameter.pdf

Edited by PedroG (log)

Peter F. Gruber aka Pedro

eG Ethics Signatory

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...