Comments on: The Food Lab: Perfect Boiled Eggs

By: Laurie

Laurie — Sun, 16 May 2010 02:17:18 +0000

I DO have my own chickens, and it seems like 6 or 7 days is the minimum to have eggs that peel easily.
Thanks for this great article =) I have been using my mother’s old 1956 Sunbeam egg cooker for years, and it’s been perfect until recently; now it often boils over & loses some of the water, thus quits cooking too soon & we get gooey yolks. DH doesn’t find it funny or even punny. :\
I’ve tried keeping it super clean, and making sure the eggs are super clean; still randomly boils over. I’ll try your method tomorrow.

By: Jacqueline Church

Jacqueline Church — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:42:48 +0000

Does it matter if the eggs are room temp before you start? I assume yes?

By: dick bengraff

dick bengraff — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:18:49 +0000

Your experiments have have confirmed a number of my practices.
At the risk of nit picking however, where do you draw 45f tap water?

That is very cold water to be circulating in the piping of an apartment!

Thanks.
dick

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:54:51 +0000

Yet another awesome post. Thanks for such wonderful, informative ‘experiments’. My 1.5 qt ’simmer’ was about 200 before I stopped it, and the 4 eggs came out perfectly.

By: patrick

patrick — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:37:35 +0000

i just used the “cooling method” and it worked great.

thanks!

By: Kenji Lopez-Alt

Kenji Lopez-Alt — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:25:23 +0000

@hap I think the confusion comes from the wording of the article

170 degrees is the temprature that the water should be at after having rested off heat with the eggs in it for 10 minutes. Otherwise, the eggs will not cook at all. A simmer is closer to around 190 degrees. I’d give it another shot, bringin the water up to 190, then letting it sit.

Also, bear in mind that as I said in the article, this recipe is custom-written only for my own kitchen. Since external temperatures, altitudes, and pots, and burner outputs vary from kitchen to kitchen, it is not by any means a univerasl recipe.

The article was intended more as a discussion of the various food science principals that go into cooking an egg rather than an attempt to give a definitive recipe. The idea is that armed with the proper knowledge, you should be able to develop your own recipe for perfect eggs that works in your own kitchen.

Hope that helps, and thanks for the comment!

By: hap

hap — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:13:25 +0000

I took two 37°F eggs and put them in a 2 quart stainless pot with 1.5 qts water. I raised the temp of the water to 170° while constantly circulating the water. The rise from cold to 170°F took about 5 mins on a good gas range.

I took the pot off of the heat and allowed the eggs to sit in the now slowly cooling water for 10 minutes.

Guess what? Not even the whites were set and the yolk was effectively raw.

So, apparently “bare simmer” is somewhere higher than 170°F.

By: KBrew

KBrew — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:59:01 +0000

I’m also a recently hooked addict. Keep up the good work. Love it….

By: KBrew

KBrew — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:57:44 +0000

Maybe I’m missing something toward the end, but I see that 1.5qt is the amount of water needed to perfectly boil AN egg. How about a dozen? 18qts?

By: Mac

Mac — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:41:16 +0000

I’d also like to know… what’s the temperature of a bare simmer? My biggest source of failed hard-boiled eggs is that I walk away from the pot for too long, and find a pretty rigorous boil when I come back, which cracks shells and overcooks the eggs. Being able to set my probe thermometer for the right temperature would be perfect.