The perfect way to boil an egg (if you have 32 minutes to spare)

The perfect way to boil an egg

There are many ways to prepare an egg. I like them fried in a little butter, sunny-side up. Others might like them over-easy: that means cooked on both sides, but without breaking the yolk. If you don’t like a runny yolk, you can ask for them over-hard. You can get them poached, scrambled, or even baked.

You can also boil eggs. The traditional way to boil an egg is to submerge it in boiling water for about ten minutes. This is a hard-boiled egg. When done right, the yolk is firm. To some people, though, this is unsatisfying. If you cook the eggs a bit too long, a green ring forms around the center. The whites, meanwhile, can turn rubbery. And some people want the yolk to be a bit softer.

Very well: then maybe a soft-boiled egg is more your style. If you soft-boil an egg, you cook it for less time. That makes the yolk a little softer, but you run the risk of undercooking the whites.

And therein is the paradox of boiling eggs. If you want a soft yolk, you risk undercooking the whites; if you want perfectly-cooked whites, you have to live with a firm, almost crumbly yolk.

There is a scientific reason for this. The egg white is also called the albumen. The yolk and the albumen have different chemical compositions. The albumen is mostly protein and water, while the yolk has fats and more micronutrients.

The ideal temperature to cook the yolk is about 65 degrees Celsius, while the albumen should cook at 85 degrees. Most people put their eggs in 100-degree water, and live with an over-cooked yolk. This is a shame: over-cooking the yolk means you lose some of the nutrients it contains.

But what if there were a way to cook the yolk at 65 degrees and the albumen at 85 degrees, all without cracking the shell?

We live in remarkable times. No fewer than eight scientists discovered the perfect way to boil an egg. The secret, according to the scientists, is to alternate the egg between hot and warm water.

Here is what you have to do. Prepare two pots of water: one should be boiling at 100 degrees Celsius, and the other must be kept at 30 degrees Celsius, which is warm, but not hot. Then, you cycle the eggs from one pot to the other, two minutes at a time. The eggs cook for two minutes in the boiling water, and then two minutes in the lukewarm water, and back again—for eight cycles. That’s eight two-minute cycles in boiling water, and eight two-minute cycles in lukewarm water, for a total of 32 minutes.

The reason this works is the speed with which the heat moves from the water to the shell to the white to the yolk. When the egg is in the boiling water, the white, which is just beneath the shell, heats up to 85 degrees, its ideal cooking temperature.

But before the yolk gets too hot, you move the egg to the cooler water. That means the yolk never gets above 65 degrees, or its ideal cooking temperature. Do this eight times, and you’ve cooked both the white and the yolk enough, at the right temperature for each part.

Voila! Taste testers confirm that this method does indeed produce a delicious egg, with a soft yolk and a firm, but not overcooked, white. Testing revealed that eggs prepared this way preserved more of their nutrients than did eggs boiled in the traditional method.

This may be the perfect way to cook an egg, but there are a few drawbacks. First, it’s easy to keep a pot of water at 100 degrees Celsius: just boil it. But it’s not easy to keep the other one consistently at 30 degrees. Second, this really does require a person’s constant attention for thirty-two minutes.

And finally, after you’ve gone to all the trouble to cook the perfectly-boiled egg, you’ll find one more problem: eggs cooked this way are harder to peel.

Jeff’s take

What I hate is when I go to peel a hard-boiled egg and the white is soft and sticky, and it sticks to the shell. I boil eggs so that I don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking in the morning; if the egg is not easy to peel, or if clumps of the whites get stuck to the shell, then my entire day is off to a bad start.

So for that reason, I tend to overcook my hard-boiled eggs. I can live with a firmer, almost overcooked yolk if in return it means I can have some inner peace as I peel the shell off.

I don’t think I’ll be trying the new method. But if anyone out there does, send me a note and let me know how it turns out.