I have been searching for this perfect soft boiled (or coddled?) egg for weeks now. Joy of Cooking has detailed instructions, but I am still confused--does boiling mean the water is vigorously bubbling? Are a few bubbles enough? How can I assess the temperature of the egg? Can I cool it for a minute or does this count as cooking? How can cooking one egg be so complicated?
If the whites are not cooked, it is disgusting. If they are cooked too much then it is hard boiled and I can't eat it. Also, the smell of a hard boiled egg makes the rest of my family nauseous, (ha!), and they flee the room. Plus, how do you extract the egg from the shell? It makes a huge mess of egg shells that have to be dug out of the bowl. I have visions of old British movies where they daintily eat these eggs out of egg cups with tiny spoons. Does anyone have an egg cup in America? Maybe I should dispense with keeping the egg in its shell and just drop the raw egg into boiling water? (tried this once with minimal success--the "streamers" are gross, and the egg watery)
Can anyone enlighten me?
Enlighten you, probably not. But we do have some gadgets that you could borrow -- we have (1) an egg cup and egg scissors, this allows you to cut off the narrow top end of the egg and eat it out of the shell; and (2) we have egg coddlers - you break the egg into these (along with any flavorings, e.g., cheese or heavy cream, salt, pepper, etc) and put them into the oven to bake - you may also be able to put them into a pot with water, like poaching them. I'll experiment with these and see if I can get the timing down and bring them over with "enlightening" instructions.
ReplyDeleteLeslie.
Marlene here. I will bring an egg cup tomorrow. It is adorable, like a little chicken.
ReplyDeleteThe big thing with eggs is to keep the water at a simmer so that the white does not get tough. Experiment with the timing, see what you prefer. Starting at 5 minutes sounds about right.
To eat, cut off the top and scoop the egg out of the shell with a little spoon. Anything that gets hard cooked can be recycled in egg salad.... or not.