Making a boiled egg is not as easy as it sounds. The doubts are more or less always the same: the cooking time, the water temperature, the size of the egg. Let's go through!
Choosing the right egg
How do you make sure your eggs are still fresh? The shell should still be opaque and if you shake it, you shouldn’t hear any slight rattling sounds (which indicates that it’s on the older side). If you crack the shell, the egg white should be clear and sticky with a well-defined outline and a firm yolk. If it’s cooked properly, it will be difficult to crack the egg and the hollow at the base will be reduced. On the other hand, a greenish outline on the yolk is the effect of a chemical reaction due to heat. (It’s better not to exceed the recommended cooking time.)
Finally, there’s always the risk of salmonella: Though bacteria are almost never found inside fresh eggs, they are more likely to be found on the shell. However, don’t wash your eggs until you want to use them. Otherwise, you’ll remove the protective film that protects the eggs from deterioration. Keep freshly cracked eggs in the fridge and eat them within 24 hours. The same applies to all recipes with fresh eggs.
Always choose fresh eggs. Try soaking an egg in salted water first. If it floats, it’s gone bad.
Soft-boiled, hard-boiled, barzotto, or poached?
Almost any dish featuring eggs is a variation based on another more basic recipe, which in the end, refers to three cooking methods: in water (or in broth or milk); in a pan with butter (preferable to oil); or in a bain-marie.
To prepare a soft-boiled egg, immerse the eggs in a pot of boiling water after having poked a small hole on top of the egg with a needle. Cook for three minutes. Then let the eggs cool off in cold water and serve them in an egg holder. Break them on the tip and eat the inside with a teaspoon, adding salt and pepper to taste. The egg white will not be completely congealed, while the yolk will be liquid.
If instead, you cook the egg for six minutes, you’re cooking it barzotto style – characterized by a congealed egg white and soft yolk.
For a hard-boiled egg, the cooking time increases up to 8-10 minutes.
To make a poached egg, the procedure is completely different. Fill a deep, large pot with water and bring it to a boil. Add two tablespoons of white vinegar; lower the heat slightly to a temperature of 180°F; and with a spoon, stir the water to make a little “whirlpool.” Break an egg inside and drop it gently. Once you can’t see the egg yolk (meaning the egg white has cooked enough to hide it), you can take out the egg with a slotted spoon.
The water temperature
At 212°F, the egg white and the yolk both coagulate, but the yolk is slower to cook because it is inside the egg white (which you risk overcooking).
The coagulation temperature of the proteins is always lower than 212 °F, but there are different proteins in the egg, and each one coagulates at different temperatures. For example, the ovotransferrin in the egg white, begins to coagulate at 144°F and becomes a soft solid at 150°F. The yolk, on the contrary, thickens at 150°F and solidifies at 160°F.
As already mentioned, an egg with its shell cooks for two minutes (for a soft-boiled egg) from the moment the water boils to a maximum of 10 minutes (for a hard-boiled egg).
Browse the photo gallery for our advice on boiled eggs!