SOFT COOKED EGGS

By shygirl

Our science editor explained what was happening: Plunging raw eggs into boiling water (or hot steam) rapidly denatures the outermost proteins of the white, which reduces their ability to bond with the membrane. Plus, those rapidly denaturing proteins shrink as they start to bond together, and that causes the white to pull away from the membrane. Thus, these eggs are easy to peel. (The pressure-cooked eggs are a unique case: Though they start out in cold water, the water gets hot very rapidly and can reach as high as 250 degrees, which likely causes additional shrinkage of the proteins, making the eggs easy to peel.) Conversely, proteins that rise in temperature slowly, as in the eggs started in cold water or baked in the oven, have more time to bond to the membrane before they bond with each other, so the membrane is difficult to remove.

Ingredients

• Any number of eggs

Preparation

Step 1

In early 2013 we published our method for making soft-cooked eggs: placing the cold eggs directly into steam for 6.5 minutes. It worked well, and as a bonus the eggs were easy to peel. This soft-cooked egg method became very popular through the magazine, TV show, and social media, and folks started to wonder: What happens if you extend the cooking time for hard-cooked eggs? (We were wondering the same thing, and were testing it ourselves.)