The Hard Truth About Boiled Eggs (2014)
seriouseats.com
seriouseats.com
http://www.amazon.com/The-Food-Lab-Cooking-Through/dp/039308...
"On Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee is another great book about the chemistry of cooking, and I especially like it since it doesn't try hard to be hip or cool as opposed to some other books about cooking chemistry I could name.
> They're just units...
The fact that the imperial units aren't even common amongst the two remaining countries that use some number of them is just 12oz of icing on the cake. It's frustrating to find an otherwise fine cooking or science book ruined by the prose pandering to some elderly subset of 5% of the population.
Sure, I could go out of my way to buy utensils and look up measurements in metric. On one hand, it would be a bit more forward thinking, especially since I want to try living in Japan at some point and there would be one less change to worry about. On the other, here and now, it would make it harder to talk about recipes with other people.
But mostly I just don't care. They're just units. If units "ruin" a book for you then you should reconsider your standards of evaluation.
[1] http://lolsnaps.com/upload_pic/FahrenheitVsCelsiusVsKelvin-6...
He's writing a book for a US audience. The US audience uses US customary units for measurement and has done so since 'forever' basically. The subset of US citizens that knows metric well enough to be comfortable using it for things like cooking is small enough to be irrelevant for his book.
Would it be better to use the metric system for everything in the US? Of course. Will it happen in the next 100 years? Nope.
And I'm really confused about the elderly part of your statement. Do you correlate being young in the US with knowing the metric system? If so you are unfortunately wrong. Actually you are more likely to find metric knowledge in the general populous in the older crowed due to an attempt in the 70's to convert to the metric system. So, outside of areas that use metric internally, the older population is more likely to know metric than the younger ones.
That's a lot better than the complete clusterfuck that is working on most mechanical equipment - you'll all too often find a bizarre amalgamation of metric & standard hex head, allen, torx and other fasteners, all mixed together - wrenches are nowhere near as inexpensive.
Wouldn't that largely be fixed by the USA moving to metric.
It uses "imperial" units, though I assume they're actually "English" units (i.e. American rather than British). This matters for volumes, a British pint is larger ("a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter", as my grandma taught me).
It has a few conversions in the introduction, but with false precision -- an oven temperature of 300F is converted to 149C.
It argues against using volume measures for dry or sticky ingredients, but the only example I see in the preview asks for "2 tablespoons of butter".
When something calls for three cups of flour, and it's a humid day, or a dry day, does that affect the quantity? Yes it does. Significantly enough to affect bread.
Both of the above reasons are why bread bakers weigh all their ingredients, including water.
I don't see how weighing the flour will help. A given volume of moist flour will weigh more than dry flour because of the water in it, so you'd still have a problem on humid days.
But yes, measure by weight.
pounds vs kilograms isn't particularly important (as long as you keep them straight!)
I own a lot of Grilling/BBQ books and normal recipe books, almost everyone says to never use table salt somewhere in the book.
My Himalayan salt is quite good for seasoning and was deposited millions of years ago. Compare that to Morton's table salt with iodine my grandmother used to use.
Its fun to play with cool, colorful salts. By the time the cooking is done, I'd bet cash money no one can tell the difference.
By the time the cooking is done, I'd bet cash money no one can tell the difference.
Besides that, one of the main reasons to use different salts is crystal size which can have significant effect (depends on what you are doing, obviously). For example, koshering salt is called that because of its use in koshering meats, where the large crystal structure helps control absorption. Likewise in "finishing" applications.
Serious Eats has an article and it really validates a part of both of our points[1]:
>"So long as your salt is going to be dissolved and distributed evenly into the final dish...there's no reason to use kosher salt...Just remember, check your recipes and make sure to compensate for table salt's density when adding it."
If you have access to Good Eats, Alton Brown explains it pretty well.[2]
[1]http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/ask-the-food-lab-do-i-nee...
[2]http://www.thekitchn.com/salt-101-alton-brown-and-the-p-1042...
At the same time, if you're just gonna boil water and dissolve some salt in it, it doesn't really matter so much as the actual amount of salt.
Given that you have enough iodine in your diet though, avoiding it in seasoning is sensible.
There are many people that dont cook at home and I doubt their Iodine levels are low.
Also I never said it was some sinister corporation spreading false info.
Real cooks use table salt all the time. Other salts are mostly useful as finishing salts (where the subtle distinctions in flavor and texture between different salts, or different sized grinds of the same salt, come out, and where color distinctions can impact presentation) rather than in cooking itself (where they don't.)
> My Himalayan salt is quite good for seasoning and was deposited millions of years ago. Compare that to Morton's table salt with iodine my grandmother used to use.
...and, what? Both are good for seasoning, the table salt with iodine is better for avoiding the (otherwise fairly common) iodine deficiency (conversely, its a good thing to avoid if you are iodine sensitive). I'd rather use the Himalayan salt as a finishing salt for some things.
Also, table salt vs. other salt and iodized salt vs. non-iodized salt are orthogonal distinctions (and table vs. other salt is a different distinction than "made in nature" vs. "made in a chemical process in a plant".)
Kosher, Sea, and some other salts are available iodized, and table salt is available non-iodized.
I do not say that one cannot work scientifically using non-metric units, I'm just saying that it has a non-scientific appeal since even in the US scientific publications normally use SI units (kg, m, s) since they are well defined and easy to calculate with.
Imperial units, on the contrary, are based on the length of body parts and sticks or the volume of some arbitrary measurement cup. Granted, the meter is a bit arbitrary as well (but at least based on the geometry of the planet), but the nice thing about metric units is that they can be converted easily: 100 cm = 1 m, 1000 m = 1 km. 1000 g = 1 kg. Try that with inches, feet, yards and miles.
So I really stay with my assessment that working in non-metric/SI units is contradictory to professional scientific work.
Let's not forget the weight of a stone!
Statistically, this does not have _any significance_ at all, though: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... (Sorry, that translation is hilarious).
(in fairness, the confidence intervals do overlap each other)
My recipe:
1. Boil water 2. Place eggs in boiling water 3. Cook eggs for 5 minutes 4. Place pot with eggs in the sink and let cold water run to replace the hot water, don't let the water get warm in the pot. 5. Wait for eggs to cool for a few minutes 6. Peel eggs easily now.
Total time: about 15 minutes
A found no difference between bringing eggs to the boil and dropping them in boiling water.
I did find a difference between running cold water into the pot and dropping the eggs in cold water. Putting the eggs straight into cold water gave me rounder eggs that were easier to peel.
If you use cold water, the time for the water to get to 100C is going to be dependent on the stove and the flame that comes out of the burner, so when the water gets to 100C, in some cases the eggs will be half-ready, in some cases 1/3 ready, so it's more difficult to cook the eggs perfectly. Obviously, if you are always using the same stove and the same flame, you will eventually know how long it takes you to cook the eggs, but then when you switch stoves, you have to re-learn this. For me, dropping the eggs in boiling water is a little easier.
Finally, yes, cold water is used to make the eggs easier to peel.
5 minutes appears low, but until reading this article I was starting my eggs in cold water so I don't have any reference.
Thing is, it's difficult to apply a time to the process. Different stoves, different water starting temperature, different pots..these these will all affect how quickly you can cook the eggs.
I think it's a matter of having some idea, some "recipe", and tweaking it. Currently I warm my eggs by running them under tap water, then put them in the water on the stove, set a time for 14 minutes, bring the water to a boil, turn it down to medium, remove from stove when timer elapses.
It works for me. Judging by the article, and the comments, almost no two people do the same thing.
No matter what model of stove or pot or starting temperature you have, water boils at 100C* . If the water is supposed to be boiling the whole time, the 5-minute cook time is completely repeatable.
You understand that it is physically impossible to have liquid water above 100C without applying pressure, yes?
* Depending on atmospheric pressure.
And? Does water boil instantly, or are there factors that can affect how long it takes to get water to boil? Things like, say, your stove, pot and starting water temperature.
>You understand that it is physically impossible to have liquid water above 100C without applying pressure, yes?
Wow, thanks for the physics lesson.
I was referring to the OP stating "the process" takes X minutes from start to finish. Well, different stoves are going to heat water at different rates. Colder water from the tap will take longer to heat that warmer water from the tap. When I'm the one cooking my eggs, these things matter. Time-from-boil isn't relevant to me when I'm getting ready in the morning.
Learn to tame your nerd-rage and give people the benefit of the doubt that they aren't as stupid as you think.
How different does the temperature of boiling water get from 100? If your little eggs are lowering the temperature of your water at a simmer by that much, you should try bigger pots.
Think about this for a second: When the water gets to 100C, it stays at 100C as long as there is sufficient fire under the pot, correct? So, your water is stable after it boils. You can then drop the eggs, time 5 minutes, and you're done.
If you don't do this, it would be difficult to apply a time to the process, like you said. But, if you let the water boil first before adding in the eggs, it's always going to be 5 minutes to soft-boiled eggs, so it becomes easy to time the process.
http://smile.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp...
(Sorry for the enormous URL.)
Also, I binge-listen to Dave Arnold's podcast, "Cooking Issues" on Heritage Radio network. A treasure trove of food science facts, going well beyond eggs: sous vide meat, hydrocolloids, liquid nitrogen cocktails, etc.
http://heritageradionetwork.org/series/cooking-issues/
(You really have to give the show a chance, though -- it's very conversational, and less... polished than your typical show.)
Also, anyone interested in food science should really consider an iSi whipper for booze infusion and other experimentation. No really, please do it, your life will be better (or at least boozier):
http://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=4463.html
(Arnold has progressed the technique a lot since then, but this primer is pretty good nonetheless. The FCI blog is basically dead; the podcast and Twitter are his current outlets.)
But yeah, I screw around in the kitchen a lot (though cook less useful food than my wife does). Pressure cooker, weird enzymes, hydrocolloids... but the iSi whipper booze-infusion technique is my all-time favorite kitchen hack. You can drink toasted hazelnut bourbon in a Manhattan like, six minutes from now! (I hope it's nighttime when you read this.) Four minutes to microwave toast the nuts, plus two minutes to nitrous-infuse them. You might want to chop them in between and filter through a coffee filter after.
Sorry, my nerd is showing. I hate eggs, especially boiled eggs, but this post hit a fun nerve for me.
Never heard about the iSi infusion technique before now, but am going to try it straight away! Thanks! ;-)
Or to put it in HN terms. If On Food and Cooking as comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of computer science, then Keys to Good Cooking is Javascript: The Good Parts
(I'll show myself out)
Totally off-topic, but you can shorten an Amazon product URL like so:
I only boil eggs now and again, but I have a 100% success rate on peeling with this method. I also don't do anything special while peeling. Just crack the shell any old way and peel it. Never once had a marred surface. Never once had dimples in the eggs (probably the shock cooling, as he suggested).
Some variables: Gas stove on medium high heat. At sea level (well, technically 4 meters above sea level...). Very fresh eggs (probably only 2-3 days on average). Eggs started at room temperature (although exactly once I started with a cold egg with no perceived difference).
I'd be interested to see if anyone else has used this technique.
http://www.amazon.com/West-Bend-TEM500W-Muffin-Toaster/dp/B0...
http://www.amazon.com/KRUPS-F23070-Cooker-Indicator-capacity...
The rice cooker and convection/toaster oven have been the two most universally useful appliances in our kitchen, and they are both still operational after an average of 15 years in service. Other gadgets have come and gone, and they remain. They have even outlasted four microwave ovens, three slow-cookers, and one full-sized range-top oven.
A rice cooker is useful enough in every home kitchen that I consider it a dire omission that they didn't even get a mention in the article. Ours can cook a dozen eggs in 15 minutes, most of that time can be spent doing something else, and there's no boiling water to pour out.
- cook the eggs 6 minutes on low pressure.
- cool down (10 minutes).
- shock the eggs with iced water.
Now, in a saucepan the water doesn't have to boil off completely, but you also have significantly more water.
That isn't to say I use this unitasker all the time, I usually don't remember to have eggs around often enough!
[0]: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61jBthbQW6L._SX425_.jp...
I can bring 12 pans of water to boil with that energy, and have lots of water to spare.
His comment was that the oven style at low heat allowed a restaurant to cook a large quantity of eggs and have a consistent product which would be good over the course of a few hours.
Nordic Ware Microwave Egg Boiler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007M2BN0
Works surprisingly well, consistent, etc. it basically steams them.
It also occurs to me that there is significant evidence of numerous "cooking myths" that lasted for decades or centuries before falling to the first person to finally put them to the test. Seems like fertile ground for some interesting high school science projects that could get some interesting results.
Egg white:
* At 180 degrees: The main protein in egg whites—ovalbumen—will cross-link and solidify, giving you a totally firm egg white (see the whites of the 7 and 9 minute eggs).
Egg yolks, on the other hand, follow a different set of temperatures:
* At 145 degrees: They begin to thicken and set up.
* At 158 degrees: They become totally firm, but are still bright orange and shiny.
----
A sous vide setup might work, but it probably isn't worth the effort for eggs. You would want to set the temperature to 145..158 degrees, depending on your desired yoke consistency and then drop the egg in boiling water to finish the whites to 180 degrees.
TBD is whether the 145 degree sous vide temperature hurts peel-ability (likely) and how long to cook the egg to finish the whites properly without overcooking the yoke.
I was unclear about what I was thinking. I was thinking using the sous vide hardware to prep water at 200F or 190F and try boiling in that, since trying to maintain that temperature by hand is very hard, or at least, very labor intensive. But my failure to communicate that well produced another interesting strategy from you.
And I have to admit I'm more searching for perfection in the abstract sense than interested in changing how I cook them. If perfect turns out to be "individually microwave the egg for 6 seconds, then cook in sous vide bath at 185F for six minutes, then boil for 3 more, then dump in ice bath immediately"... yeah, I'm not going to do that. But I'm intellectually curious.
I mapped this strategy directly to eggs, but it probably would work poorly. With a steak, "sear the outside to your preference" is easy. With an egg, "cook the whites without overcooking the yoke" is likely to be difficult.
Your suggested method of using the bath to maintain the water temperature would probably work well and probably result in less "rubbery" whites, but probably is overkill compared to maintaining the water temperature at 212 degrees (trivial) and control cooking via time per the article (and tradition). Plus you would have to boil 3,000 eggs to scientifically establish the new cook times. ;-)
http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/10/sous-vide-101-all-about-e...
For soft boiled, I've only tried it at 144f for 1 hour, but was a touch softer than I wanted. I think a few degrees higher might fix that. Part of the white was slightly liquid, but it was easy to discard. Peeling was a pain.
165f was good for a hard boiled egg. The texture was softer than normal which I thought was great.
You might be able to find a good compromise temperature, or even a good temperature-time profile with a sophisticated cooker, but boiling and steaming handily cook the white more than the yolk which is usually what people want.
Mostly, I just skip the calculator and do in-shell eggs for 40 minutes at 62.5C or 63C. They are soft, have no salmonella concerns, and delicious served on toast or on veggies.
The water bath is also a very convenient way to make pasteurized "raw" eggs at home, so you can make raw-egg recipes with very low risk.
http://www.cookingissues.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/eggc...
It's accurate and has served me well. The only downside of making eggs sous-vide is that it takes forever. If I sleep in on a Sunday morning, set up the water bath, then wait 45 minutes for egg equilbrium, it's almost lunch time...
Sorry for the paywall (I hate that!), there's an official youtube video you can watch for free, but I can't find it now. (Youtube history doesn't have search!)
I'm in Australia, and as I understand it the unwashed egg is the default in most parts of the world (certainly here and in the UK, and I think in most of the EU). In the US the default is a washed product.
But (!) this is why the default in the US is to have eggs refrigerated from soon after they leave the farm - and they need to remain refrigerated. IIRC this is because eggs that come from ~3C back to room temperature (~21C) will condense, and on washed eggs this massively increases the risk of pathogens penetrating the eggs.
On non-washed eggs, this is less of a concern - but here we still recommend to not relocate eggs from the fridge to room temperature unless we're about to eat them. The membrane, though, will prevent spoilage of eggs that haven't been washed (or refrigerated) for weeks, if not months, if kept at a reasonable room temperature. (I qualify reasonable as here in AU room temperature in summer can often reach 35C.)
Seems that the scientific method can and should be applied to nearly everything successfully :o).
Placebo
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/08/what-are-the-best-eggs-ca...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06...
It all depends on what they eat. Both articles actually say this, but bury it for some reason.
Hens in a barnyard eating high quality feed supplemented by insects, etc have a different flavor and texture than hens just fed feed. "Eggland's best" taste different because they are supplemented with flax.
Similar phenomena exists with beef and pork. Grass fed beef tastes different due to more Omega-3 in grass. Danish pork tastes a little different because the pigs eat fish.
Even if you don't believe they taste any different, they're interesting animals and it's a fun hobby.
This happens when you cut them in half when they're still hot. The trick is to let them sit in the water until it cools down after cooking, or at least don't cut them until they cool down considerably.
Upvoting this share just because of this pun!