Recipe #8
Boiled Eggs
Thomas Keller Teaches Cooking Techniques
Chapter 22
I use the term “recipe” in this one loosely. 😉
When I was growing up, hard boiled eggs looked like one thing: green and pale yellow yolks and egg whites so solid you could bounce them. My mother’s method of hard boiling eggs was to put them on the stove and come back to them in about an hour before giving them an ice bath and then prying the shells messily from the whites.
I was in my mid-twenties before I knew that the green band around the yolk was never, ever supposed to be there. I began practicing different times to boil until my yolks were a solid golden yellow. And guess what? The eggshells usually came out really easily too.
However, that was as far as I took boiled eggs. I heard of soft boiled but never tried them. I never attempted that sweet in-between of partially liquidy, partially solid yolks. And I definitely never tried eating boiled eggs with olive oil!
So I tried out Thomas Keller’s methods, not only what he shows but his recommendation to play around at 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 6 minutes, etc. He did warn that different stoves will have different times and that did prove true for me (I have an electric stove, versus his gas stove, which may well have something to do with it.)
I took four eggs from the fridge and put them right into a pot of water and turned it on. I kept Thomas Keller’s Masterclass close, watching exactly how boiled he let his water get before he set the timer. After four minutes, I took the first egg out and rinsed it in cold water. Five minutes: another egg came out and put into cold water. I repeated for each minute, going up to seven.
The shells didn’t come off quite as perfectly as I was hoping, but I wasn’t working with fresh eggs either.
Six Minute Egg
I sliced each one open and put it next to the label I made to keep track. I was surprised that even at seven minutes, the yolk hadn’t completely firmed up like his had at six minutes, but again, different stoves produce different times. My eggs at six and seven minutes were both mostly firm, with just a bit of soft liquid left to them. My four-minute egg was mostly all warm liquid and my five-minute egg was something in between. As someone who likes over easy eggs, the first two still looked good to me.
Four minute egg
Seven minute egg
Usually a fan of lots of salt and pepper on my boiled eggs, I put the pepper away and used olive oil in its place like Thomas Keller shows. I really felt like I wasn’t going to enjoy it but it completely changed the experience. Olive oil on eggs really brought out the flavor and will definitely be something I continue adding to my eggs.
Next time, I think I’ll try for 5, 6, 8, and 9 minute eggs to see if I can get a range that ends in a more solid yolk to get a true hard boil. But this was a great experiment. It was so simple, I couldn’t believe it never occurred to me to try it before! I love that Thomas Keller does dishes so complex, it takes a week of preparing and cooking to get to the final dish, but he also shows such simplistic basics like a proper soft and hard boiled egg as well.
Mastering Cooking With MasterClass 