Boiled eggs

Ingredients 

1. Hens’ eggs

2. Room temperature water

Method:

1. There are many written methods for boiling an egg—see Hints and tips for why this one is the est.

2. Gently place room temperature eggs into a saucepan and cover with cold water by at least 5 minutes.

3. Bring the water to the boil, then turn down to a barely recognizable simmers for 8–10 minutes for hardboiled eggs. For the best results, the water should not be boiling. See Hints and tips for soft- oiled eggs.

4. Remove from the water with a slotted spoon and drop into cold or iced water to stop the cooking. Boiled eggs in the shell will keep in the fridge for 7 days.

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—saucepan and slotted spoon.

* As tempted as you are to drop eggs from the fridge into boiling water, stop now and read on. The main reason eggs crack when boiled is due to temperature difference. A cold egg cooked in hot water will most probably crack, and no amount of salt or vinegar in the water will prevent this. All salt and vinegar can hope to achieve is to quickly set the egg white that flows from a cracked egg. The other reason is that eggs cooked in a rapid boil are knocked about, causing the egg to crack.

* The only reason why eggs are hard to peel once boiled is because they are very fresh. The fresher the egg, the harder it is to peel. The best eggs for boiling and then peeling are those that are about 2 weeks old. Keep the really fresh ones for poaching, frying or scrambling and for making cakes.

* For really soft eggs—both yolk and white—use the method mentioned, but remove the eggs after 2–3 minutes instead of 10 minutes. These are also known as ‘coddled eggs’.

* For soft yolks and set whites, cook for 5 minutes. For a medium cooked yolk, cook for 6–7 minutes.

* All these times are approximations and much depends on the size of the egg, temperature of the egg

and even the temperature of the water added in the beginning.