Florentina Lewis
Cooking eggs to perfection is a science in itself. Sometimes the breakfast egg is too hard, sometimes too soft, sometimes it bursts while cooking. We explain how to cook hard and soft eggs properly.
The most important utensil when cooking eggs is the clock.
Cooking time, egg size and storage all determine how firm the whites and yolks are in hard and soft eggs.
Quenching makes sense, especially with soft-boiled eggs – then the egg will no longer cook.
Opinions differ on the perfect egg for Sunday breakfast: some like it liquid, others prefer a waxy egg and some prefer their egg hard. Boiling eggs by feel is not a good idea. Three factors are important for the best result when cooking eggs: the size of the egg, the cooking time and storage (refrigerator cold or room temperature).
Boil eggs until soft: size matters
When you boil eggs, it is important to know what size the eggs are. The optimal cooking time depends on it. Eggs come in sizes S, M, L, and XL. The respective egg size is printed on the egg carton.
The most common egg size is M, here the eggs weigh between 53 and 63 grams.
Boil Eggs: Cooking time for hard and soft eggs
The cooking time for medium-sized eggs is:
Boil the eggs until soft (the egg white is set, the yolk is still runny): 4 1/2 minutes
Boil the snack egg (the yolk is soft as wax): 7 minutes
Hard boil eggs (even the yolk is hard, the egg is easy to cut): 10 minutes
Cooking an S-sized egg takes 30 seconds less each time, and L-sized eggs take 30 seconds more each time.
The following factors are also important for optimal results when cooking eggs:
Temperature of the egg: If the egg has been stored in the fridge, it may take up to a minute longer to cook.
Altitude: At sea level, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. The higher the eggs are cooked, the lower the boiling point and the longer the egg will take to cook. So if you cook your egg high up in the mountains, you have to plan a few more seconds than on holiday by the sea.
How do you cook eggs?
With these instructions for the perfect egg, nothing can go wrong when cooking eggs:
Boil water.
When the water is boiling, carefully place the eggs in the water using a spoon.
set egg timer.
Boil eggs hard or soft – don’t take your eyes off the clock.
When the cooking time is up, remove the eggs from the water and cool them under cold water.
Pierce eggs – does that even make sense?
It happens again and again that eggs burst open during cooking and the albumen swells out and spreads unattractively in the water. In an experiment with 3,000 eggs, the WDR program Quarks & Co showed that about every tenth egg bursts during cooking – regardless of whether it was pierced or not. Why this is so is not entirely clear.
One tip will help in any case: do not use eggs straight from the fridge, but warm them up at room temperature for a while before cooking. Then the temperature difference is not quite as great when the eggs are placed in the boiling water. A little vinegar in the cooking water ensures that the egg coagulates faster if the shell should burst.
Quenching eggs after cooking: does it make sense?
Many discourage their boiled egg, believing that the egg will then be easier to peel. Whether that really helps is debatable.
However, chilling under cold water will stop the cooking process. If you are cooking soft-boiled eggs, we recommend quenching them in any case: This ends the cooking process, the egg no longer cooks and retains the desired consistency. You can save yourself the hassle of quenching when boiling hard-boiled eggs.
