I have to admit, this egg thing piqued my interest. In advance of Easter, where the egg reigns supreme on the holiday buffet and has a whole entire event devoted to the finding of it, I decided to do you a favor, dear reader, and take one for the team. I tested this process. As is my usual M.O., I scoured the internet for methods, helpful hints, and failures. I also chatted it up with my mother who reminded me that Grandma Mary used to make shirred eggs, which entails baking eggs in a gratin dish, but not in their shells.
Many articles out there suggest putting the eggs directly on the oven rack. However, they also say that you'll see brown spots on those places of direct contact. To remedy this, and to eliminate what I see as a disaster in the making should something go awry, I placed my eggs in the pockets of a mini-muffin tin. I placed the tin in my cold oven and turned it on to 325F and set the timer for 30 minutes. My oven takes about 6 minutes to come to 325, so I knew that I might need to add time for that. Then, I walked away and did other stuff for 30 minutes (namely, helped my daughter prep some bread dough for a school project - more on that to come.) Before the timer rang, I placed a bowl in my sink, filled it with cold water and some ice cubes so that I could put the eggs in there as soon as they were finished to stop the cooking.
The timer rang - I looked in and just by gut feeling, decided to add another 3 minutes to the cook time. After those 3 minutes, I took the eggs out, and, using silicone tongs, placed them in the cold water to stop the cooking process. There was only one Humpty Dumpty in the bunch and I figured that would be our tester to check for doneness. The yolk was perfectly cooked but the white was funky since it had been exposed to the dry oven by the cracks. Following the ice bath, I placed the eggs back into the fridge to chill completely before doing a final test.
Twenty-four hours later...
Time to check the eggs and see what's what with this method. First note, the fridge does not reek of the tell-tale sign of hard boiled egg-y sulphur stench. I selected one at random and did my usual tappity tap tap on the edge of the sink to crack the shell. There was a different feel to this than with a traditionally boiled hard-cooked egg - not quite sure how to describe it, but there's a different quality to the shell - more brittle, maybe? The shell peels beautifully. Right off. Clean as a whistle. However, the egg does still have that pesky brown ring around it where the lip of the muffin pan met the egg. This was discussed in all of the descriptions I read and I found no solution available. So, there's that. Then upon cutting the egg, I found the green-ringed-yolk which signals overcooking. I'll chalk that up to not knowing what I was doing exactly with regards to timing (damned extra 3 minutes). Since the Humpty Dumpty egg from yesterday didn't have the ring, it could be wonky uneven heat in my oven or possibly differences in egg size. Final test: Taste - which I can say is remarkably(or unremarkably?) the same as a boiled egg - many sites reported "the eggs taste so much better" I can't say it was vastly different.
So, final verdict. It was a fun little eggsperiment (sorry, had to), but unless I was needing to cook a boat load of hard cooked eggs all at once, I think I'd stick to my regular, tried and true, bring a pot of water to a boil method....although, that no-smell thing is a pretty big plus.
Do you have a great method for hard-cooking eggs? If so, please share!
Happy Cooking!
sld
Thanks for doing the work and providing the feedback TGK. I particularly appreciate the pix.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome, Deb.
DeleteI wonder about using a mini cupcake liner in the pan to eliminate the line?
ReplyDeleteYou know, that might work - some sort of insulation.
DeleteTo me, it was more about the "does that even work"/ science factor than a super way to cook something.
I guess you just have to decide how you want to use your energy. Heating up the whole oven (and the kitchen quite a bit) or boiling a pot of water. I guess, if, like I said, you're needing to cook a large number of eggs the baked thing is better. Rarely do I cook that many at a time - even at Easter (we kind of split up the duty and have everyone bring a dozen cooked eggs).
I cheat and use my cuisinart egg cooker, it is fabulous! Though sometimes I still get the green ring around the edges. My cooker is several years old, it may be time to replace it.
ReplyDeleteWow. I never even knew such a thing existed. I just looked it up and while I'm not a fan of uni-tasking tools/gadgets, that is pretty amazing.
ReplyDelete