Cooking & Baking
Related: About this forumHow to make the perfect egg
Today I did an experiment on how you can make the perfect egg with nothing more than a 7 qt crock pot, a thermometer, and a up to a dozen eggs.
This is a follow-on to my perfect eqg quest post, simplified greatly. I wanted to reduce the procedure to more or less cookbook so that someone could get a baseline on what the perfect egg starts to look and taste like so they can experiment from there.
1) Turn on your 7qt crock pot and add 2 liters of hot water from the tap. Add 3 cups of boiling water. Stir and measure the temperature. It should be somewhere around 130F.
2) Put the lid on and allow the water to come up to 155F. This should take about 30 minutes or so.
3) While the crock pot is coming up to temperature, put a dozen eggs into a bowl and fill with hot water from the tap. Every 10 minutes, empty and fill with more hot tap water.
4) When the temperature in the crock pot reaches 155F, put in the dozen eggs, replace the lid, and turn off the crock pot. I also put a couple of tea towels on top of the lid to increase insulation.
5) Set a timer for 25 minutes.
6) After 25 minutes turn the crock pot back on and set the timer for 5 more minutes.
7) After 5 minutes, add about 1.7 liters of boiling water to the crock pot and replace the lid. Set the timer for 5 minutes.
8) After 5 minutes, remove the eggs and place inside a bowl filled with ice water for 5 minutes.
9) Serve as you would poached eggs. I like to put two of them in an ice cream bowl with a little salt and pepper.
What this does is it brings up the yolk of the egg to 150F or so which produces a perfect custard like yolk. The last 5 minutes at a higher temperature cooks the whites just a bit more and keeps them from being runny without becoming rubbery.
I store the eggs in the refrigerator until ready to serve. On serving I empty the contents of two eggs into a small bowl, microwave for about 25 seconds and serve with a bit of salt and pepper.
Lucinda
(31,170 posts)to your quest. I got tired just reading the instructions though! You have MUCH more tenacity than I do! ?
I'm still on my lemon curd quest, and will move to indian flatbreads once I'm happy with the lemons!
Major Nikon
(36,827 posts)...and cooking with eggs in general. It's really more of an exercise in temperature and egg proteins, but it just happens to yield very tasty results from very simple ingredients.
Lucinda
(31,170 posts)from my experimentations. Working with egg proteins is part of my my lemon curd challenge. The recipe is only four ingredients - lemon - sugar - egg & butter, but they way you handle them makes all the difference in texture.
I'm working against physical limitations from health problems, so I have to pace myself these days!