Its an Egg-speriment!

They say that being able to properly cook an egg is the mark of a well trained chef. While I am by no means a chef, I certainly have cooked a lot of eggs in my life not always with the greatest of success.

Scrambled is easy, fried a breeze....even over easy but I still don't always get the perfect boiled or poached egg.  In fact at my last Christmas party, I was going to make my famous Kimchi-Bacon Deviled Eggs, and I ended up tossing them because I just couldn't get them to peel properly. So annoying.

Then I saw post on Food 52 the other day testing Alton Brown's method for baking eggs to perfection. Basically oven boiled eggs sans the water.  That got me thinking....what method is best? Do I bake, boil, steam, go from cold water to rolling boil or from warm water to gentle boil to get the best result?

Only one way to find out....try them all.  So on Good Friday (which really was a good Friday) I bought 2 dozen eggs and tried 4 different methods.

Now this is really just a limited test but if you are really interested in a full-on treatise on boiling eggs, Serious Eats has this one for you in their Food Lab section.  They worked the hot water, cold water, old eggs, fresh eggs, steam, bake, pressure cook methods to the farthest degree possible with some very interesting results.

Me....I am doing 2 dozen eggs, 6 eggs per batch...4 different ways.

Method 1 - Oven baking. This idea came from Alton Brown, my favourite Food Network non-chef guy of all time.

Method 2 - Boiling from cold.  My usual method which has had limited success lately.  I am adding the idea of pricking with a pin, and adding baking soda to the water before I bring to boil from cold as per Michelle Tam's Nom Nom Paleo  blog, which is by the way one of my favourites that I follow.

Method 3 - From Serious Eats Food Lab - Steaming!  Never tried this....intriguing.

Method 4 - Also from Serious Eats Food Lab - Adding cold eggs to already boiling water.

Source:  www.tonis.at

One thing I will not be testing is the impact of the age of the egg I am cooking. As much as we are indoctrinated that fresh from the farm eggs are the best, they aren't always depending on what you are doing. The freshest eggs are best for baking as the structure of the egg is at its highest integrity, meaning the structure of meringues will be better and your batters will rise higher.

Definitely not the same case when it comes to boiling eggs...older is definitely better as the structure of the egg deteriorates over time making it easier to peel the egg after it is cooked. The downside of an older egg is that the chalazae (the singular is chalaza) which holds the yolk in the centre of the egg (on top and below) deteriorates, meaning the yolk might drop towards the bottom of the egg creating an off-centre appearance.

In reality, most commercially produced eggs can be in the market for up to 60 days from laying so chances are any eggs you buy in your local grocery store won't cause you any issue because they are aged already.  If you buy eggs at a market or from a farmer, it is a good idea to let them sit a week or two if you want to boil them as super fresh eggs are more likely to be hard to shell.

And with that....here we go.....