The Secret to Perfect Boiled Eggs (Soft, Jammy, Hard)

I'm Frank Proto,

professional chef and culinary instructor,

and today, I'm gonna show you the best way

to boil eggs at home.

We're talking soft boiled, jammy, and hard boiled.

This is how to boil eggs 101.

If you ask 100 chefs how they do their boiled eggs,

you'll get 100 different answers.

So today, we're just gonna really go over the way

that I do my boiled eggs.

If you keep a few tips and techniques in mind,

you'll pretty much get a perfect yolk every single time.

[upbeat clapping music]

Normally, with soft boiled eggs,

you get an egg cup and a spoon,

and it's eaten out of the shell, right?

We just basically get the egg,

we take the top off,

put it in our egg cup,

and then we scoop it out

with a little salt, sometimes a little butter,

and we eat it like that.

Soft boiled eggs should be a super runny yolk.

The whites should be just set, but not slimy.

A lot of times, people mess up

because their whites are slimy.

You want the whites set and the yolk super runny.

For the most part, I like to use boiling water

for my soft boiled eggs

because if I put them in cold water,

it's gonna take at least like five

to 10 minutes for them to boil,

and in that time, they're gonna be cooking.

We only really want them to cook for six minutes.

So if we start with cold water,

they're gonna cook for way more than six minutes.

Today, we have brown eggs,

and brown eggs are beautifully, aesthetically pleasing.

They're not any healthier than white eggs.

It just all depends on the breed of chicken.

It doesn't really matter what type of pot you use,

as long as the eggs are covered with water.

You don't want the eggs to be half in

and half out of the water.

You want them to be completely covered.

So I have a bowl for my eggs to land in.

I'm gonna put it right here.

I have my egg cup and my spoon.

And with soft boiled eggs,

you wanna pretty much eat them immediately.

My eggs are done.

It's been six minutes.

Fish them out.

Just put 'em in a bowl.

I don't put these into an ice bath

'cause I'm gonna eat them right away.

This is one of those dishes that's fairly immediate.

Cook it and eat it.

If you try and peel them, you will not be successful.

You're gonna have an eggy mess, yolk everywhere.

What we wanna do is take our egg, put it into our egg cup.

If you don't have an egg cup, use your shot glass.

This works really well.

And then I get my spoon, and I'm gonna tap around.

They have tools for this called egg toppers,

but we're just gonna use the spoon,

and basically what we're gonna do is cut the lid out.

You see how my egg white is nice and set?

You can eat this part, right?

You can just scoop it out and eat it.

But if you look inside of this, I break open the yolk.

Look at how nice and eggy and yolky that is.

My egg whites are set perfectly.

Make sure you get it everywhere.

But that's the consistency of a soft boiled egg,

a nice white that is set,

and a beautiful creamy yolk.

Now, what I would do with this is I would have some toast

on the side to either dip in here

or to take and scoop my egg out on the toast.

Preferably, buttered toast

with a little bit of salt and pepper, and you're done.

We don't do this enough in America, but this is delicious.

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Now, jammy eggs, you tend to see a lot in ramen.

They take the eggs,

they cook 'em,

they marinate 'em in some soy sauce,

and the yolk is just getting firm,

almost like spreadable jam-like consistency.

It's close to the method for the soft boiled eggs,

but the timing is slightly different.

If I start with cold water,

they're not gonna cook the eight minutes they need to cook.

It's gonna take at least five to 10 minutes

for it to come up to a boil.

And if the eggs are sitting in there

and the water's getting warm, they're cooking.

I want to be very precise with my cooking time here.

These eggs are in the boiling water for eight minutes only.

For our jammy eggs, we get our eggs.

Put them onto your spider.

What's important about these eggs

is we are gonna peel them, right?

So what we have to do is shock them.

In culinary terms,

shocking means you're taking something

from a boiling liquid,

and we're putting it into an ice bath.

I have a bath of water and ice here.

I'm gonna chill these eggs completely

before I try and peel them.

When we shock items, it's gonna stop the cooking.

When we cook items, they tend to carryover,

which means the residual heat

is gonna continue cooking that item.

But when we shock, we are stopping the cooking,

and we're gonna kind of set it at the time

that we took it out of the water.

This is what's gonna allow us

to get that really nice yolk consistency.

So it's been eight minutes.

We're gonna take these out immediately.

Right into the ice bath.

We're gonna put them in there for about 10 to 15 minutes,

so that we know it's cold all the way through and through.

Be patient.

Let them ice down all the way.

So our jammy eggs have been chilling for about 15 minutes,

and what I like to do with these, I leave them in the water,

and what I'm gonna do is tap around, right?

[egg thudding]

Just tap around.

Now, you'll always see there's a little air pocket

in your eggs,

either at the top or the bottom of your egg,

and if you peel them under the water,

usually that membrane comes along with it,

and you get a beautiful peel on your egg.

Once we get under that membrane

with a little bit of the water, it's so much easier to peel.

One of the suggestions I have

is when you're making eggs like this,

always do a couple more than you think you need.

If you want them to be perfect,

just make a couple extra eggs.

It's not really gonna hurt.

Here's the moment of truth.

Let's cut into this baby and see how we did.

It's just barely set, lightly liquidy,

a little bit spreadable, but look at that,

and that's a really nice jammy egg right there.

This would be a great addition to any ramen,

any salad that you like eggs on.

Go for it.

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Hard boiled eggs are cooked all the way through.

The yolk and the white are totally set.

This is what you're gonna use for egg salad,

for deviled eggs.

We want the yolk to be firm all the way through.

We want it to be kind of bright pale yellow.

We do not want it to be green at all.

Green on the outside of the yolk

usually means it's overcooked.

It doesn't necessarily taste bad when they're overcooked,

but aesthetically, it's not all that pleasing.

Believe it or not, what I've found over years

and years of boiling eggs is that the fresh eggs,

you have a lot of the membrane still intact,

and as eggs get older,

that membrane pulls away a little more from the shell,

so you get an easier peel to your eggs.

I like to use eggs that are at least a week old

before I start boiling them.

So I start out with cold water,

and I'm gonna put my cold eggs into my cold water.

I'm using cold water

because I want these to kind of cook in the water,

and cook through as the water comes up to temperature.

So these are just the opposite of our jammy

and our soft boiled eggs.

We want these to cook thoroughly all the way through.

So that's why I started with cold water.

They're gonna cook slowly

and ramp up to the right temperature,

and they're gonna cook all the way through.

Make sure that our eggs are completely covered with water.

Put 'em on high, and let it come to a boil.

Then, lower it to a simmer for about eight minutes.

We're almost at a simmer.

We're lightly bubbling away, and that's what I want.

I don't want this at a full rolling boil

'cause then the eggs will kind of jump around

and hit each other.

Letting them simmer for eight minutes

and then letting them sit for eight minutes

is gonna ensure that they're cooked,

but it's also gonna be a gentle cook.

We're not gonna get that green ring around my eggs.

So my hard boiled eggs have been simmering

for about eight minutes.

I can shut the heat off,

and all I really wanna do here is take them off of the heat,

and put 'em aside in the hot water

for another eight minutes.

I'm gonna bring this over to the sink.

I'm gonna drain the hot water out.

I'm just gonna let some cold water run over them

for a few minutes to make sure that they chill lightly,

and then we can peel 'em.

While these eggs cool down,

I have a raw egg here,

and I have a boiled egg or a hard boiled egg here,

and I wanna show you a quick trick

that I learned back in culinary school.

So I take my egg that is not cooked,

and I try and spin it like a top.

And because it's liquid inside,

it doesn't really spin all that well.

It spins okay.

You take an egg that is hard boiled.

See how it spins like a top?

This is how you know your egg

is actually cooked all the way through.

So I've cracked my shells on my eggs,

and basically I'm just gonna peel them under the water.

Make sure we get under that membrane.

Once we get water under that membrane,

it is really easy to peel.

Dry it off. Put it on our plate.

Now, there's a lot of different methods out there

on how to peel hard boiled eggs,

but I find if you usually start

where there's that air bubble,

usually it comes off a lot easier.

Moment of truth here.

There we go.

Perfectly cooked egg yolk in the center.

Bright yellow, no green, a bright yellow yolk.

It's perfect.

Not overcooked. Just beautiful.

Let me get a bite.

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Mm, delicious.

The yolk is a little crumbly, but not dry.

Hard boiled eggs, for me,

is I eat 'em for protein in the morning sometime, right?

Deviled eggs, egg salad.

There's so many different things you can do with this.

This is a super versatile ingredient,

and it's always good to have something like this

in your fridge.

Just boil off a couple of eggs

in case you want to get a little quick bite to eat.

Even though everyone thinks that boiling eggs are so simple,

it is something that does take a little bit of finesse.

You have to take your time,

you have to be patient,

and you might have to do a few different tests

to see what works for you.

If you have other methods that work for you,

please just go with it.

But these are the best methods

that I have found that work for me.

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