Boiled Eggs and Soldiers

The secret of comedy?  Timing.  Well it’s exactly the same for that elusive perfectly boiled egg.  It’s a science – it’s all about careful timing and keeping everything uniform.  The most important part of the technique is watching the clock since you can’t see inside the egg until you crack open the top.
There’s not a lot of time between too soft, just right and hard.  So take eggs, boil water, leave in for x amount of time for soft, y for hard/soft and z for hard needs a little bit more science to get it right every time. Plus, if you slow down the cooking time of the egg a little that window of time for getting what you want is a little wider and therefore more forgiving.

1. Start out with large sized cold eggs straight from the refrigerator.
   
2. Use a heavy bottomed pot that’s large enough to hold all the eggs comfortably and then cover eggs with about one inch of cold water straight from the tap.
   
3. Bring the water to a rolling boil over high heat and then remove pot from the heat cover with a lid and let the eggs cook in the residual heat of the water for the following exact times, start the clock the moment you remove the pot from the heat, or the heat from the pot if you leave the pot in place and turn off the heat.

          2 minutes – white not fully set, yolk is totally raw
          4 minutes – white is fully set, yolk is thick and runny
          6 minutes – white is fully set, yolk is almost set, runny middle
          8 minutes – white is fully set, yolk is soft set
        10 minutes – white and gold are fully set 

Remove eggs from pot and transfer to cold water to stop them cooking beyond the desired doneness before placing them in an egg cup ready to serve.

Serve boiled eggs in beautiful egg cups on a silver tray with a side of hot buttered toast cut into ‘soldiers’ for that all important dipping.

For those gluten free peeps or just to mix it up a little and incorporate more veggies I also like to serve soft boiled eggs with asparagus for dipping.
And for that all important Lean Luxury a little caviar for eggs on eggs is something I’m definitely not opposed to!