Paleoista’s Perfect Soft Boiled Egg

I loved it right away but it took a while for me to recreate it.

Soft boiled eggs are a nice happy medium between raw- which has the most nutrients but, unless the source is one you’re completely comfortable with, could potentially harbor bacteria- and hard boiled, which cooks many nutrients to death!

I’d order a soft boiled egg at  a restaurant and it would come out in its perfect little cup and with the mere touch of the spoon, the white would open just subtly enough to reveal the brilliant yolk, asking to be scooped up and savored with nothing other than perhaps a touch of freshly ground pepper.

Seemed easy enough.  As I’d been cooking as long as I can remember, I figured with one ingredient and a pot of water, there wouldn’t be too much to figure out.

Turns out, that assumption was wrong.

Too short of a boil, too runny of a white.   Too long a boil, it’s a hard boiled egg and has an ugly grey ring, thanks to the over cooked sulphur, which also smells fantastic…not  really.  

Cold eggs in hot water can result in a cracked shell and bits of poached egg swirling about in a pot of water.

I turned to my go-to source and did some investigating- Cook’s Illustrated.  By the way, if you’re even remotely interesting in cooking, this mag is a must read!  No ads, only recipes (easy to Paleoize!) techniques and thorough explanations of what works and what does not.

So- here it is:

• Put a cage free egg cold egg in a cold pot of water.
• Turn on the burner.
• Set the timer for six minutes.
• (Now here is where it gets particular to your taste and how runny you want it. Try it this way the first time and if it’s too runny, add two minutes of letting the egg sit in the water with the burner off).
• Take the egg out with a spoon and plunge into a bowl of ice for a minute or two.
• Crack open over some greens, or eat with a spoon.

Pure decadence!