How to cook the eggs to be easily cleaned and were tasty
Food / / December 19, 2019
Famous American chef, culinary blogger and writer Kenji Lopez-Alt (Kenji Lopez-Alt), as a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, often puts scientific and gastronomic experiments. One of them concerned an egg.
Over the past few years, I cooked the thousands and thousands of eggs. And believe me, there is no completely reliable method. However, the old-science increases the chances of success. If you listen to it the laws, you can get easy to clean hard-boiled egg yolk with well cooked and tasty protein.
Kenji Lopez-Alt, chef, culinary blogger, writer
The degree of freshness
You've heard from moms and grandmothers that the eggs lie down better to clean.
"Age" eggs really matters, but only if they are very very fresh, literally from under the hens. If you buy eggs from the farmers themselves or keep chickens and do not want to suffer when cleaning the eggs, then let them soak a couple of weeks in the refrigerator.
If you buy the eggs at the supermarket, you do not have to wait much sense. While their packagi at the poultry farm and razvezut to outlets, will take plenty of time - the eggs have time to "grow old". In addition, for the final result is much more important than the expiration date, and
way of cooking eggs.Which water omit
Most of the inhabitants of megacities store eggs in the fridge and cook immediately, almost taking out, as to wait until they are warmed at room temperature, no time. Usually we just we place them in a pot, fill it with cold water and send it to the plate. And that's why part of the protein and then remains on the shell.
To the eggs quickly and easily cleaned, immerse them in already boiling water.
Even if you take a two-, three-week egg and become a boil them in cold water, half of them will be bad cleaned. The following picture demonstrates the advantages of the "hot start" before the cold.
According to Kenji, are both on the steaks: if you put a piece of meat on a cold frying pan and slowly heat, then begins the process of blood clotting and juice, which should stand out, soaking the meat, remains inside. Heated with water, egg white is preparing slowly and firmly adheres to the podskorlupovoy shell.
So, a "hot start" for effortless cleaning eggs. But, alas, there is a flip side. When you cook the eggs in cold water and simmered, the yolk remains, as it should be, in the center; When throwing eggs into the boiling hot water, they cool and flounder. As a result, cutting the boiled egg, you may find that the yolk is uneven and is, to put it mildly, not symmetrical.
Solution is to steaming - an electric egg boiler or in a pan on a special grid. It is easier to monitor thermal processes inside the egg.
What happens to the egg during cooking
Take a look at this photograph. Her eight eggs: the first was brewed for one minute, and the second - three third - five, and so on.
Let's see what happens to the egg when it is in the pan and begins to boil. First, consider how to react to the increase in proteins temperature.
- 0-60 ° C. Liquid protein is slowly heated.
- 60 ° C. Some of the proteins, called glycoproteins, begin to communicate with each other to form a matrix. Protein becomes milky-white color and jelly-like consistency (pictured above - after a three-minute cooking egg).
- 68 ° C. Egg white glycoproteins formed: it is no longer clear, fairly dense, but still a bit like jelly (see. egg after five minutes of cooking).
- 82 ° C. Ovalbumin is released - is the main protein of egg whites, thanks to which it becomes a white-and elasticity (see. eggs after the seven- and nine-cooking).
- 82 ° C, and more. The higher the temperature, the stronger the protein communication. And the longer the cooking time, the more dry and hard, like rubber, becoming white.
In the yolks slightly different set temperatures.
- 63 ° C. Yolks thicken and begin to prepare.
- 70 ° C. Yolks hardened, but still tender and bright yellow.
- 77 ° C. The yolks are pale and crumbly.
- 77 ° C, and more. The yolks begin to dry, their texture resembles chalk. Protein contained in the sulfur reacts with the iron in the yolk - stands iron sulfide which is slightly color the yolk. Look for eggs that are cooked 11 and 15 minutes between the yolk and albumen formed a distinctive gray-green rim.
Thus, to get perfect egg, Hard-boiled, with elastic and soft yolk protein, which in this case is perfectly clean, you need to run it in boiling water, and after 30 seconds when Hushed boiling again activated, reduce heat and simmer for 10 more minutes. For the first thirty seconds and solidify as white proteins, and the remaining time at the desired temperature welded yolks.
With the temperature and time have understood, but how about the fact that the eggs when cooking sometimes crack and follow?
Steamed in the oven
When cooking in the old way, in a cold or hot water, such incidents, unfortunately, not uncommon. Ugly cracked and leaked eggs usually go in salads and other dishes where necessary grinds. After all, their table is not promptly supplied and Easter not to paint.
Marriage can be avoided if the eggs cook for a couple, or in the oven. But even here there are some nuances.
steamed
Pour into a pan of water to a level of one and a half centimeters, put on the bottom of a special grille. When the water boils, put the right amount of eggs and start the timer for 11 minutes. When steaming proteins produced little tougher than when cooked, but not rubber.
Multivarka or steamer
Many housewives cook adapted eggs in multivarka or double boiler. In this case, write to culinary forums that cooked their eggs themselves literally jump out of the shells and yolks they do not turn green.
Typically, they write that hard boiled egg cooked in multivarka for 10 minutes. But in practice, much depends on the model and power of the device, the cooking mode, the amount of water poured into the cup. To determine the ideal balance of all parameters, sometimes you have lime than a dozen eggs.
In addition, when preparing eggs and the double boiler multivarka besides temperature, pressure influences on the result. If during normal pulping in water or steamed not so important to prepare egg 10 or 11 minutes, in the case of multivarka (steamer) every second counts.
Compare: in the picture below the eggs, which were prepared in a double boiler over five, six and seven minutes.
In the fifth minute the yolk still watery, on the sixth - that, gentle, bright yellow, and on the seventh - is rather loose, formed a greenish jacket.
Oven
This is a popular way to prepare hard-boiled eggs, which has a number of advantages. Firstly, it is good when you have just a lot of boiled eggs. Secondly, the eggs are not going to beat each other.
To prepare eggs in the oven, The famous chef, TV presenter and culinary author Alton Brown (Alton Brown) recommends wet towel and wring it well, put it on the wire rack of the oven, put it on eggs and send it all in a cold oven for half an hour, holding temperature of 160 ° C.
As you can see, the visual result is poor: the shell appear brown spots. Even more you will be disappointed when clean egg. The yolk is shifted to the side, which is the egg, and the protein in this place turns gray. If you reduce the cooking time, the appearance of the eggs out of the oven will be better, but gently clean them will not be easy. These are the main shortcomings of this method.
In addition, here, too, a lot depends on the model of the oven. The temperature inside the oven is distributed unevenly in the door is always colder and around the burners, which can have different configurations, hotter.
If you need to cook a lot of flat, smooth and delicious eggs, cook them for a couple of several parties.
Puncture
Many pierced before cooking with a blunt end of the egg, where there is an air chamber (Puga). Sold even special facilities for this.
Why pierce the egg? Firstly, it is estimated that less likely because cracking the shell and Eggs are cleaned better. Secondly, the puncture helps prevent the formation of dents on the surface of the egg.
The older the egg, the more frightening, the more it will dent when cooking. The known French chef, broadcaster and writer Jacques Pepin (Jacques Pepín) recommends to get rid of the air chamber is through the puncture. But the problem is that in this small hole might zatech water, and then the surface of the eggs will be like lunar craters.
There is another way to get rid of the pit from pugi. To egg was oval, immediately after cooking, place it in ice water.
Kenji says that "cold shower" works like a shock therapy. Yolk and white freshly cooked eggs are more plastic. When you lower the egg hot into cold water, steam is generated in the air chamber, which in turn is converted to water, and it takes only 0.5% of the original volume pugi. Thus yielding the yolk and white occupy the vacated space - egg becomes oval.
Cleaning
The decisive factor in the issue of rapid and easy separation of the shell from the protein - temperature.
The eggs are well cleaned, they should be well cool. Keep boiled eggs for 15 minutes in cold water, but rather leave them in the refrigerator overnight.
By her own cleaning equipment is quite simple: a good crush fingers shell of the egg, then place it under cold running water and gently clean.
5 secrets of perfect boiled egg
Summarizing, we can highlight the following formula perfect hard boiled eggs:
- Use egg two- or three-week "exposure."
- Lower eggs not in cold and boiling water or cook them in steam.
- After 30 seconds, turn down the heat to low and cook the eggs for 10-11 minutes.
- Finished eggs, place in ice water for at least 15 minutes.
- Have cooled down completely, clean the eggs under cold running water.
By following these rules, you will get almost perfect boiled egg: oval, smooth, an elastic protein, soft trim bright yellow yolk, tasty and easy to clean. Such eggs are not ashamed stuff and submit to holiday table.