Boiling egg

The 6 ways to cook an egg:

    • Cooking in a pan with water
    • Cooking with an egg boiler
    • Cooking in the microwave

 

  • Cooking in the air fryer

 

There are several ways to cook eggs. You can read how below!

How long should I cook an egg?

The duration of egg cooking depends on what you like. A hard boiled egg or do you want to cook a soft egg? Or exactly in between? Also, some people count from the moment they put the eggs in cold water and light the fire, where others only count the cooking time when the water boils. And to complicate matters further, do we cook large or small eggs? Does the egg come from the refrigerator or does she come from a room temperature environment?

  1. Assuming you are cooking a medium-sized egg (size class M) that has been stored at room temperature, the following information will guide you:

If you set up the egg with cold water and start counting when the water boils:

Note the exceptions below

  • For a farm-fresh egg (less than 3 days young), calculate 1 minute extra
  • Does the egg come directly from the fridge also 1 minute extra
  • Cook a larger egg than M: Large (L) or extra large (XL) egg 1, respectively 2 minutes extra
  • Cook a smaller egg like an S? Then you can get by with 1 minute less

Shocking the eggs after cooking by directly contacting them with cold water will stop the setting process and make them easier to peel. If the eggs are very fresh, they are also a lot more difficult to peel. Set aside very fresh eggs for a few days. After 5 days they peel a lot easier.

Saving energy when boiling an egg

Do you want to save energy by cooking eggs? Then heat the eggs in a pan. Immediately close the pan with a lid. After the eggs boil, turn off the heat source. Do not shock the eggs under cold water, but let them lie in the warm water. If you wait 6 minutes you will have a nice soft boiled egg with a minimum of energy!

Do not cook the eggs on too high a heat. They then ‘dance’ through the pan with the risk of the shells breaking and the egg whites running out. It is better on a low heat and if you want to reduce the risk of breaking, use a blunt needle or egg piercer to pierce a hole in the blunt part of the egg. Then the air in the air chamber runs out and not the contents of the egg.

The basic technique of a perfectly cooked egg

  • How do you cook a perfect soft, semi-soft or hard boiled egg? In this video you will learn the basic techniques, so you can serve your favorite egg easily and quickly.

Another way to cook an egg

Of course, you can boil an egg with a egg boiler. You then place about 6 eggs on the plate, add water and set how hard the egg should be that you want to cook. When the eggs are ready, the system stops or the egg cooker gives a signal. This prevents overcooked eggs because you forgot the time. A set the egg timer next to your pan of eggs also works, of course, but you still have to turn off the gas yourself.

Cooking in a microwave oven

With the advent of the microwave, you can also cook an egg in the microwave. However, not in the shell, then there is a good chance that the egg will explode and you will have to clean the microwave. It is better to put the egg in a sealed container in the microwave for about 30 seconds to 1 minute on a not too high setting. If you want to get the egg out of the container properly, it helps to grease the inside of the container with a little butter or margarine first. Some experimentation often leads to a good result. There are also separate microwave egg cookers on the market.

Cooking in a Dishwasher

Some people say that you can also cook an egg in a dishwasher. After all, a dishwasher runs at a temperature of 55 to 65 degrees Celsius and that is exactly the temperature that the egg white in an egg will solidify. The method: fill a glass jar with warm water, put the egg in and screw on the lid. Place the jar in the dishwasher and ….? We took the test. We left the pot in the hot dishwasher for another half an hour and let it cool down outside the dishwasher. The result: a very soft boiled egg with about 50% of the egg white still transparent. Not a great success as far as we are concerned.

Since we are not easily caught, we also try it in a new dishwasher. Ours was already 15 years old and had had its day. It improved, the white was now just white but not solidified. Not even when the dishwasher was set to 70 degrees, the highest setting. The result was a boiled egg but one that had been cooked in a pan for about 2 minutes. If you like that then this is an original and cheap way. If you want at least solidified egg white then there are better ideas.

Cooking with airfryer

Place the egg in a non-preheated airfryer. At 120 degrees this will yield a soft boiled egg for 12 minutes. Prefer a hard boiled egg? Set the airfryer for 15 minutes. Make sure to poke a hole in the egg to prevent it from cracking prematurely.

‘Cooking’ in the oven

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Place the eggs in a muffin tin and put it in the oven for half an hour. Cool well immediately afterwards and you have delicious hard boiled eggs. Also good to apply when you have prepared a dish and the oven is still warm. From the residual heat you can ‘harvest’ delicious eggs that you can keep for at least a week.

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There is a small chance that the eggs are contaminated with salmonella. About 3 in 10,000 eggs are contaminated in the Netherlands. This is a very limited risk but it is particularly threatening for children, the elderly, the sick and pregnant people. Healthy adults often have limited problems with salmonella. When you boil the eggs hard the salmonella bacteria are certainly dead. Storing them in the refrigerator also helps reduce the risk of salmonella contamination.

As we have already seen, the size of the egg also determines the cooking time. But how big is which egg? The size of an egg is indicated by a letter which you can find on the packaging.

Small: S 43 – 53 grams
Medium M 53 – 63 grams
Large L 63 – 73 grams
Extra Large XL >73 grams

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Checking the freshness of the egg

So how do you determine the freshness of an egg? That is not very difficult. As an egg develops, an air chamber is created in the egg that gets larger as the egg gets older. An older egg will therefore float in a glass of water with some salt. A fresh egg sinks to the bottom immediately. Another trick is to move the raw egg back and forth along your ear. With a fresh egg you hear nothing, with an old egg the egg white is less firm and you hear the contents move.

What do the codes on the eggs mean?

Each egg must be traceable and qualified. That’s why there are all kinds of codes on the egg. Below you can see which codes these may be and what the letters and numbers mean.

All eggs in The Netherlands for ‘loose’ consumption are class A eggs. Class B eggs are used by the industry for application in cakes and pastries. Then comes the code 0 to 3 where 0 stands for an organic egg, 1 for free range egg, 2 for barn egg and 3 for eggs laid by hens in battery cages. Then country of origin NL for the Netherlands and BE for Belgium. Followed by the registration number of the producer. And sometimes the UHT, the best before date.

Egg cooking can also be done with Omega-3 eggs. Omega 3 fatty acids are a collection of unsaturated fatty acids of which the most important 3 are:

– ALA: Alpha-linolenic acid
– EPA: Eicosapentaenoic acid
– DHA: Docosahexaenoic acid

ALA is an essential unsaturated fatty acid. This means that this fatty acid cannot be produced by the body itself. You must therefore ingest it through the diet. This fatty acid occurs naturally in vegetable foods such as walnuts, soy, chia seed, rapeseed oil but especially flaxseed and linseed oil. Flaxseed oil in particular contains as much as 55 ALA per 100 grams of flaxseed oil.

In addition to ALA, the Omega 3 family of fatty acids includes EPA and DHA unsaturated fatty acids. The human body itself is only able to convert a limited amount of EPA and DHA from ALA. The rest of the required EPA and DHA (also called fish oil) must therefore come from our food. EPA and DHA are found in fish, shellfish and crustaceans but particularly in oily fish such as mackerel, herring, salmon, trout and sardines. Eggs also contain EPA and DHA but the amount varies considerably, depending on what feed the hens have been given.

Eggs from free-range pasture hens contain significantly more healthy Omega-3 fatty acids, including DHA but also vitamin E and CLA (an Omega-6 fatty acid). That’s because the chickens can hunt for grubs and insects. Their shells are really hard, not like the eggshells of factory eggs that you can crush with your fingers.

Their yolks are dark yellow-orange – rather than pale yellow – because they contain a lot of lutein, the same antioxidant that gives salmon, carrots and sweet potatoes their color.

And because of the food the chickens get from pastures and forests, their eggs also contain many more healthy omega-3 fats. In addition to allowing the chickens to roam in pastures and forests, the content of omega-3 fatty acids in eggs can also be greatly increased by feeding the chickens flaxseed-based plant ingredients. This converts the chicken, all natural, into eggs with extra omega-3.

Suppliers of omega-3 eggs claim that ‘their’ eggs contain up to 6 times more omega-3 than other eggs. Biodynamic poultry farmers ensure that 70% of the outdoor run is planted with trees and shrubs. Also in the context of offsetting Co2 emissions a good choice.

Cooked eggs and cholesterol

How dangerous is eating eggs and how many eggs can you eat healthily per day? An old misconception is that eating eggs raises blood cholesterol with a chance of damaging the heart and blood vessels. Studies in recent years show that eating eggs hardly raises blood cholesterol. For 70% of people, cholesterol levels are not raised at all. Cholesterol is also a necessary building block for many body cells and body processes but is mainly produced by the liver. If a lot of cholesterol is ingested, the liver automatically shifts back to producing cholesterol. You can therefore cook one egg a day and eat it.

Moreover, not all cholesterol is unhealthy. HDL cholesterol is very healthy and only the LDL cholesterol can have harmful effects. Not only is the total content of cholesterol decisive, but also the ratio of healthy HDL to LDL. Different stories circulate about cholesterol and diabetes. You can find more about this and the scientific research at nutritional value egg.

 

How many types of eggs?

Have you been craving a nice boiled egg? Then these days you have a choice of organic, hatchery, free-range, outdoor, Omega3 eggs, primal and hen eggs. As if roosters lay eggs any other way…. Even vegetarian eggs which of course may be called a contradiction in terms. As such, they do not come from chicken but are made from chickpea flour. For the vegans among us or those who suffer from egg allergy. More info on egg allergy.
Curious or just order eggs online? Then get started quickly and add a box of eggs to your shopping list.