Heston Blumenthal's Soft Boiled Eggs

DH is fascinated by Heston Blumenthal's videos on Youtube and therefore decided to boil my egg for Sunday's breakfast Heston-style. When I opened the egg, it was hard boiled.

I think several things can go wrong. One of the reasons why I usually put my egg in boiling/simmering water instead of starting in cold water is that if you start with cold water, you will also have to factor how good your stove is, ie. how quickly you are able to raise the temperature from, say, 10°C to 100°C. I'm sure the old electrical stove in my student flat was way slower than Mr Blumenthal's professional one, which means that my eggs would stay longer in hot water than his. Also, judging from the comments on Youtube, several users weren't sure when exactly they had to remove the pan - when the water started to simmer? Once it had reached a full rolling boil?

He does have a point, though, in that boiling water may produce a rubbery egg white. My theory is that you can produce safer results if you place your egg in very softly simmering water - and keep it there for the time needed (4 minutes in my case). Unfortunately, though, we ran out of eggs to prove it. I might try next weekend.

Eggs-periment, take 2: We made Broad Beans with Raw Ham, Soft Boiled Eggs and Sauce Bearnaise - partly because it's empty-the freezer-week and we needed to get rid of a few broad beans, but partly also because it gave me a chance to test my theories.

DH likes hard boiled eggs, so for him I made what he had done before: put the cold eggs in cold water, bring to a boil, then set aside for 6 minutes. I must admit that this way of cooking them had one great advantage: peeling them was as easy as pie.

I like my eggs runny, so I did two things: I placed one egg straight from the fridge in not even properly simmering water for 5 minutes and a bit - perfectly runny egg yolk, but the egg white could have been softer. The other egg I cooked according to Blumenthal's instructions, though setting the egg aside as soon as the water started to simmer, and then waiting only 5 minutes. That egg was definitely undercooked. To be continued...

Eggs-periment, take 3: I cooked my eggs Heston-style, and let them rest for 6 resp. 7 minutes. Both were definitely overcooked. However, I also noticed that even 'simmering' is a really broad definition. Look at this image. I took my smallest pan (with a fitting cover) and heated the water on the gas stove as fast as possible. And yet I watched the water stay in the 'quiver'-phase (60-75°C/140-170°F) for at least four minutes, until I finally gave in and turned off the heat. The water hadn't even reached what the guys at Serious Eats call the 'sub-simmer'-phase (75-90°C/170-195°F) - keep in mind that Heston Blumenthal talks about 'bring to a boil', which equates to 100°C/212°F. And yet the eggs were overcooked. So if his theory that 'the residual heat does all the work' is true, then apparently the egg and the water take much longer in my kitchen to heat up, and to cool off afterwards than in his kitchen. Given that there are still quite a few other variables we haven't even discussed yet (such as the size of pan/amount of water and the temperature in my kitchen), how can I ever find out the perfect timing for my soft-boiled egg?

Oh, and also: I cooked two hard-boiled eggs for DH in the same pan, I just let them sit a few minutes longer. This time they weren't easy to peel at all, so that must have a different reason than I thought it would.

While writing this review I found an article on Serious Eats how to cook the perfect boiled egg - I'll try that next, hopefully tonight.