Pefect Boiled Eggs

As expected, the most difficult part was to get the water exactly on temperature, and then to keep it that way until the egg was boiled. I managed to keep it between 80° and 85°C (175 and 185°F) - it should have been 82°C (180°F). Not too bad, you would think. However, the egg was still undercooked.

Yet, it's still too early to call - I tried Heston Blumenthal's recipe at least three times before giving up. I'm still considering what went wrong - was it too short? The water too cold? I noticed that I wasn't able to see any bubbles in the water - it should have looked like the upper right of these images. Surely this isn't due to altitude, right? For heaven's sake, I'm in Amsterdam and not in Bogotá!

Take 2: Of course, my day started with a soft boiled egg. One of the commenters (on 23 April 2011) mentions steaming an egg. It seemed simple enough, so I gave it a try - obviously this had nothing to do with the method described in Serious Eats. Unfortunately, my egg was overcooked, the egg white was rubbery and even the egg yolk had begun to set. I tried another one, reverting back to the Serious Eats method, adding one minute extra. It was nearly perfect, the egg white was just a bit undercooked. I have to add, though, that I had forgotten to put the eggs back into the fridge, so in reality you might have to add a few seconds to get this effect. 8 minutes then? And there were tiny bubbles this time, I believe it was just too dark to see (the pan had blue enamel on the inside).