I just have a few tips for you when cooking eggs, I hope they are useful.
Hard or Soft Boiled Eggs
When boiling an egg, first put it into cold water, then raise the temperature of the water
to boiling. If you put the egg straight into boiling water, the shell may well crack.
Secondly, as an additional safeguard against cracking, stick a pin in the round end.
This lets the air out instead of bursting the shell.
Once cooked, a hard boiled egg should be put under cold running water straight away.
It will stop the yolk going gray.
Additionally, running the egg under cold water allows you to shell it while it is still hot.
The cold water stops the hot shell burning your fingers.
If you are chopping the hard boiled egg into bits, it is easier to cut it without dragging
if you wet your knife first.
Poached Eggs
When poaching eggs, if you put ½ a teaspoon of vinegar in the hot water, it helps the
egg to go solid a bit more quickly than without.
If you don't have a proper poaching pan, you can use a normal saucepan. After putting
the vinegar in the boiling water, stir the water around and around in a circle. While it is still
swirling, gently place the egg in the middle of the pan using a ladle or large spoon. In a few
seconds it has solidified enough to remove the spoon. This takes a little practice but it is
very satisfying when it works.
Fried Eggs
When frying eggs, to give them a regular shape and to keep them apart from each other,
put pastry or biscuit cutters into the frying pan and put an egg in each one. Remember to
use metal ones not plastic! This is also nice for making unusual shapes but it can be
difficult to extract the egg from some shapes so be careful.
Other Things
To separate yolks from the whites, either use your hand by passing the yolk from hand
to hand while letting the egg white drip through your fingers into a container or by cracking
the egg into a bowl or onto a plate and covering up the yolk with an egg cup. You can then
tip the egg white into your waiting container.
Finally, at Easter time, if you want to decorate some eggs for the children, hard boil
some eggs with different things in the water to color them. For example onion skins will
turn the eggs an orange color, beetroot will turn them a reddish color and of course food
coloring will also do the same job. The whiter the egg shell, the better the color will be.
With any of the above cooking suggestions, please be careful with the boiling water and/or
hot fat so as not to burn yourself and please enjoy your eggs.
