Today I was very bored... and very hungry. I did the required stare into the fridge and then left after seeing nothing to eat in the full fridge. Then I got an idea. Not just any idea, an idea so brilliant that its actually pretty underwhelming. There were eggs in the fridge, and a lot of them. Now my background as far as eggs go is that I know how to make them scrambled.
That is the only way that I know how to make my eggs, and it is the only way I have made them in the past. I am well aware of other types of eggs, but I never connected names with what they actually were or learned to make them. Today however I was just hungry enough and just bored enough to decide to experiment with eggs and discover how to cook the ultimate egg. The following is the fruits of my labor.
Trial 1: First Attempt at a Soft-boiled Egg
Procedure:
On this first try I filled a small pot with water and put it on the stove. I put one egg in the water and heated it at a lower setting for five minutes. I put no lid on the pot. The water did not boil but it did get hot. After five minutes I take the egg out of the water, put it on my plate, and crack it open. The egg is essentially raw still. I am very hungry. I eat the raw egg. The raw egg is not as disgusting as one would think. It was actually kind of good. Now I just have to hope that I don't get infected with some raw egg alien bacteria.
Conclusion:
Raw eggs aren't as nasty as everyone thinks they are. They actually don't taste half bad. To draw on outside experience, when I was in Asia I used a raw egg as a topping on noodles and beef (the only other time I've eaten a raw egg). So my conclusion of the raw egg is that it is pretty good to use as a topping.
Trial 2: Second Attempt at a Soft-boiled Egg
Procedure:
On this try I decided I needed more heat. So this time I made the heat hotter and put the lid on the pot. I set a timer for five minutes again. At around four minutes the pot started boiling over. I took the lid off the pot for the remaining minute. After the fifth minute I took the egg out and crossed my fingers that it would not be raw and at the same time not be hard boiled. I cracked the egg and was happily greeted by a perfect soft boiled egg. Then I failed in epic proportions at peeling the egg, getting fragments of shell in my soft boiled egg. It still tasted damn good.
Conclusion:
This is the correct way to make a good soft boiled egg. If you want a soft boiled egg, do as Trial 2 on this article.
Trial 3: First Attempt at an Egg Cooked out of the Shell
Procedure:
After my little issue with failing at peeling the shell off, I decided that I should maybe try to take the shell out of the equation. So I put the pot aside and grabbed a frying pan. I set the pan on the stove, cracked the egg, and let it out in the pan. I set the stove on a medium heat and waited for the egg to look good. The white of the egg became solidified while the yolk remained liquid in its little oval. Once the edges of the white started turning brown I decided that I might have had it on for a little too long. I pulled it off the stove and transferred the egg from the pan to my plate with a spatula. Upon trying it the majority of it tasted good, but there were some burnt parts. Overall it was pretty good though.
Conclusion:
I probably should have taken the egg off of the stove a little earlier to avoid the burnt parts. Overall the egg tasted good and the burnt parts weren't even so bad. Not as good as the soft boiled egg though.
Trial 4: Second Attempt at an Egg Cooked out of the Shell
Procedure:
This time I decided to attempt to create the same egg, but without the burnt parts. I decided that the best way to do this would be to flip the egg like a pancake with a spatula. Hey, it works for pancakes, why not eggs? So I cracked open the egg and dropped it in the pan. The whites solidified very quickly and once the white had solidified a bit but the center yolk was still liquid I flipped it with the spatula. The result was catastrophic. The egg totally fell apart when I tried to flip it and then I cooked the pieces a bit like I cook scrambled eggs. The result was scrambled eggs with the yolk still partially wet. It was also pretty tasty.
Conclusion:
Do not flip your egg over. It is not a pancake. However I am inclined to wonder if I had waited for it to solidify more if it would have been successfully flipped. Though at this point I have concluded that the best way to avoid the burnt parts would be to cook it for less time.
Trial 5: The point at which my stomach was full and cooking eggs no longer amused me
Maybe I will conduct another egg experiment one day when I am bored and hungry again and follow this up with more egg research.
Experiment Conclusion:
In this testing I succeeded in creating one perfect egg. The soft boiled egg on trial 2 came out exactly as desired. The official conclusion of this experiment is that all eggs taste pretty much the same. Raw, soft boiled, and whatever the other thing I made was, they all tasted just about exactly the same on all of the trials. A secondary conclusion is that eggs should always be eaten with pepper... it makes them more tasty.
