The Perfect Soft-boiled Egg

While other kids begged for lunchables and candy, I nagged my mom to put a hard-boiled egg in my lunchbox. Packed in a Ziploc bag with a tablespoon of water and a generous sprinkle of salt, I’m shocked to this day that I wasn’t mocked at the lunch table.

As I got older, my passion for eggs grew with me. Breakfast is my favorite meal because it’s a perfect excuse to eat eggs in any of their wonderful forms. Omeletes, breakfast sandwiches, perfectly poached on avocado toast. The list goes on!

Soft boiled eggs, colloquially referred to as jammy eggs, always scared me. I never seemed to get the timing right and would end up with the dreaded undercooked egg. Instead, I would overcook them out of fear, and stick to my hard-boiled comfort zone.

It’s possible that my mother’s mental block with cooking has rubbed off on me. My mom has a habit of flitting from task to task, which sometimes meant she would start a meal with no intention of finishing it. The only thing she made consistently was a weekly batch of hard-boiled eggs, and even that was not without oversight.

I’m referring, of course, to the water burning incident of 2008, when my mother left a pot of water, intended for hard boiled eggs, boiling for so long all the water evaporated, and the pot was scorched beyond repair.

Soft boiled eggs require a precise stopwatch, and a laser sharp focus, thus they were not in my mother’s repertoire. Intent on enjoying eggs in every way possible, I resolved to break this family curse.

Below is my tried and tested recipe that takes the guesswork out of cooking eggs, and is guaranteed to leave you with a perfectly done, springy egg-white, cradling a runny yolk.

Ingredients

· 1 large egg, chilled

Instructions

1. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil over medium heat (keep an eye on it)

2. Place an egg directly from the fridge into the water. Replace the lid and let it boil for EXACTLY six minutes. (don’t wander away during this step)

3. Remove the egg from the pot using a slotted spoon and dunk into an ice water bath until cool

4. Peel and enjoy!