How to boil an egg

Plenty of people learn to cook in their first flat, with one pan and a box of eggs. A boiled egg is a sensible first dish. It teaches you to read the water and keep time. The steps below follow the student cookbook at the University of Warwick.

What you need

You need two eggs, a saucepan, water and a slotted spoon. The recipe uses medium eggs. You also need a way to time the eggs, and the stopwatch on a phone is fine.

Step by step

  1. Fill the saucepan with enough water to cover the eggs. Leave the eggs out for now. Bring the water to the boil on the hob.
  2. Lower the eggs gently into the boiling water with the slotted spoon.
  3. Turn the heat down slightly, to a rolling boil. Start the stopwatch.
  4. For soft-boiled eggs, lift them out at 4 minutes. For hard-boiled eggs, lift them out at 10 minutes. With large eggs, add one minute to either time.
  5. For hard-boiled eggs, drain the pan and fill it with cold water. Let the cold tap trickle over the eggs for two full minutes, so they stop cooking.
  6. Dry the eggs with kitchen roll. Tap each one gently on a chopping board, then roll it to crack the shell all over. Peel the pieces away.

Words recipes use

A rolling boil, in the Warwick recipe, means steady bubbles rather than splashing.

A gentle simmer is quieter. The British Egg Information Service describes it as small bubbles just breaking the surface.

A set white has turned firm. In the same service's poaching recipe, the whites are just firm enough to hold their shape.

Two more egg dishes

A fried egg uses a frying pan and a low heat. BBC Good Food's cooks crack the egg onto a saucer first, so no shell ends up in the pan. They melt butter in a frying pan without letting it brown and slide the egg in. With a lid on, they leave it for 3 minutes over a low heat. If the white has not set, they give it another 30 seconds and look again.

An omelette uses the same pan. The British Egg Information Service cracks the eggs into a bowl with a teaspoon of water and a pinch of salt and pepper. It whisks them with a fork until the white and yolk are fully mixed. The mixture goes into a hot, oiled pan for two minutes. As the egg sets, a spatula pushes it towards the middle. After another minute, the cook folds the omelette in half and slides it onto a plate. For two eggs, the service suggests a pan of about 22 cm.

Keeping eggs

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) answers the common questions about eggs at home. It says eggs are ideally stored in the fridge. Eggs are safe for a couple of days after the best before date if they are cooked well. Both the white and the yolk should then be cooked thoroughly.

Some people float an egg in water to test it. The FSA says that test shows how old an egg is, not whether it is safe.

Runny yolks

For pregnancy, nidirect, the Northern Ireland government's site, gives this advice. "You should cook all eggs thoroughly, unless they are British Lion hen eggs or hen eggs produced under the Laid in Britain scheme." The NHS says babies can have eggs from around 6 months, and its page explains which eggs suit them lightly cooked.

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