Cooking eggs soft-boiled

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Shadowhawk
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Cooking eggs soft-boiled

Post by Shadowhawk »

When rereading "Dreams Made Flesh", a set of short stories in the Black Jewels universe by Anne Bishop, I have read the following fragment
Marian shook her head. "How can she not be able to boil an egg? You don't even need Craft for it. All she did was put the eggs in the water." She blew out a breath. "How can you end up with eggs that have the whites fully cooked and the yolks still raw?"
And I am wondering: what is so strange about soft-boiled eggs, with yolk at least partially liquid? You only need to be carefull about timing.

Or perhaps I don't understand something implied in that quote...
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Re: Cooking eggs soft-boiled

Post by Spec8472 »

Shadowhawk wrote:When rereading "Dreams Made Flesh", a set of short stories in the Black Jewels universe by Anne Bishop, I have read the following fragment
Marian shook her head. "How can she not be able to boil an egg? You don't even need Craft for it. All she did was put the eggs in the water." She blew out a breath. "How can you end up with eggs that have the whites fully cooked and the yolks still raw?"
And I am wondering: what is so strange about soft-boiled eggs, with yolk at least partially liquid? You only need to be carefull about timing.

Or perhaps I don't understand something implied in that quote...
Soft/hard boiled is a personal preference -- the way I read the quote is that Marian didn't like soft boiled eggs (or had never heard of them).
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Shadowhawk
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Re: Cooking eggs soft-boiled

Post by Shadowhawk »

Spec8472 wrote:Soft/hard boiled is a personal preference -- the way I read the quote is that Marian didn't like soft boiled eggs (or had never heard of them).
Well, the quote says yolks still raw, but even with soft-boiled eggs yolk is at least partially changed (if whites are fully cooked); yolk is liquid but not raw... Hmmm... :?
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Re: Cooking eggs soft-boiled

Post by Spec8472 »

Ah, the beauty of the english language is that it can be parsed in so many different ways if the speaker/writer isn't very precise in their meaning.

"How can you end up with eggs that have the whites fully cooked and the yolks still raw?"

is like other sentences i've seen/heard in that the speaker intended it to be more like:

"How could you incorrectly boil eggs so that the whites were fully cooked, but the eggs still raw/runny?"
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Re: Cooking eggs soft-boiled

Post by Mad Monk »

It is possible to cook the eggs so that the white is cooked, but the yolk is still mainly raw - the main way is to use a very hot liquid (or even sand). The yolks cook by the heat transfer through the white, so if you use something like oil, which has a boiling point higher than 100 Centigrade (cooking oil boils at about 300 C), you might be able to do it.

Warning - do not try this at home - the eggs may expolde.
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Re: Cooking eggs soft-boiled

Post by Phantom »

Mad Monk wrote:It is possible to cook the eggs so that the white is cooked, but the yolk is still mainly raw - the main way is to use a very hot liquid (or even sand). The yolks cook by the heat transfer through the white, so if you use something like oil, which has a boiling point higher than 100 Centigrade (cooking oil boils at about 300 C), you might be able to do it.

Warning - do not try this at home - the eggs may expolde.

You mean like that time Fifer tried to dry his Hamster off in the Microwave ?



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Re: Cooking eggs soft-boiled

Post by Gabriel »

I think that it can happen if the eggs had just left the fridge, the center is cooked slower. Especially if the eggs were in there for quite awhile.
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