Basic Egg Dishes

The simplest egg preparations — boiled, poached, fried, scrambled — are exercises in temperature control. Each dish exploits the staged coagulation of egg proteins at different temperatures, and the quality difference between a perfectly cooked egg and an overcooked one is always a matter of just a few degrees.

Boiled eggs

“Boiled” eggs should never actually boil. A rolling boil is violent enough to crack shells, and the sustained high temperature overcoagulates the proteins. A gentle simmer — 180–190°F/82–87°C — is the correct cooking medium.