5 Tips For Perfect Eggs

Eggs are one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast, especially scrambled.  (add some diced ham and maybe some French Toast---perfect breakfast!!)  They are an excellent source of protein and other nutrients, a good source of fat (including omega-3’s if you pick the right type of egg).  They are good for not only breakfast, but lunch and dinner too.  And, for all of the nutrients you get, they are not expensive.  Here are 5 tricks I came across to make the most of this fabulous food.

1) How to know if they’re spoiled. Place your eggs in a bowl of cold water. If they sink, they’re good. If they float, they’ve gone bad. If they start to float but keep one end on the bottom, they’re good but not for long.

2) How to boil eggs to desired doneness. Place eggs in a pot or pan and fill with water until it reaches midway up the eggs. Remove the eggs and set aside. Bring the water to a boil at medium/medium-high heat (4 on a scale of 6). Return the eggs to the now-boiling water and cover the pot. For soft-boiled, remove eggs after 6 minutes 30 seconds. For medium-boiled, remove eggs after 8 minutes. For hard-boiled, remove after 10-15 minutes. After removing eggs, place under cold running water for at least 30 seconds.

3) How to scramble eggs. There are two acceptable ways. The first one involves lots of whisking, lots of butter, and creme fraiche. Scrambled eggs this way come out soft and slightly wet. Another method is to heat butter (or olive oil) on a stainless steel pan over medium high heat, crack whole eggs into it, and let them cook a bit – as if you were doing sunny side up eggs. Right when the bottom begins to set, go to work with your spatula, chopping and cutting and breaking up the eggs. Scrambling, in other words. Take the eggs off before they fully cook.

4) How to separate the white from the yolk. If you’re short on time, you don’t have to mess around with passing the egg between shell halves (the eggs I buy have shells with strong membranes that make symmetrical halves difficult to achieve). Instead, just crack the egg into your open hand and let the white slip through your fingers. To get that the chalazae off (the stringy thing that attaches the yolk to the shell), pinch it between two fingers. Easy.

5) How to get broken shells out of a cracked egg. We’ve all spent fruitless hours chasing the wily little devils around the pan with our fingers. It’s like trying to look at an eye floater head on: completely impossible. If you just use a jagged piece of egg shell itself, you can cut right through the white and nab the errant fragment. Like attracts like.

Source: Mark’s Daily Apple