With a lot of tinkering I figured out how to make the perfect hard boiled egg with a soft center ^_^ The soft center maintains the nutrients of the yoke. The yoke is healthiest raw! So this is the next best thing. Not to mention they're delicious! I very highly recommend buying organic free-range eggs...or better yet, fresh organic eggs from a trusted local farmer. (a recent news example of why I make this high recommendation- Undercover video shot by the animal rights group Mercy for Animals and provided to ABC News appears to show unsanitary conditions and repeated acts of animal cruelty at a major American egg farm.)
Ingredients
- as many eggs as desired
- cold water
- bowl of ice water
- pepper for seasoning (salt too if you desire)
Recipe
In a small pot, add your eggs and add cool water just enough to cover the eggs. Heat on high to bring to a boil. As soon as it starts boiling turn off the stove immediately and cover pot. Let stand for 4 minutes, then immediately scoop out eggs and gently put the eggs in the bowl of ice water. Let sit for a couple minutes. At this point you can them peal the eggs. The shell shouldn't give you any problem pealing off. If it does, try adding a little vinegar to the boiling water (I haven't needed to do this).
Another method of pealing it is to lightly tap both sides (top and bottom) of the egg on the counter to crack, then lightly (extremely lightly...especially if you are doing a soft centered egg) roll the egg in your palm on the counter. The peal should come off very easily at this point. Make sure your egg is thoroughly cooled before attempting this or it may fall apart with too much pressure.
Cut your egg in half and the center should be nice and creamy while the whites of the egg should be fully cooked and firm:) Enjoy with a sprinkle of your favorite seasonings. I love it with a sprinkle of pepper, Himalayan salt (ground fine), garlic powder and onion powder.
Bring water to a boil...then turn off burner and cover for 4 minutes
Give the eggs an ice bath immediately after the 4 minutes are up
Eggs should peal easily
Fully peal the egg and make sure all shell pieces are off...rinse if needed
The center should be nice and creamy...and all the whites should be fully cooked
Sprinkle with some pepper (and salt if you'd like) and enjoy!
Look for tomorrow's blog with an alternative version of boiling the egg...along with a dairy free deviled egg:)
A little more Info about Eggs
When I eat eggs primarily for health reasons, I actually eat them raw. I stir them up in a berry smoothie and no one could ever tell they are there! They don't give the smoothie any texture Or taste, in spite of what one may think, so it shouldn't be as off putting as it is to most people.
The reason I try get the yoke as uncooked as possible is that the process of cooking eggs destroy the very goodness that our bodies so desperately need as the nature of proteins and fats is altered when exposed to heat. When cooked, the egg protein changes its chemical shape; it is often this process that can be the cause of allergies. Generally when eating raw eggs, any incidence of egg allergy will disappear.
The sulphur amino acids help to keep you young, raw eggs also contain an abundance of other vital substances including protein, essential fatty acids along with niacin, riboflavin, biotin, choline, vitamins A, D and E, magnesium, potassium, phosphorous, manganese, iron, iodine, copper, zinc and sulphur. Egg yolks are one of the few foods that contain vitamin D. And before you toss the egg yolks, make note they are also a good source of carotenoids which help to protect against macular degeneration of the eye as well as choline which is important for brain health.
Poisoning from salmonella has been exaggerated in the past. A study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2002 indicated that only 2.3 million, of the 69 billion eggs produced annually, are contaminated with salmonella. In other words 0.003% or 1 in every 30,000 eggs. The bulk of these come from battery chicken eggs and chickens kept in unhealthy conditions - only sick chickens lay salmonella contaminated eggs. If only healthy chicken eggs (organic and free range ideally) are consumed, then far less than one in 30,000 eggs are contaminated. This is why I highly recommend buying eggs from organic sources, and free range.
Another concern is cholesterol, and here's something very interesting about that. There is no danger from the cholesterol build up since 2/3 of cholesterol in the body is produced by the liver. The amount of cholesterol consumed in the diet does not relate to the amount of cholesterol deposited. Many studies have shown that the cholesterol in eggs does not raise cholesterol level in the body. Furthermore, eggs contain Lecithin, a valuable nutrient that helps the body to process fats and cholesterol.
Here are the facts on Cholesterol!
Click on the blue numbers if you want references to the scientific literature
1 Cholesterol is not a deadly poison, but a substance vital to the cells of all mammals. There are no such things as good or bad cholesterol, but mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but may reflect an unhealthy condition, or it may be totally innocent. 2 A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high. 3 Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the ”prudent” diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few per cent. 4 There is no evidence that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promotes atherosclerosis or heart attacks. For instance, more than twenty studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten more fat of any kind than other people, and degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated with the diet. 5 The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs, but neither heart mortality or total mortality have been improved with drugs the effect of which is cholesterol-lowering only. On the contrary, these drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life. 6 The new cholesterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascular disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents, disturb the functions of the muscles, the heart and the brain and pregnant women taking statins may give birth to children with malformations more severe than those seen after thalidomide. 7 Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by the proponents of the diet-heart idea. 8 The reason why laymen, doctors and most scientists have been misled is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press. 9 The Benefits Of High Cholesterol
