Stop Overcooking Your Eggs!

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome back to the Salt Sear Savor newsletter. I hope your holidays were egg-ceptional. Mine were quite egg-cellent. Sorry…I know you all are probably rolling your eyes at me. But come on, what were you egg-pecting!?! Feel free to egg-nore me…

You guessed it. Today we are talking about cooking eggs.

Wet when undercooked. Rubbery when overcooked. Eggs are quite the goldilocks. They are a challenge to cook just right.

The trick to cooking your eggs through without overcooking them is to finish them off using gentle heat. Gentle heat provides more margin for error and gives you more tender eggs.

So how do we cook with gentle heat? Cook off heat.

Cooking Eggs Off Heat

Eggs are the perfect food to show off the power of cooking off the heat. It’s simple. Cook your eggs like you would normally. And then a couple of minutes before the eggs are done, you remove them from the direct heat.

The carryover cooking is more gentle when it comes from the still-hot pan and still-hot eggs. It will finish off your eggs and keep them warm until you’re ready to serve.  

You have to be careful of carryover cooking. The hot exterior of the food continues to cook the interior as your food sits. Whether a piece of meat or a pot of beans, they can be perfectly cooked when you take them off the heat. But within 10 minutes of sitting there, they could end up overcooked.

Examples of Cooking Eggs

Scrambled Eggs: You can cook your scrambled eggs on high heat first to get large curdles as the cold eggs hit the hot pan. Then as the eggs are almost solidified but still wet, pull them off the heat. Your scrambled eggs will cook through to a creamy consistency without turning out dry and tough.

Omelets: Cook your omelet until it is just starting to set but isn’t completely cooked on top. Then add your toppings, cover the pan with a lid, and take it off heat to use steam to gently cook the top without overcooking the bottom.

Frittatas or Quiches: If the eggs are still slightly jiggly but not set when you shake the pan, take them out of the oven. As the frittata or quiche sits, it will continue to cook and set. A good recipe should account for this but not all do so keep carryover cooking in mind so your eggs don’t end up overcooked.

Poached Eggs: There’s one thing I’ll recommend no matter how you poach your eggs. Once you add the eggs to the water, cover the pot and take it off the heat. Rapidly boiling water doesn’t cook as evenly and can cause your eggs to break up. When they’re off the heat in near-boiling water, the eggs still only take about 4 to 5 minutes to cook depending on how you like them. Plus, there’s a larger window when you can take them out of the pot without worrying about overcooking them.

Where I learned this: America’s Test Kitchen’s Cooking School Cookbook