Recipe How to boil an egg in the microwave

Morning Glory

Morning Glory

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Thanks to @Elawin who discovered this link:Back to Basics: How to boil an egg in the microwave oven from the Microwave Technologies Association

I was skeptical but thought I'd try it out. I was convinced it was impossible to boil eggs in a microwave! How wrong can I be? This is so easy and fast that from now on its the way I will boil eggs. I cooked for 4 mins which produced a slightly underdone egg so I tried again. 4 mins 15 seconds produced a perfect soft boiled egg. The egg I used was large and came straight from the fridge so that may have affected cooking times.

From now on, this is how I will be cooking boiled eggs. You can keep the piece of foil to re-use.

Method
  1. Boil water in a kettle.
  2. Wrap the egg (in its shell) in foil.
  3. Place in a microwaveable bowl or mug and pour boiling water over until submerged.
  4. Microwave for approx. 4 mins 15 seconds for a soft boiled egg. For a hard boiled egg cook for 6 mins.
  5. Place the bowl/mug in the sink and run cold water into it.
  6. Remove egg, unwrap and place in eggcup!

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I'd just as soon do it in the saucepan as go through all of that personally. Not a whole lot of time or energy saving.
 
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medtran49 said:
I'd just as soon do it in the saucepan as go through all of that personally
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This is much simpler that it sounds. Its super easy! Nothing really to 'go through'. I probably made it sound or look complicated! And I suspect the method has much lower use of energy.

Simplified instructions:
  • Wrap egg in foil, place in mug and pour over boiling water. Microwave for 4 mins or so.
 
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Don't know about that. The way I do it just involves bringing water to boil. I use a slightly modified Julia Child way. Just cover eggs with water. Place on burner on high in covered pan, bring to boil, remove from burner and let stand for 10-12 minutes for hard boiled eggs. I don't normally make soft boiled eggs but I think it was 4-5 minutes. It works every time once you get the timing down to your specifications and you never get the green ring or the sulfur smell.
 
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medtran49 said:
Don't know about that. The way I do it just involves bringing water to boil. I use a slightly modified Julia Child way. Just cover eggs with water. Place on burner on high in covered pan, bring to boil, remove from burner and let stand for 10-12 minutes for hard boiled eggs. I don't normally make soft boiled eggs but I think it was 4-5 minutes. It works every time once you get the timing down to your specifications and you never get the green ring or the sulfur smell.
Click to expand...

Its a bit quicker to use the microwave compared to your method. But also it saves using a saucepan. Maybe its not a problem where you are but here the water is very hard and leaves deposits on the saucepan so you then need to scour the saucepan! The deposits don't seem to adhere to mugs. I just empty the mug and leave it to dry - so no washing up.

The microwave method could be useful for students with limited cooking facilities I suppose.
 
It' s not necessarily a better mousetrap; just a different way about it.

Also, most Americans don't necessarily have a kettle of hot water at the ready, hence the rise of the machines (coffee machines). Boiling water is a distinctive step. I'm not sure if there's a cultural perception thing there.

Secondly, if college kids can boil water, they can boil an egg without extra steps such as obtaining foil.

However, if I can be more precise with timing as far as making various degrees of soft to hard boiled yolks, I must give it a try.
 
buckytom said:
most Americans don't necessarily have a kettle of hot water at the ready, hence the rise of the machines (coffee machines). Boiling water is a distinctive step. I'm not sure if there's a cultural perception thing there.
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:eek:. New thread! See here.
 
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Just so I understand this: you're intentionally putting foil in the microwave? I've accidentally done that, and the sparks from the light show were spectacular after only a few seconds. I'd be surprised if I could keep going for 3 minutes without resetting the circuit breaker, or at least charring the inside of the microwave.
 
The Late Night Gourmet said:
Just so I understand this: you're intentionally putting foil in the microwave? I've accidentally done that, and the sparks from the light show were spectacular after only a few seconds. I'd be surprised if I could keep going for 3 minutes without resetting the circuit breaker, or at least charring the inside of the microwave.
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Because its under water it doesn't do that I think. At any rate I'm now boiling eggs every day using this technique and it works fine (no sparks or charring) @SatNavSaysStraightOn explains the science behind this elsewhere - I will try to find a link. Here we go - see here.
 
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Thought I'd resurrect this thread since I tried this today.

This wasn't a roaring success for me. First, I read the instructions in the original link, and decided I could do two eggs simultaneously in a bowl. That proved troublesome, as the eggs insisted on floating, exposing the foil.
That left me to do one egg at a time in a mug, where strangely, neither egg floated at all.

Wrapped in foil, covered in boiling water, 4 minutes 15 seconds in the microwave. At about the two minute point, that's when the water boiled over, though I'd left a good inch-and-a-half room at the top of the mug.

The end result was very mixed. The yolk was just starting to cook, there are a couple of flecks of hard-cooked yolk visible, but not much, so that was ok.

Further into the egg, though, showed that the white at the opposite end wasn't cooked at all. It was just going opaque and still quite soupy.

So it left me with the same problem I usually encounter; either an overcooked yolk or an undercooked white, and this time, I got some of each.

I may play around with this some more, but not sure what else there is to do with this method. Zapping it for additional time might get the white more to my liking, but will continue to cook the yolk, I'm afraid.

Maybe I'm looking for some eggy nirvana that doesn't exist: 100% cooked white and 100% liquid yolk. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Egg, Bacon, Toast

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Next time we need eggs cooked, I'm going to use the sous vide. We were watching 1 of the traveling food shows and the guys in the restaurant used the sous vide to do their eggs at 60 C or 140 F. White was done, but yolk was still liquidy no matter how long they kept it supposedly.
 
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medtran49 said:
Next time we need eggs cooked, I'm going to use the sous vide. We were watching 1 of the traveling food shows and the guys in the restaurant used the sous vide to do their eggs at 60 F. White was done, but yolk was still liquidy no matter how long they kept it supposedly.
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I may need to buy a sous vide just for eggs! :)
 
TastyReuben said:
Maybe I'm looking for some eggy nirvana that doesn't exist: 100% cooked white and 100% liquid yolk. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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I don't know - were your eggs fridge cold or room temperature?

The mug is the thing that works and its what I do. I get perfect results all the time now. This one I made a few days ago has perfect white and runny yolk as I think you can more or less see. Are you putting the mug in the middle or at the edge of the turntable?

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