How Not To Boil An Egg (Microwave Egg Boilers)

Member Name: wigglylittleworm

Product:	Microwave Egg Boilers
Date:	29/10/08 (156 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap, easy

Disadvantages: Mixed results

Does anyone remember the fuss everyone made when Delia wrote a book telling us how to boil an egg? I am one person who needs that advice. I will happily bake cakes or cook casseroles but am unable to make a perfect soft boiled egg. There are so many variables involved in the process, is the water cold or boiling to start with, is the egg refrigerated or room temperature and what size is the egg. I'm not a totally lost cause however, I can make a hard boiled egg but getting the yolk nice and soft without the white being overly runny is beyond me.

I saw the microwave egg boiler and decided to give it a try. At just £1 I wouldn't lose much if it didn't work. It's a simple device, the bottom made out of yellow plastic and the top from clear plastic and shaped like a large egg with a flat bottom.

It's easy to use, just crack your egg into the bottom, pierce the egg and stick it in the microwave for a minute.

I've had mixed results with this. I've needed to experiment with the timing a bit, a minute is too long for small eggs and not enough for the jumbo eggs I get from the Co-Op. I've found with a small egg then I can get a good result with the egg fairly evenly cooked but with the large eggs then it is impossible to have a soft boiled egg as the white is still too runny. It didn't like my double yolk egg either and the only way to cook it was to blast it till it was hard.

You can use the boiler as an egg cup too but I've found it is too big to use easily and prefer to tip my egg onto some toast.

Cleaning should be easy, it is just plastic afterall but egg white has the tendency to weld itself to the holes in the top half. One day I even had an egg explosion in my microwave and when I took the top off to look noticed some egg white that had formed an invisible film over the holes so no steam could escape.

Overall it's ok, the results are not as nice as a normal boiled egg but they are passable if you use a small egg. I've found I can get better results by poaching my egg in a mug in the microwave, spreading the surface of the egg over a larger area makes it cook more evenly.

Any tips to help me get the perfect soft boiled egg in a pan will be appreciated!

Summary: Please tell me how to make the perfect boiled egg!