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If we boil an egg which already has a crack on its shell before boiling, it will break and spread into the water. In many cases if we put an egg into hot water it will crack also. So, is there any safe method to boil an egg like that, or should it be fried or cooked in another way?

vasin1987
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user29521
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    I would like to remind everybody that this question is on methods for boiling known-cracked eggs without making a mess. If you have methods for detecting cracks, please post at https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/22535. If you have methods for reducing the chance that a whole egg will crack during boiling, please post at https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/909. For theoretical explanations why an egg cracks during boiling, post at https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/63296. – rumtscho Nov 26 '18 at 15:52
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    Is "safe" really the word you mean? I thought this question would be about food safety, but it seems to be more about cooking an egg without making a mess. – nasch Nov 26 '18 at 18:31
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    This depends on how much of a crack you're talking about. I deliberately put small cracks in my eggs before hard boiling to make them easier to peel. – barbecue Nov 26 '18 at 18:54

9 Answers9

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If an egg is already cracked then it will almost certainly split open when boiled, there's no way to avoid it, it would be best to cook them using another method. Be aware that once eggs are cracked they no longer have protection against microbes, if you don't know how long they have been cracked it may be best to throw them away.

rumtscho
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GdD
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23

I use Egglettes™ to boil my eggs. You simply crack the egg/s into a silicone cup and place it/them into boiling water. Without wishing to seem like a crappy infomercial (see below), I find it a heck of a lot easier to crack an egg into a cup than I find it to peel eggshells off of a soft-boiled egg.

Obviously it makes no difference if the egg has already sustained a recent crack (from being dropped onto the surface, for example) since you're removing the shell prior to cooking.

enter image description here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxVT2Q6Vt_c

For the avoidance of doubt, I am in no way affiliated to Egglettes other than being a customer

David Richerby
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Richard
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  • Wow, you'd be able to poach the egg too with this method. Just add a bit of water/vinegar in? Pretty cool – insidesin Nov 27 '18 at 04:32
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    Yup. And scrambled by topping up with milk and swirling them with a chopstick for ten seconds – Richard Nov 27 '18 at 07:13
  • Ordering some now then I guess :P – insidesin Nov 27 '18 at 07:35
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    Could you edit a clarification/disclaimer into your answer as to whether you are affiliated in any way with this tool? It's probably not really an issue, but this network has had issues with people advertising products without properly sharing affiliation, which is spam according to our rules. It's fine to specifically mention a product you have a stake in, but you need to be clear about affiliation. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260638/what-is-the-exact-definition-of-spam-for-stack-overflow has more information on our spam rules. – Nzall Nov 27 '18 at 09:52
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    @Nzall - I am in no way affiliated with this product. Also, people don't generally refer to their own adverts as crappy if they work for the company – Richard Nov 27 '18 at 10:19
  • and if you don't have acces to one of these a bit of clingfilm (the heat-resistant kind) works too. – Borgh Nov 27 '18 at 11:08
  • @Borgh - Yes, if you drape the clingfilm loosely over a cup you can crack the egg onto it. It falls into the cup and you can then tie off the top to make a pouch. The only problem is that if the film touches the sides of the pan it can melt and ruin the egg – Richard Nov 27 '18 at 11:12
  • @Richard I assumed you weren't affiliated, but I wanted to be sure. Like any site with community-created content, the Stack Exchange network frequently is the target of spam advertisement campaigns that tend to get increasingly more inventive with the passage of time. Your post has some similarities with spam posts in general: the first question of a new contributor, focusing on a specific product name and brand rather than a general product category, linking directly to an Amazon product page,... Again, nothing personal, just a formality. – Nzall Nov 27 '18 at 11:53
  • funnily enough the plastic used to make these is identical to the plastic used in Duct Tape! (Duct Tape adhesive has more crap in it, of course.) – Fattie Nov 27 '18 at 16:35
  • there seems to be an astounding Food! Safety! issue arisen here. You can't use cling film in any way where you could possibly end up ingesting some, BTW. – Fattie Nov 27 '18 at 16:36
  • @Nzall, purely since we're doing a "For what it's worth": the post did not (to my eyes) come off even slightly as spam, even the subtlest spam. Thanks for the cool answer, Richard. – Fattie Nov 27 '18 at 16:39
  • Happy customers are by far the best advertisement. :-) Smart answer, too. – T.J. Crowder Nov 27 '18 at 18:03
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Adding salt in the water helps as well. There are multiple theories on why this works.

  • Osmosis direction
  • The egg white will become solid when getting in contact with the salt water and basically it will close the crack again.
  • Boiling point difference
StefanJanssen
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    It's hard to believe that the sort of quantities of salt one uses in cooking would make any significant chemical change. This sounds a lot like people claiming that you put salt in the water when you boil food because it means the water boils hotter so the food cooks faster -- in fact, the change in boiling point is of the order of tenths of a degree, so makes essentially no difference. – David Richerby Nov 26 '18 at 15:56
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    In my experience, this is exactly the correct answer. It doesn't matter if it's because of chemical changes, boiling point difference or osmosis direction or whatever, as long as it works. –  Nov 26 '18 at 16:14
  • My personal experience is also more salt = less cracking. I admit, I use a **lot** of salt when I know my eggs are cracky batch. Not *quantities of salt one uses* normally. I don't pretend to know or understand why it works. – Mołot Nov 27 '18 at 09:13
  • @Mołot OK, but this egg is already cracked. – David Richerby Nov 27 '18 at 11:25
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    The answer has been edited since my first comment so, in more detail: 1. Increased salt in the water would cause a tiny fraction more water to leave the egg; what difference would that make? 2. The egg white will already become solid when it hits the boiling water -- egg white hardens at around 80C (176F) and the boiling water is already much hotter than that. 3. As I've already said, the increase in boiling point from salting the water is negligible: even if you add 60g (2oz) of salt per litre (quart) of water, the boiling point will only go up by about 0.5C (1F). – David Richerby Nov 27 '18 at 18:37
  • Salt supposedly makes them easier to peel as well. I always add salt and I've never had this problem, +1 – Mazura Nov 28 '18 at 04:23
  • @DavidRicherby for hairline cracks, it reduced the risk of white flowing out. I was just poured salt directly on the crack with egg already in water, so it was also an mechanical barrier (too much salt to dissolve rapidly). – Mołot Nov 28 '18 at 13:23
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You can choose to poach the egg.

The egg is cracked into a cup or bowl of any size, and then gently slid into a pan of water at approximately 75 Celsius (167 °F) and cooked until the egg white has mostly solidified, but the yolk remains soft. The "perfect" poached egg has a runny yolk, with a hardening crust and no raw white remaining.

I don't have any experience with this but I would imagine you could cook it until the yolk hardens along with the whites.

MonkeyZeus
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  • To be clear, one of the key differences is water temperature--the water should be hot but not boiling--this helps keep the egg together (or rather, boiling water makes the egg not stay together).. – user3067860 Nov 26 '18 at 18:46
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    @user3067860 Yep, I think the "75 Celcius" covers that though. At any rate, my answer addresses the "or should it be fried or ***cooked*** in another way" segment of the question. – MonkeyZeus Nov 26 '18 at 18:49
  • I just never use a thermometer for cooking eggs, I go by "boiling", "simmering", etc. No idea how hot 75 C is except it's between 74 C and 76 C. – user3067860 Nov 26 '18 at 18:59
  • @user3067860 Thanks again. That too sounds like an option so feel free to post your own experience with non-poaching cooking techniques. – MonkeyZeus Nov 26 '18 at 19:26
  • @MonkeyZeus I don't think you're answering the question here. The asker is aware that there are other ways of cooking eggs and isn't asking for suggestions of them. The question is (paraphrasing) "Can I hard boil it or am I going to have to do something else?" not "What's the best way of cooking an egg whose shell is cracked?" So the answer is either "Yes, you can hard boil it using technique XYZ" or "No, boiling it won't work so you'll have to do something else." – David Richerby Nov 27 '18 at 11:24
  • @DavidRicherby If my answer does not provide a potential option to solve OP's needs then I would hope that they leave a comment. To me, the question reads as a free-for-all as in "How can I cook a cracked egg and get a result closest to that of hard boiling?" – MonkeyZeus Nov 27 '18 at 12:59
  • @user3067860 Defending the answer, I think it's useful to give a precise temperature (ideally with error bounds) even if it's not necessary to use a thermometer. For example I'm pretty sure I can tell the difference between 40, 60, 75 and 95 degree Celsius by (carefully, lightly if necessary) touching the pot with my hands (even though I usually use a cooker with built-in thermometer and don't need it). – Nobody Nov 27 '18 at 20:31
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You can boil cracked egg safely just use 2 table spoons of white vinegar. Put White vinegar in boiling water and then gently put the egg in the water and let it boil. Egg will not come out of its shell. You can also make egg poach.Click here to understand about egg poach

user227201
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Believe it or not, you can put some Duct Tape (like gaffer tape - heavy tape) over the crack, and away you go.

(I'm not sure why anyone would bother with this - boiled eggs which have some white "poking out" are fine - but there you have it.)

Fattie
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    Is duct tape food safe though? – wjandrea Nov 26 '18 at 18:13
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    @wjandrea It's safe to bet is not. This advice is only useful for people cooking for show. But there are people who needs perfectly boiled eggs for photos etc, so maybe someone will benefit from this answer. – Mołot Nov 27 '18 at 09:18
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    The duct tape will leach who-knows-what into the water and the egg. Unless you have information to the contrary, you should assume that duct tape is not food-safe, and boiled duct tape doubly so. – David Richerby Nov 27 '18 at 11:29
  • Although duct tape is indeed certainly not food safe, I personally would risk it. Decent duct tape isn't water soluble (though I'm less sure about _boiling water soluble_). I'm actually pretty sure I've had duct tape in contact with foodstuff I later ate, and no ill effects. And anyways eggs generally don't absorb much of whatever is in the water. But yeah, I'd rather not recommend this for anybody else. – leftaroundabout Nov 27 '18 at 16:17
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    @leftaroundabout It's pretty likely that at least some components of the glue will start floating around in the water, even if they're not formally "dissolved". – David Richerby Nov 27 '18 at 18:31
  • @DavidRicherby The glue might be perfectly safe to consume, though. (I'm not saying it _is_, but there are plenty of glues that are not harmful.) – user91988 Nov 27 '18 at 19:15
  • There are many FDA approved food tapes that could be suggested instead. I'm sure users who feel comfortable to risk substituting duct tape will still do so - but it will avoid this answer giving potentially harmful advice.(examples: https://adhesive-tape-converting.mbktape.com/viewitems/specialty-tapes-and-adhesives/fda-food-grade-adhesive-tape) – Bilkokuya Nov 28 '18 at 14:20
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It's possible to boil an egg with steam. This usually requires an additional device. The eggs are put upright and won't split open since they are not exposed directly to the hot water.

enter image description here

fiscblog
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    Does this work for eggs that are already cracked? And why would being exposed to hot water make an egg more likely to split? – David Richerby Nov 26 '18 at 15:54
  • I have two devices like this and the directions specifically say you need to pierce the top of the egg with a needle (that is included). Sometimes if the hole is a little big or if the hole is cracked, there is a considerable amount of egg white material ejected from the egg. It still makes a good hardboiled egg, but it's not as pretty. A cracked egg would certainly expand into a weird shape (again, would probably taste fine). – JPhi1618 Nov 26 '18 at 16:02
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    When doing hardboiled eggs in a commercial steamer i have seen the same issue with eggs coming apart as with boiling water. – Summer Nov 26 '18 at 19:48
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If the egg's been cracked for a while, just throw it out. Even though the boiling process should kill anything growing in it, good sense says it's not worth the risk. If the egg gets small cracks when you put it in the water or while cooking, it's perfectly fine. In my experience, the heat will quickly make the outer layer of white solidify as it cooks, which will lock everything else inside, crack or no. The worst I've ever seen happen from cooking an egg that cracked early on is that little bits of white escape and get cooked in the water, giving it a cloudy look. I've eaten many eggs that cracked while cooking and never had any problems.

CMB
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  • I wouldn't trust boiling the egg to sterilize it. The outer parts will get up to 100C but the inner parts won't -- the yolk can completely set at about 70C. – David Richerby Nov 27 '18 at 11:28
  • @David Richerby I agree. Better to get a fresh one. – CMB Nov 27 '18 at 17:29
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You can "steam" the egg instead. use a separator/sieve to suspend the egg above the boiling water in the pan. It will take longer than boiling to completely cook the egg.

aquarian47
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