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Get your salt shaker or vinegar can ready! In view of the many tips disseminated by both chefs and TikTokeurs, cooking eggs is not so easy. To the point that there are a number of grandmother’s tricks to prevent the eggs from bursting during cooking. Because you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, we decided to unravel the real from the fake.
It’s a cooking video that has been liked more than 16,000 times on Jamie Oliver’s Facebook account. Published a few days ago, the English media chef presented in less than 4 minutes everything you need to know about cooking eggs. In the land of King Charles III, you don’t mess around with hard-boiled eggs at breakfast time; we remember the myth around the seven hard-boiled eggs that were offered to him every morning when he was still a prince, in order to choose the one that suited him (a legend that would have been built by a book signed by BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman and which was denied by the Clarence House palace, editor’s note).
Still, the most publicized cook in the kingdom, Jamie Oliver, thinks he knows the trick to prevent eggs from bursting when they are immersed in boiling water: “add a tiny pinch of salt to the water”. For what ? The chef explains that this addition would allow a balance between the salt now contained in the water and that contained in the egg…
cooking eggs
In France, vinegar is presented more as the preferred trick to prevent breakage during cooking… A grandmother’s “trick” presented by many TikTokeurs and which can also be found in many recipe books. In reality, this recipe, however rudimentary, is at the origin of a number of beliefs. On the Chinese social network, a user offers a solution that seems risky but more ingenious: lightly tap the egg before plunging it into water in order to crack the air pocket that is between the shell and the albumin. It also offers a start of cooking in cold water… For his part, the English chef Jamie Oliver recommends choosing eggs of the same size…
A seemingly simple subject generates a host of questions on social networks. On TikTok, the hashtag #boiledeggs generates more than 154 million views. And one of the latest trends on the Chinese application is to cook the eggs in an air fryer (these devices that promise less greasy fries thanks to the total absence of the frying bath for cooking). This type of “recipe” is spotted by the hashtag #aifryerboiledeggs, which compiles more than 721,000 views.
Acolyte of Thierry Marx for culinary experiments explained by science, the chemist Raphaël Haumont spoke on this subject at the microphone of France Bleu at the end of last year. The scientist has thus demolished all received ideas around the cooking of eggs, insisting on the completely useless nature of adding salt like vinegar in the cooking water.
All that should be remembered is that an egg begins to cook from 80°C. This specialist in molecular cuisine had also addressed this culinary aberration in a book entitled “L’innovation aux fourneaux”, published by Dunod editions.