Hard boiled eggs

My wife likes to eat hard boiled eggs (*). Instead of cooking them in a small saucepan with a lid, she cooks them in what's known here as a finjan, a small open pot that is normally used for making coffee in the oriental style. I pointed out to her that a great deal of heat is lost when the water boils, as it escapes as steam; it would be more efficient to put a lid on the pot to catch the steam.

But the finjan doesn't have a lid, so I would often balance a small plate on top of the finjan. Recently I did this, but the plate didn't balance and the pot fell to the floor, splashing me with boiling water. I treated the scald immediately (it hurt for about an hour), but I have been left with a red patch above my right knee that one day might fade away.

As a result of this misadventure, I resolved to find a better way of boiling eggs. I suggested the saucepan route, but it seems that we don't have a small enough saucepan; also, I believe that the boiling water causes cavitation that can break an egg's shell. I went looking on the internet for an alternative and found the device pictured above (it was on the website of an Israeli (?) gadgets site; my wife wanted something from there, and I continued looking to see what else they might have). 

I ordered the gadget (about 150 NIS, which these days is equivalent to maybe $40) and it arrived after two weeks. Unfortunately there was no explanation whatsoever as to how to use it (excluding the Mandarin written on the box). Viewing this as an intelligence test, instead of puzzling out how to use the gadget (and in fact, how to put it together), I took the alternative route and looked on the internet for a manual. I got many hits for the gadget but far fewer for instructions; eventually I found some and downloaded them. These aren't 100% accurate for my gadget (they seem to be for a slightly different model) but good enough for my purposes.

First one removes the clear perspex dome and the white egg caddy (pink in the picture). Using the tiny cup that comes with the gadget, one fills it with water (this is maybe one teaspoon-full, i.e. 15 ml) then pours the water onto the steel plate that is revealed under the caddy. One then replaces the caddy, places however many eggs are required (I think that six can be done at once) then replaces the dome. Finally one turns on the electricity.

There is a heater under the steel plate: this causes the water to turn to steam, thus cooking the eggs. Indeed, after about ten seconds the plastic dome was covered inside with condensing steam. After about 7 minutes, the gadget turned itself off - there is presumably some device like a thermostat that recognises when all the water has been turned to steam. I unplugged the gadget from the wall socket but let the eggs set there for a few more minutes as they cooked.

Despite the fact that there is no boiling water to create air bubbles that might break an egg's shell, one of the eggs that I cooked this morning had the tell-tale 'albumin bubble', presumably caused by the shell cracking slightly and the white of the egg leaking slightly. 

This gadget seems to be far safer and more efficient than boiling water on a stove.

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* I used to like eating hard boiled eggs but now they seem to have a metallic taste. In the summer of 1972 and 1973/4, during the many field trips that I took in Israel, we used to have boiled eggs every day for breakfast. Someone would get a fire going (or we had gas rings), then we would fill a big pot (we used to call them 'tillys') with water and place eggs inside to be cooked. I had an unofficial competition going with our leader in 1972 as to who could peel an egg with the fewest pieces of shell. After some practice, I was able to peel an egg with only two pieces of shell, which I thought was the fewest number possible, but one day I peeled an egg leaving the shell intact! This was possible because directly underneath the shell there is a membrane to which the shell sticks; if one doesn't puncture the membrance, one can peel the egg leaving all the shell stuck to the membrane.

In 1979, whilst working in the kitchen in Mishmar David, one of my fellow cooks would make hard boiled eggs for breakfast. For this we used what is apparently called a 'steam kettle', similar to the one shown in the picture on the left. Every kibbutz kitchen had several of these in different sizes - on Mishmar David we had two really big ones, three smaller ones and one really small. We would put the eggs in a wire basket then put the basket in the smallest kettle in order to cook. The eggs that my fellow cook would make were far from hard boiled - they were so soft that I used to say that she showed the kettle to the eggs, then took them out to the dining room to be served.