ULTIMATE SOUS VIDE EGG GUIDE

Introduction

Sous Vide Egg Basics

While we generally think of eggs as having two parts — the white and the yolk — there are actually three phases that we should care about: the yolk, the tight white, and the loose white.

• The yolk is the main nutrient source for the developing chicken embryo and contains most of the nutritive value in the egg, including vitamins, minerals, and a good chunk of fat and protein (though it is mostly made of water). It’s tightly bound in a membrane that keeps it spherical within the egg.
• The tight white consists of about 90 percent water with the rest being made up of proteins and a minute amount of minerals, fatty acids, and glucose. It is contained within a delicate membrane that is just slightly smaller than the full size of the egg.
• Finally, the loose white is the part of the egg white that is not contained by the egg white membrane. When you crack the egg open, it’s the white that spreads freely away from the rest of the egg. Its composition is similar to that of the tight white, but it has a lower concentration of proteins and other dissolved solids.

As eggs age, the membranes around both the yolk and the tight white will get thinner and more fragile. At the same time, the tight white will leak moisture into the loose white, diluting the loose white further and causing it to become even runnier.

Raw eggs are basically balloons of water thickened up by proteins. In their raw state, these proteins are tightly and individually packed and can thus flow relatively freely around each other. Think of them as little balls of yarn. As the egg gets heated, these balls slowly loosen up.

Eventually, they begin to entangle one another, creating a semi-solid meshwork that is powerful enough to suspend the water, fat, and minerals that make up the rest of the egg. Keep on cooking and that mesh will start to tighten up, eventually squeezing so tight that emulsions will break and the egg — especially the yolk — will go from being tender and homogenous to dry and crumbly.

Why is this important for sous vide cooking? Because of varying concentrations of different types of proteins within each of an egg’s three constituent parts, each of those parts behaves slightly differently when heated. Tight whites will begin to set first, though they don’t become fully firm until a relatively high temperature. Loose whites remain watery until they reach high temperatures, and yolks fall in the middle, gelling softy at moderate temperatures and getting firmer and firmer the more you heat them.

The classic method for cooking sous vide eggs is by placing the whole egg directly into a water bath and cooking at a precise temperature for a precise amount of time. As you’ll see below, both of these elements drastically impact the final doneness and texture of the egg. Unlike sous vide steak and chicken, the time window for desired doneness is much shorter for eggs. You don’t need to worry as much as when you cook eggs on the stovetop, but you should still pay attention to your timer to avoid overcooking.

There are two approaches to cooking eggs in the Anova Precision Oven:

1. Replicate sous vide times and temps. This method will give you almost identical results to cooking in a water bath. Turn on Sous Vide Mode and set your desired temperature based on the charts below. Add the eggs (straight from the fridge!) once the oven has reached temp and remove once they’ve cooked for your desired time.
   
   The only disadvantage to cooking eggs in this way is that they can be very difficult to remove from their shells if you are cooking them to a hard-boiled-like doneness.


2. Set the oven to the Steam Cooking Mode (212°F/100°C with 100% steam) and cook for a shorter amount of time. This method is just about as quick as cooking on the stovetop, but you don’t need to worry about hot pots of boiling water or eggs bouncing around in the pot and cracking.
   
   We prefer to use this method for hard-boiled-like eggs as it’ll make them far easier to peel.

Temperature and Timing for Sous Vide Eggs

No matter what you’re cooking sous vide, you’ll need to pay attention to both temperature and time to truly dial in your favorite doneness and texture. Nowhere is this more apparent than when cooking sous vide eggs. Since many of the gelling reactions taking place occur relatively slowly, simply bringing an egg up to equilibrium temperature will not actually take it to its maximum thickness. Continue cooking and the egg will become thicker.

This fact holds true whether you’re cooking eggs in a sous vide water bath or the Anova Precision Oven.

To test the effect of temperature, we cooked eggs with the Precision Cooker to various temperatures ranging from 130°F (54°C) to 165°F (73.9°C). In each case, we heated large eggs for exactly 40 minutes — enough time for the egg to reach thermal equilibrium with the water bath, but not so long that the effects of prolonged cooking will have started to take effect.

An egg can sit indefinitely without any sort of gelling taking place. This is useful if you have a fear of using raw eggs in sauces like mayonnaise or Caesar salad dressing. By holding an egg at 130°F (54°C) for a few hours, you can effectively sterilize it, making it safer to consume in raw preparations.
Loose white: Indistinguishable from raw.
Tight white: Indistinguishable from raw.
Yolk: Indistinguishable from raw.

Proteins are just beginning to unravel, causing the egg white to take on a cloudy appearance. Texture-wise, it’s tough to distinguish the egg from a raw egg.
Loose white: Appearance is slightly cloudy, texture is indistinguishable from raw.
Tight white: Appearance is slightly cloudy, texture is indistinguishable from raw.
Yolk: Indistinguishable from raw.

The first big jump for tight egg whites, which will become firmly set enough to hold their basic shape, though the slightest provocation will cause them to crack and split.
Loose white: Watery and loose.
Tight white: Ghostly white and barely set.
Yolk: Indistinguishable from raw.

Here the whites are firm enough to let you cut through them and pick them up with a spoon, while the yolk remains raw. This is our favorite temperature for poached and soft-boiled eggs.
Loose white: Watery and broken.
Tight white: Opaque white with a ghostly fringe, set enough to cut with a spoon.
Yolk: Ever-so-slightly thicker than raw.

These egg yolks have gone from completely liquid to a soft, malleable texture that easily holds its shape.
Loose white: Watery with coagulated chunks of protein.
Tight white: Completely opaque, firm enough to break along fault lines when you cut it with a spoon.
Yolk: Very tender but malleable and firm enough to hold its shape when cut in half.

At this stage, the yolks have caught up with the whites in terms of firmness — you can easily slide a spoon or knife into the whites, but the yolks offer a bit of resistance and hold their shape much better. This is our least favorite egg temperature.
Loose white: Watery with coagulated chunks of protein.
Tight white: Opaque and firm, but still tender.
Yolk: Fudge-like in texture. Malleable, but starting to slightly crack.

The loose whites have been heated sufficiently to coagulate and leave no watery liquid phase within the shell.
Loose white: Solid but tender, it tends to peel away from the tight white in a distinct layer.
Tight white: Opaque and firm, but still tender.
Yolk: Completely firm and still malleable, but with a tendency to crack when pressed or cut.

If hard-boiled is how you like your eggs, then this temp should do you well. This is the ideal temperature for an egg salad that has distinct chunks of tender, non-rubbery egg.
Loose white: Opaque and firm, but still tender.
Tight white: Opaque and firm, but still tender.
Yolk: Completely firm but still moist and not at all powdery. It crumbles easily along fault lines.

We cooked eggs at each of these temperatures for times ranging from 45 minutes to 2 hours. The testing showed that indeed timing does matter, though the most noticeable effects are with the egg yolks.

For instance, an egg cooked at 145°F (63ºC) for 45 minutes will have a barely set white and a completely liquid yolk. Take that up to 2 hours and the whites will still be just about the same, but the yolk will have thickened to the point where it holds its shape as well as, say, a washed up jellyfish.

145°F (63ºC) for 45 Minutes

Raw yolk that easily mixes with a white that is barely set, but can be broken up with a spoon. These are the types of eggs that the Japanese call onsen tamago, or “hot spring eggs.”

145°F (63ºC) for 1 Hour

Slightly thicker yolk that holds peaks for about five seconds when you pour it off of a spoon.

145°F (63ºC) for 1 ½ Hours

Whites that are ever-so-slightly firmer than 45-minutes eggs (though barely distinguishable), and yolks that are as thick as tender pudding.

145°F (63ºC) for 2 Hours

The whites are indistinguishable from the 1 ½-hour whites. Yolks at this stage are solid enough that you can pile them up in a bowl and let them sit for a good half hour and still distinguish individual lumps.

Temperature and Timing Charts

Sous Vide Eggs, Step by Step

1. Attach a Precision Cooker to a water bath and heat to your desired final doneness temperature or preheat the Precision Oven to your desired temperature.
   
   If cooking poached eggs in the Anova Precision Oven, crack each egg into its own well-greased ramekin or small bowl. Cover the bowl with aluminum foil.


2. For easier peeling when cooking sous vide, bring water to a boil on the stove. Place eggs in the boiling water and let them boil for 3 minutes, then drop them in an ice bath for 1 minute.


3. Carefully place the eggs in the water bath or place directly on the oven rack. Cook according to your desired time and temp.

1. Carefully lift eggs out of the water bath with a slotted spoon or remove from the oven.


2. For soft- and hard-boiled eggs, transfer to an ice bath to chill completely. Peel and serve.

For poached eggs cooked in a water bath, heat a pot of water to just below simmering. Crack the large end of the shell on a flat surface, then carefully peel away a window with your fingertips and let any water loose egg drip out. Gently flip the egg out of the rest of the shell and into a bowl. Use a perforated spoon to lift the egg into the simmering water, leaving any loose whites behind in the bowl. Cook, swirling the water around the egg, for 1 minute. Remove from the water and serve.

For poached eggs in the Anova Precision Oven, carefully pour the eggs out of the ramekin into a slotted spoon to remove any loose whites. Serve.

For pasteurized eggs, remove from the water bath and refrigerate until ready to use.

A Closer Look at Sous Vide “Poached Eggs”

Traditional Sous Vide

So now that you’ve seen how temperature and time affect the various parts inside an egg, you can easily poach or soft boil eggs to exactly the texture you’d like them to be, right?

Well yes, if you’re content to serve sous vide eggs out of the shell as-is. But what if you want something with a slightly more traditional appearance (albeit with improved texture control). A perfect poached egg should have a distinct layer of egg white around the exterior that is firmer than the rest of the egg. This requires a bit of additional cooking.

Once you’ve gotten tender-and-barely-set 145°F (63ºC) 45-minute eggs, the only thing you need to do to convert them into bona-fide poached eggs is to, well, poach them. Simply crack the eggs and tip them into a bowl, then slip them into a pot of barely simmering water just until a skin forms around the exterior. Unlike traditional poached eggs, you don’t need to worry about swirling the water or adding vinegar. Just give them a quick dunk in the simmering water and you’ll wind up with foolproof poached eggs with an internal texture that strikes that perfect balance between runny and rich.

Peeling Sous Vide Eggs

When you cook eggs at a low temperature, as you do with sous vide, proteins coagulate and cross-link slowly, giving them plenty of time to bond with the interior of the shell. Cook them fast by steaming or boiling on the stovetop, and they’ll quickly change their shape before they get a chance to bind to the shell. This is much like how a chicken breast is far more likely to stick to a warm pan than to a ripping hot pan.

So when you’re cooking eggs sous vide, and you want to be able to peel the eggs and serve them whole, you’ll want to take an extra step to help ensure easy peeling. Now, we’ll say that this doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, but it does push the odds in your favor.

Before putting the eggs into the water bath, cook them on the stovetop just as you would for a normal three-minute egg — plunging them into boiling water for three minutes, then shocking them for a full minute in an ice water bath. After that, I drop them into the sous vide water bath at your desired time and temp.

Make Ahead And Meal-Prep

Can you save eggs for later after cooking them sous vide? Yes, you absolutely can. Chill the cooked eggs in an ice bath and store them in water in the refrigerator for up to a few days. To serve them, just submerge them in warm (130°F (54ºC) to 140°F (60ºC) water) for ten minutes or so and they’re as good as fresh.