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Time to talk about cooking boiled eggs in your steam oven.
Today I’m going to run your through one of the simplest steam oven cooking tricks: the humble boiled egg. I’ve visited the topic of steam oven scrambled eggs before but today is a boiled egg masterclass, if you will.
A boiled egg can be used for so many things, even if (like me) you aren’t a big fan of just eating one straight out of its shell. Sliced or mashed with mayonnaise and nestled between two slices of soft supermarket bread; yolks carefully removed and creamed before being artfully piped back in for that 70’s classic, devilled eggs; quartered and used in a salad to provide heft and protein; wrapped in sausage meat, crumbed and fried for the artery-busting bomb which is a Scotch egg – I think we all get the idea.
Eggs are handy, nutritious and relatively cheap and we’d be lost in the kitchen without them, although please, PLEASE, I implore you to spend a little more to buy free range, for the welfare of your egg-producing birdies.
As with so many previously-tedious tasks, using a steam oven to boil eggs – or rather, to steam eggs – removes the annoyance of putting them in a pot of water which then needs draining, and also all but guarantees they’ll never crack while cooking and lose half their contents before you can blink.
So, onto the details. There are a few factors which will greatly affect how long you need to cook eggs for in a steam oven, so let’s talk about those.
Cooking temperature for steam oven boiled eggs
I prefer to steam my eggs at 95⁰C (203⁰F) rather than 100⁰C (212⁰F).
Though they’re regarded as quite robust, eggs can be sensitive little things and the slightly lower temperature means the difference between softly cooked whites and bouncy, slightly ‘chewy’ ones (but hey, if you love a bouncy egg white by all means up the temperature and drop a minute or two off your cooking time).
Egg temperature for perfect steam oven boiled eggs
This is a bit of a contentious issue for me.
I like keeping my eggs in the fridge for freshness, so ideally I’d just pop them in the steam oven straight from the fridge and set my timer accordingly for the doneness I prefer. Except whenever I’ve done that, I’ve had really inconsistent cooking results. Because of this, I really recommend bringing your eggs to room temperature before you steam them. It will make your cooking times much more accurate.
Cooking vessels for steam oven boiled eggs
Whatever you do, don’t use thick ceramic or glass cooking vessels here. They’ll alter the cooking time of your eggs by up to 100%, and cook them unevenly too.
I use the 1/3 size or 2/3 size stainless steel trays which came with my oven – they’re thin, light and conduct heat very quickly, which is so important for steaming foods which don’t take long to cook.
Freshness of eggs for boiled eggs
I’d like to share something about the photos for today’s post here – when I tested all my timings to share with you, I used some glorious eggs from my local greengrocer. They cooked beautifully, peeled easily and were all around fabulous. So fabulous we used them all to make egg mayonnaise for lunch, and I had to cook more to photograph.
Except this time around I used supermarket eggs (albeit the most expensive ‘happy chicken’ ones on the shelf). Bad idea. They were obviously old, and the whites, even on the longest cooked eggs which came out with chalky yolks, were thin, watery and impossible to peel. Boy was I annoyed about that after I’d set up my camera, backdrop, even the plate, before clicking the shutter!
Moral of the story? Freshness matters. Almost as much as when you make a poached egg, and I think we all know freshness is the key to a perfect poachie.
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Cooking time for perfect steam oven boiled eggs
Everyone likes their yolks cooked differently. I’m going to give you a visual guide so you can get yours just right.
Safe to say somewhere between 8 minutes and 12 minutes is generally the sweet spot for a 59g egg. This is the standard weight for an extra large egg in Australia and as best I can tell, the US, and equivalent to a large egg in the UK.
7 1/2 minutes: whites set but fairly soft; yolks just barely set with a tiny bit of ‘run’ in the centre. 8 minutes: whites softly set; yolks set but quite ‘fudgy’.
10 minutes: whites fully set and firm; yolks mostly set with a little bright orange left in the middle.
12 minutes: whites very firm, yolks fully cooked and crumbly/’chalky’.
Whew! Who would think popping an egg in your steam oven could require so much information?! The thing is, it doesn’t really, once you’ve got the basics down. Fresh eggs, right vessel, right temperature, right time.
Once you’ve got this nailed, you’ll be able to cook a dozen eggs at a time with hardly a thought (and they’ll last a good 4-5 days in the fridge, ready to put in lunchboxes as you race out the door).
If you’re not already making boiled eggs in your steam oven, now you’ve got no excuse not to try it. I’d love to know how you get on.
Happy steam oven cooking, see you here again soon.
Steam Oven Boiled Eggs
Ingredients
- Eggs 59g (large) size, at room temperature
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 203⁰F/95⁰C, steam setting (100% humidity).
- Put your eggs into a stainless steel pan or onto a rack. Put the tray into the oven (be quick – leaving the door open for a long time will take the temperature right down!), setting the time as per the guide to obtain yolks cooked to your desired hardness.
- 7 1/2 minutes: whites set but fairly soft; yolks just barely set with a tiny bit of ‘run’ in the centre.
- 8 minutes: whites softly set; yolks set but quite ‘fudgy’.
- 10 minutes: whites fully set and firm; yolks mostly set with a little bright orange left in the middle.
- 12 minutes: whites very firm, yolks fully cooked and crumbly/’chalky’.
- Let the eggs cool until you can handle them before peeling, or leave unpeeled and store, refrigerated for up to 4 days.
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After some other simple steam oven staples? My Steam Oven Scrambled Eggs are over here; a handy guide to Steam Oven Rice is here, or, if you’re about done on savoury options for today and consider chocolate cake a staple (if we’re all honest with ourselves, who doesn’t?), you can find my Simple Steam Oven Chocolate cake here.
For all I have ever known,
and I have checked this all over the Internet just today,
the fresher the egg, the more difficult to peel
best eggs to peel easily, an egg should be 4 to 5 days old
in the EU, an expiration date is printed on every single egg
legally that is 28 days
so if you discount the days left towards the expiration date
you obtain the age of the egg
Poached eggs next?
I always allow for preheating in my recipes/instructions here, unless stated otherwise. So definitely wait to put your eggs in until the oven’s warmed up. I’ve just altered the post to make that very clear, as I don’t think it was before. 🙂
Do your cooking times a) start from zero (zero steam and a room temp oven)? or do then start when the oven has warmed up to the indicated temp. and humidity?
I have a Gaggenau combi oven and routinely steam eggs to the hard boiled stage. I do take them right from the frig, use the tray that came with my oven and set the temp for 210 to 215 degrees,100% humidity and set the timer for 21 minutes. These are jumbo eggs from Costco so a little more time for the larger eggs. If store bought large eggs, I bring the time down to 18 minutes – without preheating my oven. I don’t notice my whites being rubbery and the eggs are not overcooked. I’ll give your method a try and see if I actually am overcooking the eggs. Thanks!
Hi Chris. I have tried all sorts of ways and the most consistent results I’ve had come from preheating the oven first. So I make sure my eggs are at room temperature, preheat, then quickly open the oven door and pop them in, trying not to leave it open too long so all the heat escapes. Hope that helps.
I’ve done "boiled" eggs in my Bosch steam oven a few times but one question I have is when do you start timing for when the eggs will be done? I put the eggs in my oven then start the steam cycle but I’m never sure if I start timing then or after the oven has come up to the proper temperature. What is your strategy? Thanks, Chris