A “little” bit healthy tonight…

After eating deep fried pizza yesterday (post tomorrow), I decided a salad would be a good idea for tea tonight. My favourite salad is a Chef Salad with cheese, ham and eggs, oh ok, maybe not that healthy after you cover it with Salad Cream.

I decided to “try” and cook the eggs

Sous Vide.

When I was waiting for my Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking books I purchase a Sous Vide, but did not know how to really use it. So I downloaded an online recipe book Beginning Sous Vide which is really very good. I have done a crazy Scrambled Egg Recipe but tonight we I wanted soft boiled. I opened the Beginning Sous Vide and it said the “perfect” egg was 148F for 60 minutes. So I fired up the Sous Vide and set the temperature to 148F

I did not have to vac pack the eggs as they are already done. So I gingerly put them in the bottom of the Sous Vide and sat back for an hour.

I then cut up some lettuce, cheese and ham to go with the eggs (classic Chef Salad).

OK this is getting quite weird. After an hour I took one of the eggs out of the bath and tapped it with a back of a knife, but it was still wet. Hmmm, back to the Beginning Sous Vide book and came across a recipe that said.

“Take the eggs out of the water bath using a slotted spoon or tongs. One at a time, gently crack the eggs on the counter and remove the top ¼ to ½ of the shell. At that point you should be able to turn the shell upside down and the egg should slide out. Add 1 sous vide egg to the top of each salad. Drizzle some olive oil on each salad, grind some pepper”

Huh “slide out” what is that all about!!! I dumped the egg onto a plate and it was quite wet but it stayed together. So I put some sea salt on it and ate it with a spoon. It was really quite good, but not what I wanted on a salad. So I cranked up the temperature to 151F and let them cook for another 10 minutes. Trial and error when you are hungry is not really a good idea.

This is a bit too weird. The egg whites are like mayonnaise but the yolks are cooked. So the second egg is put on the salad, which has been cooked for 80 minutes at 151F. And here it is plated up and ready to eat.

I decided to try another couple of degrees so up to 153F for another 10 minutes.

And the only thing that was cooked further was the yolk.

So there is no way to cook hard boiled eggs in a Sous Vide. The whites always turn out like mayo and the yolks go from liquid to solid. I thought is was nice but not for a salad, but on toast with beans and bacon it would be really good.