Sous Vide Eggs Kameko-san Part 1: Soft-Boiled

I've wanted to try eggs in the sous vide cooker (aka Kameko-san) since I got it. The long weekend with company that tends to sleep late gave me an opportunity to try, since one does not often get up and say "oh! I think I'd like some soft-boiled eggs in an hour and a half!" But since we ended up eating more of a brunch than a breakfast, eggs taking that kind of time was not a show-stopper.

Kameko-san's instruction booklet came with a table saying to do soft-boiled eggs at 64C (147F) for 45 minutes to 1-1/2 hours. I cooked half the eggs for 45 minutes and half for the full hour and a half.

Picture above shows the 45-minute egg in the shell. The white is quite soft; in some instances it was running a little bit out of the shell. It was, however, white - even the runny parts were not clear like a raw egg white.

Plated, the eggs, as shown in the picture above, looked like they had the yolk of an easy-over egg with a very custardy white. When mixed, the yolk had just started to set, which blended nicely with the white, which similarly had a just-about-to-gel flavor and texture. The result was phenomenal. I tasted a faint back-of-the-palate aromatic almost like an ester; other opinions ranged from a feeling that it was like an ur-hollandaise sauce to "green" (this from a friend who experiences certain tastes as colors, which I find most fascinating). We uniformly agreed we had never had a soft-boiled egg that tasted this subtly good, either from the flavor itself or from the texture, with the white at least as soft, if not softer than, the yolk. Amazing.

Next up was the 1-1/2 hour egg, also done at 64F. Picture above shows it in the shell. I could tell peeling it that the white was a little more firm,  but still it had a custard-like consistency, as is seen in the picture, which shows how it ran a bit over the shell. The picture also shows how the egg white was cooking from the inside out, rather than from the shell in.

The plated egg shows this. The yolk was nearly firm. The white had firmer chunks but still was quite liquid. It was this texture difference that set the eggs apart from traditional soft-boiled eggs. The eggs were too cooked for the distinctive aromatics I tasted, let alone the "green" of my color-tasting friend. The texture, though, was buttery-creamy and the yolk was cooked consistently throughout (I'll talk a bit more about this in the post on hard-boiled eggs). This is completely different from a traditional soft-boiled egg, which has a firmer white and a yolk that is cooked more on the outside, gradating to a softer core. I thought these eggs would be a perfect waffle topping, if I were still eating waffles. The whites would be spread around like syrup; the yolks spread like butter, with a knife.

The group consensus was that the traditional soft-boiled egg will be with us for a while because it is fast and easy goodness. But the sous vide soft-boiled egg is perfect for those occasions, and the 45-minute sous vide egg can be the start of, or used on their own as, an incredible sauce for any number of savory dishes. Now it's just up to me to think and plot.

Next: Part 2: Hard-Boiled