If there’s one thing you can probably eat every single day of your life, it’s eggs. It’s affordable, it’s easy to cook, and it can be so delicious. That’s what makes eggs so important to master. If you’re going to use it all the time, tips and tricks will make your meals much easier to make and also more delicious.
Here is everything you need to know about cooking with eggs:
1 Buy and use the freshest eggs.
There’s a big difference between fresh, old, and bad eggs. As a basic rule, fresh eggs are best. However, for making meringue and other uses for the egg white and especially for hard-boiled eggs, older eggs might be better to use. When an egg ages, the egg white shrinks slightly, creating an air pocket inside. This explains those flattened parts in hard-boiled eggs. It also makes peeling eggs much easier.
You can check the expiry date or get to know your suki at the wet market to make sure you’re getting them at the freshest. If you’re concerned that your eggs have gone bad, you can test them with a simple float test.
2 Store eggs correctly.
Since our climate in the Philippines runs generally on the warmer side, it’s best to refrigerate eggs to prevent eggs from spoiling or aging prematurely in our temperate heat. Just an hour at room temperature can drastically change the quality of eggs for the worse.
Another important tip to remember when storing eggs in the refrigerator is that you should not place them on the refrigerator door. A lot of us have that misconception that this is the right place to store these since there’s usually an egg holder that fits perfectly in your refrigerator. However, everything kept in the refrigerator door experience unstable temperature. It’s best to place your eggs instead in more stable areas, such as under the freezer to keep your eggs fresh for as long as possible.
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4 You can peel eggs easily.
If you’re making deviled eggs, egg salad, or any recipe with lots of hard-boiled eggs, you might want to cheat the system. We found three ways to peel eggs, only one of which did the best job. See it in the article below.
If you’re carefully peeling a soft boiled egg however, consider these tips: shocking them in cold water after boiling and hand peeling carefully under running cold water. This is the best you can do.
5 Don’t overcook eggs.
Overcooked boiled eggs can be rubbery—who wants that? Dry, overcooked scrambled eggs are a far cry from creamy, fluffy, and perfectly cooked scrambled eggs.
For scrambled eggs, learn to cook your eggs just right by using the right amount of heat. If it’s cooking too fast, don’t be afraid to take it away from the heat. For boiling eggs, drop your eggs in when the water is boiling and start a timer only then. The timer will depend on the kind of egg you want.
When you can’t think of anything to eat and all you’ve got is what’s in your refrigerator, egg dishes are great recipes to have as stock knowledge. Mastering the basic scrambled, omelet, boiled egg, and sunny-side-up will help you loads already.
7 Separate egg whites and egg yolks successfully.
Eggs are easier to separate when they’re cold, so it’s fine to separate eggs straight out the refrigerator. That’s because colder eggs have firmer egg yolks and won’t break as quickly as warm eggs when handling them.
We found that one of the best ways to separate whites from the yolks is to use your hands. If you haven’t mastered this the technique using the eggshells, sometimes the jagged edges of the shell might pierce through the yolk so using your hands is the safer, easier way.
If separating egg whites for whipping, it’s advisable to do so using 3 containers. One container is where you break the eggs in. Separate the yolk into another container. Then, place the egg white in a separate container where it’s going to be whipped. This way, you won’t ruin a dozen clean egg whites with a drop of egg yolk.
8 Whip egg whites easily.
When whipping egg whites for cakes, soufflés, marshmallows, icing, or whatever you’re using for, there are a few things you need to remember. One is that dust and fat can make your egg whites whip much, much, much slower and probably won’t be as whipped as possible. Make sure your bowl and whisk are clean before whipping whites.
To stabilize egg whites, you can use an acid like cream of tartar, lemon or calamansi juice, or vinegar. For every large egg, you’ll need about 1/8 teaspoon of acid. Another way to stabilize is by adding sugar. Caster sugar will dissolve much faster than regular sugar. Don’t drop it all in at once though, as that would deflate your egg whites.
For a faster, and much more stable whip, use room temperature to warm eggs. However, in Japan, when they make Japanese soufflé pancakes and Japanese cheesecakes, they use cold egg whites. It takes longer to whip but yields smaller bubbles as it can be whipped for far longer before being over whipped.
9 Remember: egg temperatures matter.
As mentioned earlier, your egg’s temperature matters. Eggs act differently when it’s warm or when it’s cold. Use cold eggs for baking cookies, separating eggs, and boiling eggs. Use room temperature eggs for whipping egg whites, and baking.
11 Note egg sizes in recipes.
Eggs in the Philippines come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Small eggs are not advisable to use if you’re following most recipes. Medium eggs, on the other hand, have about three tablespoons of liquid. Large eggs have 3.25 tablespoons. Most recipes, especially baking recipes, use large eggs. That means that for five medium eggs is equal to four large eggs.
