Traditionally cooked in hot springs in Japan, these soft boiled eggs have custard-like whites and runny yolks.
Cook’s notes
These aren’t ordinary soft boiled eggs. And they’re not the same as poached eggs either. With poached eggs, the white is fully cooked. Not so with onsen eggs where the white is softer yet firm.
There’s science behind the cooking. Egg yolk and egg white solidify at different temperatures. The yolk at 70C and the white at 80C. If a whole egg in its shell is submerged in water with the temperature between 65C and 68C, you get a firm yolk that’s still runny at the center and a white that’s silky soft like custard.
There are plenty of formulas that you’ll find on the web. Some require leaving the eggs in the hot water for as long as 30 minutes. I cook my onsen eggs for 12 minutes.
Hot spring egg (onsen tamago)
Ingredients
- 6 large eggs at room temperature
Sauce
- 6 tablespoons dashi
- 6 teaspoons soy sauce
- 6 teaspoons mirin
Garnish
- toasted sesame seeds
- sliced scallions
Instructions
- Boil a liter of water in a pot. Turn off the heat. Pour in 200 milliliters of room temperature water.
- Slide in the eggs and cover the pot. Leave for 12 minutes.
- Scoop out the eggs and dump into a bowl of iced water.
- While the eggs cool, simmer the dashi, soy sauce and mirin for about two minutes.
- To serve, crack an egg into a bowl, drizzle in some sauce, top with scallions and toasted sesame seeds and serve.
Salmon, tomato and cheese salad