How to boil an egg, the Heston Blumenthal way

For me, an egg is just right when the yolk is warm and runny, wrapped in a blanket of egg white that is just set. When the white’s not mucus-like (which means it’s not cooked) and not hard, it’s silken and melts in your mouth. Which is why the best way to boil an egg is not to boil it. The problem is that the white sets at a lower temperature than the yolk so, when you cook the egg traditionally in boiling water, the white becomes rubbery.

People say science takes the emotion out of cooking, but if you understand how ingredients work, you have greater control over them. It’s all about time and temperature. I read about the physicist Nicholas Kurti, who cooked an egg at 64°C for hours and created this version. I experimented, using a water bath. After 45 minutes, the white is a gel and the yolk a paste. It’s almost as though the yolk and the white swap textures, and it tastes fantastic on a crumpet!

After relentless trials, here is my formula for the perfect boiled egg:

1. Take a small saucepan with a glass lid and carefully place a single egg (or two, or three) inside it. Burford brown eggs have a nice orange yolk. Fill the pan so the water only just covers the eggs – not even a millimetre more. If you had a centimetre of water covering the egg then you could still get the same result, but you’d have to play with the timing.

2. Put the pan on maximum heat with the lid on and bring to the boil.

3. As soon as the water starts to bubble, remove from the heat. As you take the pan off, set a timer for six minutes; keep the lid on. Make sure you time it exactly, and you’ll end up with the perfect egg.

As told to Rosanna Greenstreet

Historic Heston, by Heston Blumenthal is out now (Bloomsbury, £40, hardback)

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