An electric kettle is more than a convenient device; it’s a pillar of liberation. This is especially true if you’re someone who’s easily distracted, averse to the sound of a whistling teapot and resentful of tasks that require patience.
Boiling eggs is one such task. I adore a yolk cooked anywhere along the spectrum between gooey and firm, but a fully cooked egg can be quite unforgiving. When in doubt, I shoot for the safe side of a soft yolk, but if you’re craving devilled eggs, oeufs mayonnaise, or a chunky egg salad flecked with capers and dill, you’ll need to go all the way. And if you enjoy eggs prepared with any degree of consistency, they will require some babysitting.
My long-time method for hard-boiling involved placing a few large eggs in a pot of cold water just large enough to fit them, setting the burner to high, then pulling the pot from the heat the moment it reaches a boil. Slam on the lid, set a timer to 10 minutes and get an ice bath ready.
Awaiting hard eggs at every turn is a host of possible fates that sound like murder mysteries: hard boiled eggs and the dreaded green ring, an unwelcome aftermath of lingering sulphur, and what I like to call the “billowing sadness”, that ghostly wisp of albumen that escapes into the water when an egg cracks while boiling. You can try adding matches and vinegar to the water, or pricking holes in each end of an egg to prevent this, provided your luck is better than mine.
Now I think that a hard-cooked egg isn’t best achieved by boiling. Some swear by placing eggs in mini muffin pans and baking them in the shell. My preference is steaming, which has the added benefit of making eggs super easy to peel, no matter their age. (Attempting to peel a somewhat freshly laid boiled egg will result in extreme frustration: the albumen sticks to the shell membrane, and as eggshell is chipped away, it takes chunks of egg white with it.)
The perfect hard-boiled egg will have a creamy centre of deep tangerine, still moist like the inside of a baked sweet potato, and feel full and velvety in the mouth, like fudge. Overcooked by a minute or two and you’ll find a pale yolk the colour of a yellow legal pad, powdery and crumbling and smelling like the low tide in a salt marsh. The whites should be tender, not squeaky, and as smooth as gel.
Arabs eat a lot of eggs and we eat them every which way. Growing up, there was a lot of shakshouka, a North African scramble of eggs, tomatoes, sweet onion and chilli. Like falafel, shakshouka has acquired a sort of universality within the region that gives it greater visibility than, say, ijjit arnabeet, a delicious Lebanese frittata of roasted cauliflower. The Lebanese will also fry eggs with sumac and bake them in hollowed-out tomatoes whose flesh has been used for sauce. They also love to hard-boil eggs and mash them into a seasoned paste, or arrange them in slices dressed with olive oil and lemon on a platter of greens. And Emiratis will frequently throw whole boiled eggs on to rice and meat dishes. Whether it’s the national dish, machbous, or a borrowed one, such as biryani, eggs are a welcome addition either way.
Nouf Al-Qasimi is an Emirati food analyst who cooks and writes in New Mexico
