Is there really a secret hack for the perfect boiled egg?

IF you're cooking eggs should you have your salt shaker or your bottle of vinegar handy? There are numerous tips for one of the simplest recipes, that of boiling eggs.

Between the many tricks and hacks proffered by both professional chefs and amateur home cooks on social networks, in reality, it's not always as easy as it seems, even with all the age-old advice for preventing eggs from cracking in the process. As the saying goes, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs; a look at what's being said about boiling eggs.

Earlier this month, Jamie Oliver's Facebook account posted a cooking video claiming to tell viewers everything they need to know about boiling eggs perfectly. Under four minutes long, the English celebrity chef's video has already been liked more than 16,000 times.

It's a subject taken seriously in the United Kingdom. In fact, there was a story about King Charles III that when he was still a prince, he would be presented with seven hard-boiled eggs at breakfast time in order to choose the one that suited him. The story, which was refuted by the royal website, was a claim made by British journalist Jeremy Paxman in a 2006 book.

Still, boiling eggs perfectly is no laughing matter in the UK and the country's famous chef, Jamie Oliver, thinks he knows the trick to keeping them from cracking when they're dipped in boiling water: "add a tiny tiny tiny pinch of salt" to the water. Why? The chef explains that this addition of salt creates a kind of balance between the tiny amount of salt contained in the egg.

A range of varied and diverse tips

Other cooks tout vinegar as the preferred ingredient to prevent breakage during cooking... This age-old "trick" is mentioned by many TikTokers and also found in many recipe books.

Another TikTok user proposes an approach that seems risky but ingenious: lightly tap the egg before plunging it into the water to crack the air pocket between the shell and the albumen. He also advises home cooks to start cooking the egg in cold water. Meanwhile, Jamie Oliver's video also emphasizes the importance of choosing eggs of the same size.

Such a seemingly simple subject generates a lot of questions and a lot of opinions on social networks. On TikTok, the hashtag #boiledeggs counts more than 154 million views.

And one of the latest trends on the Chinese social network is cooking eggs in an air fryer. These types of "recipes" can be found through the hashtag #aifryerboiledeggs, which counts over 721,000 views.

Meanwhile French chemist Raphaël Haumont, known to French foodies as celebrity chef Thierry Marx's associate in culinary experiments put to scientific testing, spoke on this very topic to radio station France Bleu at the end of last year. He refuted all the preconceived ideas about cooking eggs, saying that adding salt or vinegar to the cooking water was useless.

The only thing home cooks need to remember is that an egg starts to cook at 80°C. The molecular cooking specialist also discussed this culinary phenomenon in one of his books (entitled "L'innovation aux fourneaux," published by Dunod).