Steam Your Eggs

One egg, 12 eggs, 30 eggs ...

I’ve always been team sauna over steam bath, but that doesn’t really explain my shady attitude toward steaming.

Steamed eggs take the cake. Left to right, top to bottom: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

The way that I like to describe cooking is very simple: High heat and low heat; dry heat and wet heat; long time and short time. Time and temperature; that’s all cooking is. When I wrote Where Cooking Begins, I wanted to include a section that would expand these umbrella categories to capture all the “essential” cooking techniques. My intention was to illustrate how having a handle on the basics can allow you to improvise more with ingredients, rather than relying on recipes.

My list is definitely Euro-derived, which aligns with the culinary education I got in school and in the restaurants I worked at, and includes these six methods¹:

Dry Heat

Pan-roast

Sauté

Slow-Roast

Wet Heat

Steam

Confit

Boil and simmer

Making a list of ingredients to apply to every technique was second nature to me. Except: Steaming. I’m not a big steaming girlie (or so I thought). I’ve always said that steaming is sad because it’s often a low-fat method, and we love fat in this house.

But steaming belonged on the list, without question. I had to commit to it, and once I did, I fell in love. The combination of high heat and high moisture??!? Fast and forgiving! Plump. Me. Up! A steamed chicken breast once seemed so tragic to me; but then I learned. A properly steamed chicken breast is juicy and cooks in minutes, and there’s no rule that says you can’t serve it with a delicious dipping sauce of chili crisp, black vinegar, and Kewpie. Just because there isn’t a lot of fat in the method, doesn’t mean I can’t add it after!

During testing, I was big enough to admit that I loved eating steamed winter squash and the dinners at Souen and Angelika Kitchen (RIP) it reminded me of. Steamed sweet potatoes? Iconic and incredible. Steamed corn? Obvious. Lobster? D’oy. Artichokes? Always. Dumplings?? Helloooooooo. Then I realized that you can start cooking something in fat, then throw a lid on it and let steaming do the rest: every single time I made spaghetti with clams this is what was happening. Steam is also what gives pressure cookers their superpower. Stovetop popcorn? Steam.

I was falling in like with steaming. Then I steamed eggs, and the relationship went to a whole new level. Talk about a perfect match.

Here are all the problems with cooking whole eggs in simmering water that steaming solves:

Eggs crack when they bounce around in the pan and then their whites explode all over the place.

Steamed eggs rest nice and secure on a steamer rack, and even if they do crack, the pressure created in the steaming environment keeps the whites from coming out. Incredible.

If you’re boiling several eggs at once, they will lower the water temperature as soon as they’re submerged, and you can’t start the timer until the water comes back up to a simmer. But the timing will always be slightly off.

Steam vapor is much hotter than simmering water, and when the eggs go in and you replace the lid, there’s no temperature drop. It’s on.

More eggs to cook means a bigger pot of water to boil.

A standard bamboo steamer can accommodate 18 eggs, easy. A collapsible metal steamer that fits in a tall stockpot will allow you to cook dozens at once. Deviled eggs, egg salad, Easter eggs, ramen party, frisée aux lardons for 10, meal prep eggs … life-changing stuff right here.

No clue how many minutes I should steam an egg to get my desired doneness.

Oh, you do now! My perfect snacking egg steams for 9 minutes. Ramen egg: 6 minutes. Hard-boiled for deviled eggs or egg salad: 11 minutes. Watch today’s video to see me cut into individual eggs that have been cooked from 6 minutes to 12 minutes. You, too, can find your dream egg.

In conclusion, I am sorry for talking so much sh*t about steaming. I am sorry for calling it “dietetic” and “depressing.” I am sorry for pretending I hadn’t been steaming for all that time, when I was absolutely steaming. We’re learning, we’re growing, we’re evolving. Most importantly: We’re eating perfect eggs.

xoCLM

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1. Are there other methods? Yes. Are there other techniques that you could draw parallels to? Yes. For example, wok-frying is similar in principle to sautéing. Slow-roasting can happen in an underground oven, as with a Mexican pibil for making barbacoa. Grilling is not on the list, because I didn’t feel it was “essential”—but it’s a dry heat method that can be fast or slow. Considering its history and global applications, grilling is more canonical than any other way of cooking. Left off sous vide because I see it as a specialty technique, but it’s an amazing way to prepare food (essentially a wet/slow method).