How to Hard Boil Eggs in a Microwave
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When it became clear that Blue’s repair would take awhile, we paid him a visit at the Ford dealer to extract more clothes, jackets and hiking gear. We also removed all the perishables from the refrigerator and shut it off... once he was moved inside the garage, there’d be no solar to keep the batteries charged, and the fridge would drain them in only a few days.
One of the things we removed was a dozen eggs. We carried these eggs with us for a week or so, stowing them in the hotel refrigerator each night, then carrying them out to the trunk of the car each day. I eventually decided that this was silly. Why go to all that trouble for something we paid $1.25 for? We should either donate them to the housekeeping crew or (a revelation here) try cooking them in our hotel room. Since our breakfast usually consists of a hard boiled egg and a yogurt, it would be nice to be able to microwave those dozen eggs.
There are gizmos you can buy for hard boiling eggs. In fact, our niece, Gentry, has one and swears by it, but I didn’t currently have one, and I was convinced I could figure out how to microwave eggs in our hotel room with what we had on hand.
I searched online and, as expected, there are several foodie forum threads where someone asks whether it’s possible to microwave eggs, half a dozen people respond with things like “don’t do it.. my aunt’s friend killed herself and her cat when her microwave exploded trying this”, after which the thread meanders off to a discussion of whether you really can fry an egg on the hood of your car, and, if so, what color cars are best.
There were also a few YouTube videos and a half a dozen online recipes for accomplishing the job without causing the eggs to explode. Some claim that wrapping the eggs in aluminum foil will prevent them from exploding, which runs counter to what I always thought I knew about microwaves. Maybe the arcing reduces the energy transfer? At any rate, I didn’t have any foil and I certainly didn’t want to buy the hotel a new microwave.
Other recipes suggest making a small hole in each egg and putting them in water. Most, however, recommend immersing the eggs in salted water - adding one to two teaspoons of salt per egg. This also seemed counter intuitive to me. Adding salt to water raises the boiling temperature. Wouldn’t boiling the eggs at a higher temperature increase the likelihood of exploding them? Still, maybe it would be worth a try.
I gathered up the dozen eggs, a stack of paper coffee cups and some salt packets, and set about nuking a few eggs. I put an egg in one of the cups, added enough water to cover the egg, and tried varying amounts of salt and different amounts of time in the microwave. Here’s what I found out...
What a mess!
No Salt. Nuking the egg with no added salt results in a sensational egg-plosion after about 1:20 minutes. There was a loud THWUMP, but just to be clear, no old ladies nor their cats needed to worry about being injured in the blast, nor was the microwave damaged. Partially cooked egg guts, shell fragments and water were blown all over the insides of the microwave, however, and much of it oozed out the front when I opened the door. No big deal... twenty minutes later and it was all cleaned up.
One Salt Packet. When I added one salt packet, the egg lasted longer before exploding - 2:08 minutes. The explosion was much less spectacular - more of a lower case thwump and most of the egg remained in the cup. It only took few minutes to clean up the mess.
Two Salt Packets. Two salt packets added to the cup of water did the trick. I microwaved the egg a full five minutes with no explosion.
So why does salt prevent the eggs from exploding? After more research, I think I’m beginning to understand the reason. Microwaves cause the water molecules in food to vibrate, producing heat that cooks the food. That's why foods that are high in water content, like fresh vegetables, can be cooked more quickly than other foods. The yolk and white of an egg are mostly water. When an egg is cooked in a microwave, the microwaves pass right through the shell, superheating the yolk and egg white, building the internal pressure until it explodes. Putting the egg in salt water prevents the egg from superheating in two ways. First, microwaves are partially blocked by salt ions, preventing them from reaching the egg. Second, salt water heats more slowly in a microwave than pure water, causing the egg to cook more gradually... more like boiling an egg on a stovetop.
I only had to sacrifice a few more eggs to figure out the correct cooking time. The final tally: eggs exploded: 3; undercooked eggs: 2; edible eggs: 7. Here’s the recipe...
P.S.
Our good friend George Swallow provided a terrific response to one of my Blue Views a couple years ago on cetane diesel additives... and his response was better written and a lot more interesting than my blog. Following the recipe below is his response, from an accountant’s point of view, to this blog, and again, it is well written and quite funny. Hope you enjoy it.
All that’s needeD: water, salt, a cup… and the egg
How to Hard Boil an Egg in Your Hotel Room
Put an egg in a paper coffee cup
Add water to cover the egg
Add two packets of salt (~ 1/4 tsp), and stir to dissolve salt. This is the minimum amount... you can add more to be doubly sure the egg doesn’t explode.
Microwave on high for 3 minutes
Leave egg in hot water for an additional 3 minutes
The microwave needs to have a rotating turntable
Notes:
If the microwave doesn’t have a turntable (or it doesn’t work, as in our last hotel room), stop the microwave after each minute of cooking time, stir the water and rotate the cup 1/3 rotation. Otherwise, the cup will scorch and start leaking.
The water can be reused for additional eggs if you are cooking more than one.
The finished product.
Hope you enjoy them.
And here is George’s response:
Dear David,
Good Cop / Bad Cop
Good Angel / Bad Angel
I am sure there are other possibilities to the above comparisons. So what does all that mean and why am I sending this to you? I read your blog today and now I feel like it is another battle for David vs Goliath or rather David vs The Accountant. Yes, it's Cetane Boosters all over again, only with eggs.
Where to start? So many things come to mind, so I guess I will just list my thoughts in no particular order.
What did that microwave ever do to you that you felt compelled to explode partly uncooked egg all over it's insides. Are you sure that you did not leave even the slightest hint of egg somewhere within it's bowels. Just a hint of missed experiment might sicken an unsuspecting next user of that machine. And three partially burnt cups had to leave a bit of a stink. Perhaps your nose might have thought the smell of burnt cups was totally gone, but was it? If the maid smelled them and turned you in to hotel authorities, would that put you on some sort of blacklist for that hotel chain. Worse, is there a universal blacklist that when circulated would put you on a blacklist for every hotel chain?
I am pretty sure you paid for the eggs, but did the hotel "take it on the chin" and sacrifice the cost of wasted cups, salt and water? How did you clean up the mess? Did you use hotel napkins or worse, did you use their towels and did any egg get left that will make it difficult for the staff to get suspect towels clean? Speaking of eggs, you mention that you had a dozen eggs and yet the picture shows only a "six pack". Sure, you feel you solved the problem of how to make the perfect hard boiled egg in a microwave, but does that system work perfectly for different brands of eggs. Would a chicken's diet make a difference how an egg "cooks"? Did you experiment with room temperature eggs vs eggs from the refrigerator. Perhaps you could have frozen the eggs and maybe in that case you would not need to use salt. In this accountant's humble opinion, your experiment needed to go a lot further.
Does the brand of microwave make a difference? How many watts should it have? Does the square footage of the inside of the microwave make a difference? You can see from just those three questions that there is a lot more research needed to be done. What about outside barometric pressure, how many feet above sea level is the microwave, and maybe more importantly was it operating at peak performance. How many other experiments might other patrons have done in that microwave before you got to it. Perhaps someone might have done previous damage trying to roast a chestnut in it or my favorite question about a microwave is could a firework placed inside a microwave actually explode without lighting the fuse? I actually just made that up, but it might just become my favorite question regarding a microwave. Yes it will.
If you use water from the Pacific Ocean, would that eliminate the need to use salt? If Pacific Ocean water works, would it also work with water from the Atlantic Ocean? If you ever get Blue back from the mechanic, item 4 might be a good next step to try. Of course you would need to be sure the eggs were from the proper coast as well....I think.
After you draw your conclusions about chicken eggs, you should consider expanding your tests to include duck eggs or eggs from some other bird-like creatures.
Did this experiment affect your marriage? You must be thinking that is a stupid question. but let me explain. In Saturday's Blue View you finished with this - So as not to leave you sitting on the edge of your seats for an entire week, I’ve pre-empted Marcie’s next blog to tell you all about it. See you Monday. Was Marcie okay with being pre-empted? Oh, I'm sure she said it was fine, but deep down, was she? I suggest you take her out for a nice meal to apologize. Maybe buy her a steak, but whatever you do, don't get her any eggs. Just sayin'
Your favorite accountant,
George