Egg timer

How long do you boil an egg?

From water already at a rolling boil, with large eggs straight from the fridge: six minutes gives a runny yolk, seven is jammy, nine is soft-set but still tender, eleven is firm, and thirteen is fully hard and pale enough to mash. Below six you are into dippy-egg territory, where the white itself is only just set and three to four minutes is the whole job. The presets here are labelled with those outcomes rather than left as bare minute counts, because the number was never the thing you wanted to choose. The full boiled egg timing chart adds a cold-start column and explains why published times disagree.

Start the clock when the water returns to a proper boil after the eggs go in, not when you drop them. That gap is thirty to sixty seconds and it is the main reason the same timing gives different results on different days.

Do the times change for egg size or altitude?

Yes to both. Medium eggs come out a little sooner than large, and extra-large need a little longer. At altitude water boils below 100°C, so the heat driving the cooking is lower: New Mexico State University's high-altitude cooking guide notes that a soft-boiled egg taking three minutes at sea level can take five to six minutes at high elevation, so sea-level timings do not transfer above about 5,000 feet. Eggs going in at room temperature rather than fridge cold also shave time off.

Why do my hard boiled eggs have a green ring?

Iron in the yolk reacting with sulphur in the white, which happens when eggs cook too long or cool too slowly. It is harmless and it tastes slightly of sulphur. Staying at eleven to thirteen minutes rather than fifteen prevents most of it, and moving the eggs straight into ice water stops the carryover cooking that causes the rest.

How do I make eggs easier to peel?

Two things do most of the work: starting them in boiling water rather than bringing them up from cold, and an ice bath the moment they come out. Both encourage the membrane to separate from the white. Older eggs peel more easily than very fresh ones, which is the one variable a timer cannot help with.