This Is How You Should Be Soft-Boiling Your Eggs

There's something so decadent about an egg with a perfectly runny yolk. While there are tons of dishes that showcase that runny yolk, eating a soft-boiled egg by dunking toast points into the center just can't be beat. It's a simple, yet delicious breakfast. If your eggs are overcooked, however, then your experience might be ruined; and boiling eggs can be surprisingly tricky.

If you're someone who detests solid egg yolks, then you probably did not intend to hard-boil them. However, it's easy to get busy in the kitchen after putting eggs on to boil and completely forgetting about them until it's too late. Fortunately, if you can hard-boil an egg, you can definitely make soft-boiled eggs — it's just a matter of timing and abruptly ending the cooking process. If you employ this one trick and have a kitchen timer on hand, then accidental hard-boiled eggs can be a mistake of the past, never to happen again.

To make perfect soft-boiled eggs, Delish recommends you place your eggs in a pot of cold water and bring them to a boil. Once the water boils, turn off the heat and place a lid on the top. Start your timer for six minutes, and when it goes off, transfer the piping hot eggs into a bowl of ice water. This will stop the cooking process, resulting in perfectly runny yolks inside of your soft-boiled eggs.

Leave the eggs in the ice bath until they are cool enough to handle, which should take about five minutes in the water (via Food Network). Afterward, you can either peel the eggs and use them in place of notoriously tricky poached eggs in most dishes, or you can serve them in egg cups and let everyone crack their own. Keep in mind that if you want to peel your soft-boiled eggs, it's best to use older eggs which the outlet states are easier to peel. So the next time you make soft-boiled eggs, simply remember to set a six-minute timer and have an ice bath ready for perfect results every time.