A few days ago I saw the below photo in my facebook newsfeed.

I had never heard of hard boiling an egg this way and it seems many others hadn’t either. As a proponent of using the oven for bacon I saw this as opportunity for breakfast to take over my oven on days that I need to step away or use my stove top for other things. It’s always nice to have options. But would the claims that the photo made ring true?

We just picked up our Farm to Family USA, urban supported ag, share and had fresh eggs from Pampatike Organic Farm. I don’t know if there is a difference if you are using farm fresh vs grocery store eggs and I am not really willing to find out.

So the post claims

1. Oven eggs are tastier

2. Oven eggs are easier to peel

and from facebook followers

3. the concern for explosion

4. too hot for oven in the summer months

Let’s get started. I put 3 eggs in the water bath and 3 eggs in a dark muffin tin. I don’t know if a light vs a dark muffin tin matters any except with cooking time, but that can be a different experiment for a different day. They each would have the same length of time in ice water after being cooked before being peeled.

The Results

water bath (L) vs oven cooked (R)

Tastier: Water Bath, in consistancy and texture. The oven cooked came out chewy/rubbery and the yolks were extremely inconsistant ranging from raw center to dried out.

Easier to Peel: Water Bath, most defintely. And when cut in half the oven cooked whites were “sticky” and crumbly 2 out of 3 times

Explosion: None, but they did sweat

Too hot for oven: Doesn’t even matter because I would recommend sticking with a water bath to boil your eggs

*On an extra note the oven cooked did get marked by the oven as well (see picture) and there was a lack of consistancy in yolk in oven cooked

Oven Cooked Eggs markings

My son did like this experiment as now he gets to have deviled eggs. He also eyed the tray of eggs while I wrote this and went to steal/eat the prettier, water bath eggs.

 Photo: Flickr