How Long to Boil Eggs: Soft, Jammy and Hard-Boiled (Chart)

The times in the chart are for chicken eggs of about 60 g straight from the fridge, roughly a US large egg or an EU medium. Use enough water to cover the eggs by about an inch (2-3 cm), and after the eggs go in keep it at a gentle rather than a rolling boil. For eggs lowered into boiling water, start timing when the eggs go in; for eggs started in cold water, start timing when the water boils.

Room-temperature eggs cook faster: about a minute less for soft-boiled and 2 minutes less for hard-boiled. Bigger eggs take longer: see the size chart below. The cold-water method is less precise: heating time depends on the pan and the stove, so for a runny yolk it is more reliable to lower the eggs into boiling water.

1. Bring the water to the boil

Pour enough water into the pan to cover the eggs by about an inch (2-3 cm) and bring it to the boil. The eggs should sit in a single layer: if you are cooking a lot of them, use a wider pan, otherwise the water takes too long to come back to the boil and the timing goes off.

2. Lower in the eggs

Take the eggs out of the fridge and lower them straight into the boiling water with a slotted spoon or a large spoon so they do not hit the bottom. Start the timer when the last egg is in the water; do not wait for the water to come back to the boil.

3. Turn down the heat

When the water comes back to the boil, turn the heat down to a gentle boil. In rolling water the eggs knock against the bottom, the sides and each other, which causes cracks.

4. Stop the cooking

A minute before the time is up, get a bowl of cold water with ice ready. When the timer goes off, move the eggs into the ice water for 3-5 minutes; leave hard-boiled eggs for salads there until they are completely cold. A soft-boiled egg you will eat warm from the shell needs only 30 seconds in cold water to stop the cooking. Without cooling, the yolk keeps cooking in the residual heat, and within a couple of minutes a soft-boiled egg can firm up into a runny-centre egg.

5. Peel or serve

Serve a soft-boiled egg straight away, slicing off the top with a knife. Tap a hard-boiled egg on the table all over and roll it under your palm so the shell is covered in a network of cracks, then peel from the wide end: the air cell is there, so the membrane is easier to lift.

This is the classic home method: the eggs go into cold water, the water is brought to the boil over medium heat, and the time is counted from the boil. While the water heats up, the white already starts to set, so after the boil the eggs need less time. The British Lion egg scheme gives this scale: 3 minutes for a runny yolk and set white, 4 minutes for a slightly set yolk, 5 minutes for medium, 6 minutes for hard with a slightly soft centre and 8 minutes for firmly hard. The scale is for UK large eggs (63-73 g), with the timer started when the water is almost boiling. A 60 g egg timed from a full boil comes out slightly firmer, so if you want the yolk really runny, take it out half a minute earlier.

The main downside is that the method is imprecise. In a large pan on a small burner the water takes longer to boil, and the egg cooks further, so a runny yolk does not come out every time. Eggs that heat up together with the water also have whites that stick more firmly to the shell, so they are harder to peel.

There is also a hard-boiling method that finishes off the heat. Bring the eggs to the boil in cold water, take the pan off the heat, cover it and leave the eggs in the hot water: 9 minutes for US medium eggs, 12 for US large and 15 for US extra-large. Then move them into ice water. This is what the American Egg Board recommends: the eggs cook gently and hardly ever crack.

A soft-boiled egg has a set white and a warm runny yolk. For this, a fridge-cold egg is cooked in boiling water for 6 minutes: the white is firm all the way through and the yolk is just starting to thicken at the edge. At 5 minutes the white near the yolk is still quivering and the yolk is completely liquid: this is the softest soft-boiled egg, eaten with a spoon straight from the shell.

A soft-boiled egg is served in an egg cup: slice off the top with a knife and eat it with a spoon, dipping strips of toast into the yolk. Salt it on the plate. Runny yolks are not recommended for young children, pregnant women, older people or anyone with weakened immunity: more on this in the safety section.

After 7 minutes the white is as firm as in a hard-boiled egg, the yolk has thickened at the edge and stays runny in the centre. In Eastern European kitchens this egg is called "v meshochek", literally "in a little bag": the set white holds the semi-liquid yolk like a pouch. Unlike a soft-boiled egg, which is eaten from the shell, it is peeled like a hard-boiled egg, just more gently, and served whole or halved.

After 8 minutes the yolk turns thick like jam and does not run when you cut the egg. Jammy eggs go into ramen and other Asian soups, warm salads and avocado toast. For ramen, the eggs are often marinated in soy sauce after the ice bath: see the recipe for marinated eggs in soy sauce, and for an example of a finished dish with them, ramen soup with chicken.

A fridge-cold egg takes 10-11 minutes to hard-boil in boiling water. At 10 minutes the yolk is set but still moist in the centre; at 11 minutes it is firm all the way through. For salads where the yolk is diced, cook the eggs for 12 minutes: the yolk gets drier and does not smear when cut. There is no need to go further: by 15 minutes the white turns rubbery and the yolk dry and powdery.

For Olivier salad, okroshka, herring under a fur coat and Mimosa salad, the eggs are hard-boiled and cooled completely in cold water. A warm yolk crumbles and smears when you cut it, and hot eggs warm up the rest of the salad. For deviled eggs, use eggs that have been in the fridge for about a week: they peel more cleanly, and the halves of white stay neat.

Why the yolk turns green

A grey-green ring around the yolk appears when the egg is overcooked or cooked over too high a heat. Sulfur from the white combines with iron from the yolk, and iron sulfide forms where they meet. The egg is still safe to eat, but it smells of sulfur and the yolk becomes dry. To avoid the ring, do not cook eggs for longer than 12-13 minutes and cool them in ice water straight away.

Two things matter most for peeling: a hot start and the age of the eggs. In Milk Street's tests, eggs lowered into boiling water peeled easily, while eggs heated up together with cold water always peeled badly: the white had time to stick to the shell membrane. J. Kenji López-Alt describes the same effect. Fresh eggs peel worse too: their white is less alkaline, and during storage it becomes more alkaline and comes away more easily. The American Egg Board advises using eggs that have been in the fridge for 7-10 days for hard-boiling.

• Lower the eggs straight into boiling water: the white sets quickly and pulls away from the membrane.
• Tap the egg on the table all over and roll it under your palm: the shell will crack into small pieces and come off in large sheets.
• Start at the wide end, where the air cell is, and lift the membrane together with the shell.
• Peel under running water or in a bowl of water: the water gets under the membrane and separates it from the white.

An ice bath is first of all a way to stop the cooking. The American Egg Board and Milk Street believe it helps peeling as well, because the egg contracts slightly inside the shell. In J. Kenji López-Alt's experiments, on the contrary, chilled eggs peeled slightly worse. According to Milk Street tests, piercing the shell, baking soda in the water and even using older eggs help less than simply starting hot.

Most often the shell breaks when an egg is lowered into the pan carelessly or when a rolling boil knocks the eggs against each other. Less often, cracks appear where the shell already had invisible hairline cracks.

• Lower the eggs into boiling water with a spoon or slotted spoon rather than dropping them in.
• After the water boils again, keep it at a gentle boil, not a rolling one.
• Do not boil eggs in their shells if they were cracked before cooking: bacteria from the shell could have got inside through the crack.
• An egg that cracks in the pan can be cooked through and eaten: the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers such eggs safe.
• Post-Soviet catering standards call for salting the water, 40-50 g per 3 litres, so that the white does not leak out of cracks. There is no reliable evidence that salt or vinegar prevents the cracks themselves.

Advice on piercing the wide end with a pin is divided: the British Lion scheme recommends it to let the steam out, while the American Egg Board advises against it, because bacteria can get in through the hole and hairline cracks. There are no reliable tests, so it is simpler to lower the eggs in gently and avoid a rolling boil.

Cooking time does not grow in proportion to weight but more slowly, roughly with weight to the power of 2/3: this relationship comes from physicists at the University of Exeter. Below are the boiling-water times for fridge-cold eggs, calculated from a 60 g egg. Hard-boiled times in this chart are for a yolk firm all the way through (11 minutes for a 60 g egg). Markings differ by country, and the same words can mean different sizes: a US large egg (about 57 g) is closer to a UK or EU medium than to a UK large (63-73 g), so it is more reliable to go by weight.

Room-temperature eggs cook about 20% faster than fridge-cold ones, according to the University of Exeter calculation: about a minute less for soft-boiled and about 2 minutes less for hard-boiled. Poached eggs are best made with the freshest eggs, because their white is thicker and spreads less. For eggs you will peel (runny-centre, jammy or hard-boiled), eggs a week or so old are better.

Steaming

In America's Test Kitchen tests, fridge-cold eggs in a pan with ½ inch (about 1 cm) of boiling water, covered, take 6.5 minutes for soft-boiled and 8 minutes for jammy. For hard-boiled eggs in a steamer basket, ATK uses 13 minutes and J. Kenji López-Alt 12. Steaming time does not depend on the number of eggs, so this method is handy when you are cooking a lot. In a multicooker, use the "Steam" mode with a rack.

In a pressure cooker

For hard-boiled eggs in an electric pressure cooker, use the 5-5-5 method: pour in a cup of water, put the eggs on the rack, cook for 5 minutes at high pressure, let the pressure release naturally for 5 minutes, then open the valve and move the eggs into ice water for 5 minutes. The method was tested with 12 US large eggs (about 57-60 g). For medium eggs the author suggests 3 minutes under pressure and for extra-large 7 minutes, but these are estimates, not tested times.

In an air fryer

Eggs in their shells go into the preheated air fryer basket without water. At 120 °C (250 °F), soft-boiled eggs take 9-11 minutes, jammy 12-13 and hard-boiled 14-17; at 130 °C (270 °F), about 10 minutes for soft-boiled and 15 for hard-boiled. Models vary a lot in power, so the first time, cook a single egg as a test. After the air fryer, cool the eggs in ice water straight away too.

In a microwave

Never cook eggs in their shells in a microwave: steam builds up quickly inside and the egg explodes, sometimes on the plate or when you bite into it. A whole peeled boiled egg can also burst when reheated. In a microwave, only cook eggs out of the shell: beaten, or cracked into a cup with the yolk pierced, covered and at half power.

In an electric egg cooker

An egg cooker cooks with steam: water is poured in with a measuring cup to the "soft", "medium" and "hard" marks, and the wide end of the egg is pierced with the pin supplied, usually on the bottom of the measuring cup. When the water boils off, the appliance switches itself off.

For eggs from other birds, the guidance comes mostly from producers and retailers, so treat the times as approximate. The quail egg times are for room-temperature eggs: fridge-cold ones need the upper end.

The UK National Health Service (NHS) allows pregnant women duck, goose and quail eggs only if they are well cooked. There is no reliable data for turkey and guinea fowl eggs: go by weight. A guinea fowl egg (40-45 g) cooks like a small chicken egg, and a turkey egg (70-100 g) like a large chicken egg or a duck egg.

Even clean, intact eggs can carry salmonella inside. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) advises cooking eggs until both the white and the yolk are firm, and giving eggs to young children, pregnant women, older people and people with weakened immunity only when fully cooked. The UK makes an exception for most of these groups: British Lion hen eggs are considered safe even runny, because the hens are vaccinated against salmonella and production is regularly tested. People with severely weakened immunity should still eat only fully cooked eggs, even in the UK. The exception applies only to British hen eggs; it does not cover eggs produced elsewhere.

• Keep raw eggs in the fridge in their original carton, not in the door, where the temperature fluctuates a lot.
• Do not wash eggs before putting them in the fridge: water damages the protective layer of the shell. Wash a dirty egg just before cooking.
• Wash your hands and utensils after handling raw eggs: salmonella can be on the shell too.

Hard-boiled eggs in their shells keep in the fridge for up to 7 days if you refrigerate them within 2 hours of cooking: this is the advice of the USDA and the American Egg Board. Food Standards Scotland is more cautious and gives up to 2 days. Peeled eggs are best eaten the same day. Do not leave boiled eggs out of the fridge for more than 2 hours, or more than 1 hour when it is hotter than 90 °F (32 °C). That includes dyed Easter eggs on the holiday table.

Soft-boiled and jammy eggs are best eaten straight away. Keep marinated jammy eggs for ramen in the fridge and eat them within 2-4 days: there is no specific guidance for soft-yolk eggs, and for cooked egg dishes the USDA gives 3-4 days and Food Standards Scotland 2 days.

Freezing hard-boiled eggs is not worth it: the white turns tough and watery. Cooked yolks can be frozen separately and later grated into a salad or sauce.

100 g of hard-boiled egg contains about 155 kcal, 12.6 g of protein, 10.6 g of fat and 1.1 g of carbohydrates (USDA data). The shell makes up 9-12% of the weight, so a 60 g egg gives about 53 g of edible egg and roughly 82 kcal, a 50 g egg about 68 kcal and a 70 g egg about 95 kcal. Soft-boiled and jammy eggs have the same calories as hard-boiled. Full nutrition facts are in the table of egg calories.

• Mixing up the timing. For eggs lowered into boiling water, time from when they go in; for a cold-water start, time from the boil. Mix the two up and a soft-boiled egg comes out almost hard.
• Boiling for 15-20 minutes "to be safe". The white turns rubbery, the yolk dry, and a sulfur smell appears. 10-11 minutes in boiling water is enough, 12 for salads.
• Cooking eggs of different sizes together. With one timing, small eggs overcook and big ones stay soft. Sort the eggs by size and take the small ones out earlier: see the size chart above.

In the video, eggs cooked for different times are cut in half to show how the yolk and white change from soft-boiled to hard-boiled. The video is in Russian.