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CookMatey

Cooking guide

How to Boil Eggs

Soft, jammy or hard-boiled — exact timings for perfect boiled eggs and easy peeling.

  • 3 min read
  • 5 steps
  • Easy
Halved boiled eggs on toast

Boiling an egg sounds simple, but timing is everything. Starting the eggs in already boiling water gives you the most predictable results, and an ice bath afterwards makes them much easier to peel.

Step by step

  1. Step 1: Boil the water

    Bring a saucepan of water deep enough to cover the eggs by 2 cm to a gentle boil.

  2. Step 2: Lower in the eggs

    Use a spoon to gently lower room-temperature eggs into the water.

    Tip: Cold eggs straight from the fridge are more likely to crack — add 30 seconds to the time.

  3. Step 3: Time it

    6 minutes for a runny yolk, 7 minutes for jammy, 10 minutes for hard-boiled.

  4. Step 4: Cool quickly

    Move the eggs to a bowl of cold or iced water for 2 minutes.

  5. Step 5: Peel

    Tap all over to crack the shell, then peel under running water starting from the wider end.

Put it into practice