How to steam hard boiled eggs: The Healthiest and Tastiest

Making hard boiled eggs seems to be the easiest food you can cook. Meanwhile there are so many egg-specific cookers out there you wonder if it’s true. Of course you can find an egg steamer for as little as 15 to 24 dollars, but why buy a cooker for one ingredient, when you can use one steamer for all your steaming needs, however big?

The question should be : How to make hard boiled eggs so it doesn’t have this horrific smell?

The food steamer I use, the Vitaliseur, can steam your eggs with the taste, and without the small. More than that, it can preserve the nutrition. 

Gentle steaming: Learn the best way to cook eggs and more

“I do want to be healthier, perhaps to start steam cooking, but I do not know how to start”.

That’s what changing the way we eat is so darn hard. It may require taking a class, or may be watching countless videos on how that works. After that, trying to replicate what we saw on a screen can feel overwhelming! That’s where my “How Do I Steam” Youtube Video Series come in. But first let’s chat a bit about the steaming tool I use, the Vitaliseur, and it’s competitors.

“Gentle” steam cooking, like I call it, is actually very simple – even easy. It does not require a cooking school degree. You can learn from videos or recipe cards.

Learn to cook eggs… and much much more

The goal of this blog is that once you have been introduced to the Vitaliseur, you may be able to adapt other meals you are used to making to with your food steamer. Down the line, you may experiment with other taste combinations that I may know nothing about ! ( Please, do share!)

I was raised closed to the Mediterranean sea. So needless to say, I am heavily influenced by the mediterranean diet. However, I do not subscribe to any specific diet outside of that: I am neither vegetarian, nor vegan, pescatarian, or carnivore. I am eating everything, with an emphasis on natural, preferably seasonal and organic if I can afford, from scratch meals. I am committed to healthy and tasty wholesome meals for my family, and indirectly for you!

To this end, my food steamer is my best ally. It helps me implement daily the cooking method which I argue in a recent post is the healthiest cooking method.

The goal of this blog is to help people learn a new healthier and tastier way to cook, and if possible at all, to help them understand that they don’t need to outsource all the cooking to restaurants!

Steamed Cuisine Lifestyle

The Gentle Steaming Method Cleanses and Quickly Cooks Your Foods

Many tools that are used to “steam” food: steam baskets,  plastic electric steam cookers, pressure cookers, the couscous makers, bamboo steam cookers. 

The steam cooking method I am using is gentle steam cooking. This type of steam cooking let the steam flow freely around your foods and gently cook them by going IN ( water can’t penetrate food, steam can!). The overall temperature of the steamer remains low, at 202°F /95°C, below boiling point. Because the steam remains “gentle” it does not destroy the foods’ nutrient density. Besides, by giving your food a steam bath, it also detoxifies them from many toxines.

The Vitaliseur, the steam cooker I use, was inspired from the bamboo steam cookers from Asia, Chinese steam cookers as well as couscous maker from North Africa. Want to learn more about why I promote this team cooker above all else? Stay tune for my upcoming article! 

The Vitaliseur is made of a large pot or tank, covered by a steamer insert or sieve with large hole allowing for abundant vapor circulation. This helps it being a very efficient cooker! The steamer is topped with a rounded lid, a dome. This shapes allows makes room for the vapor to freely flow around your food to cook it faster.

More info on my “Steamer” page Interested in buying? Get 10% off and no European sales tax ( at check out) if you live in the US or Canada, with code “steamedcuisine”. Get 10% off from European countries. (Any issues with the code? Contact me at bernadette@steamedcuisinelifestyle.com )

Why steam eggs?.

If anything can convince you of adopting steam cooking as your main cooking method, it’s steaming hard boiled eggs!

Ever since my mom got a steam cooker, we’ve enjoyed cooking of “soft boiled” or “hard boiled eggs” all the more when they were steamed. In my experience, it’s the best method for cooking eggs.

Key Advantages

• they taste better, 
• they don’t smell! 
• Another advantage is that the sieve of the Vitaliseur is large enough to steam more about a dozen egg at a time: you won’t need a second batch!
• Less water waste: you can keep the water to steam your other foods after steaming eggs.

The best proof you ever will need is cooking a hard boiled egg in the steam cooker and tasting it!

Nutrition

As for anything, there is one cooking tool I use all the time, and steaming eggs is one of the things it’s great at. So I don’t own any other fancy egg-cooking equipment !  Secondly, I find eggs don’t smell at all when they are cooked in there.

Mostly, I want to make sure my eggs are not exposed to extra high temperatures. Many nutrients start degrading above certain temperatures. Omega 3 fatty acid are among them, and they are in high concentration in egg yolk. So, I would rather make sure they don’t get overheated. Staying runny is one of the main signs that omega 3 haven’t heated too much. The cooking temperature is my second insurance.

The pot

No need of fancy egg cooking equipment ! You can finally go clear up your cabinets from steaming basket, egg cookers, rice cookers and baby food makers ! 

The Vitaliseur steam cooker will steam all you need to steam: eggs, vegetables, meat, grain, cook cakes or bread too! Just look at my recipe categories to get an idea!

The Vitaliseur is designed to make sure the bottom of the steamer insert does not touch the water, so the water does not touch your food and boil it. It also leaves enough room between the water and the sieve to build enough steam to steam efficiently.

Steaming Eggs

In my Youtube Video “How Do I Steam Eggs?” , I show you in a few minutes the simple steps of cooking eggs from turning on the steam cooker with water in the tank. Then I cook the eggs ( 4 to 9 minutes, 10-11 minutes to get a very hard boiled eggs if the egg came from the fridge), and I open the egg to show you.

Easy 4-steps process

Steaming eggs is as easy as boiling eggs.

It’s an easy 4 steps method, using a large egg:

• Take out your fresh eggs out of the fridge, so they reach room temperature;
• Simply fill up the tank of your steam cooker with preferably hot water. For eggs only, one inch is enough water. I generally have 2 inches in the tank: more water, more steam! And you can cook other ingredients right after. If you have a thermos with pre warmed water, that can help speed up the process!  Turn on the stove on high heat, and wait until the steam cooker steams abundantly.
• Once the steam cooker is hot and steamy, open the rounded lid and check the amount of steam. There is no pressure: you should just see the steam flow around. Then place the desired number of eggs into the steam basket/sieve. Close the lid. Turn on the timer. 
• Prepare an ice bath with ice cubes to cool the egg. Personally I just use a bowl with cold water when I cool down soft boiled eggs, it is enough to cool them quickly. However an ice bath is better to peel hard boiled eggs.
• Remove the eggs with a ladle or a slotted spoon, and place them into a bowl of ice water. Let them cool down for a couple minutes before eating.
• Once the eggs have been cooked, remove from the steam cooker and put all eggs in a bowl with cold water.
• ENJOY!

Steamed Eggs Cooking Times:

Cook time for steamed eggs and boiled eggs is similar. Sometimes it takes even less time.

Steaming time:

• 4 minutes for very runny, still some liquid egg white;
• 6 minutes for a cooked white, but fully runny yolk ( my perfect spot for breakfast);
• 7 minutes for a cooked white, but slightly taken yolk; ( great for runny egg sauce, or to make deviled eggs);
• 8 minutes for harder yolk, but still soft inside ( great for thicker egg sauces, or cut in two on a toast);
• 9 minutes for almost hard ( great for picnic, the yolk won’t run everywhere but it is not die hard!);
• 10 minutes for fully hard “steamed”, the equivalent of hard boiled eggs, without the smell.

Serve as desired ! 

You can make egg sauce, deviled eggs, egg salad to go, steamed egg in a bowl ( we call it “oeuf cocotte” in french) or just have your soft boiled egg for breakfast!

Next time, we steam broccoli 🙂 Bon appétit!