Egg cutting

[chef in the making]

How do you cut an egg shell so that you can place the cooked product back inside?

 

[jkath]

I suppose you'd want to break a few extra eggs till you got nice halves, (save them for another purpose), then use the smoother side of an emery board to file the sharp edges down. Wash the egg and thoroughly dry. Then you can fill your egg cups with your cooked goodies. Hope that helped

 

[Gretchen]

I think you can sort of tap the end gently until it cracks. Then take a pair of scissors and cut around the edge to make a hole. I saw this done on Behind the Bash for a big "do".

 

[grumblebee]

You can also buy egg shell cutters/toppers specifically for this purpose. I have one that I use to cut the tops of my soft boiled eggs. Here is a link to one similar to the one I have.

 

[Michael in FtW]

You could do what I've seen some chefs do on TV and just use a knife and carefully whack around the end of the egg - but it comes out rather jagged. So, if you are looking for something smother I would go with an "cutter type" egg topper like grumblebee showed (around $5). Another version along this line is made by Zyliss (about $15), and one from Italy (about $30).

If you want to go pro and get an even smoother cut - then you need one of the "bell" shaped toppers, and they will cost you more. On the low end is the "Clack" egg topper (about $25-$30 but seems to be only available online from the UK or Germany) or the iNOX which uses a plunger and cost anywhere from $45-$95 depending on where you buy it.

Only the bell type cutters mention being suitable for raw as well as cooked eggs. The cutter types only mention "cooked" eggs - don't know how they would work on raw eggs - maybe grumblebee could shed some light on that.

 

[Aurora]

Depending upon how fancy you wish to get with the presentation you may wish to look into something like a Dremel Rotary Tool (http://www.dremel.com/en-us/tools/tool-category.htm?H=188091) to saw through the egg shells. I envisioned a presentation of cutting the egg shell around the long perimeter rather than the narrow diameter.

You may wish to poke a hole in the top and bottom and blow out the contents first.

 

[Michael in FtW]

Have you ever tried to cut a raw egg shell, with the raw egg still inside it, with a Dremel tool, Aurora?

 

[Aurora]

That's why I included the last sentence.

You may wish to poke a hole in the top and bottom and blow out the contents first.

I dare say that you will have the same problem cutting the shell of any raw egg with a fancy egg cutter or a rotary tool. That is, one **** of a mess! You'd have shell fragments and bits all through the raw egg. I'm rather sure that the sizzor type egg cutters are intended to be used on cooked eggs.

 

[Waterbury Paco]

I saw a perfectly soft boiled egg in shell on an episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman at the Grand Hotel in St. Petersburg, Russia. The edges of the shell were so perfectly smooth that the emptied smaller portion was used on edge decoratively! I suppose the chef could've made the perfect shell separately, Emory board and all, then loaded the newly cooked egg into it, but was hoping an all in one solution possible.

 

[pacanis]

Well the home of Fabergé eggs... what do you expect?

 

[GotGarlic]

Well the home of Fabergé eggs... what do you expect?

lol.

 

[Jing]

One of my most memorable restaurant dishes featured softly scrambled egg with chopped chives in a perfect whole egg shell with just a tiny lid cut off the shell and replaced to lean gently over the top. When you lifted up the lid, you found caviar on top of the scrambled egg. The egg was served in a traditional plain egg cup.

It was a brilliant presentation...but I have no idea how they did it so beautifully.

 

[Aunt Bea]

Try this little stocking stuffer!

Egg Topper | Williams-Sonoma

 

[Jing]

Oooh I love! Bit pricey for a stocking stuffer though.

 

[Caslon]

I've seen soft boiled eggs eaten in the shell...in b&w movies, lol. I've always wanted to try them that classy, room service way.

 

[RPCookin]

I've seen soft boiled eggs eaten in the shell...in b&w movies, lol. I've always wanted to try them that classy, room service way.

I grew up with soft boiled eggs eaten in the shell in an egg cup. My grandmother had a set of egg cups (I sometimes wonder who ended up with them - I never saw them again after she passed away), and she taught us very early on how to properly eat a soft boiled egg. I'm not sure that I liked the egg so much as it was fun to do.

Take the spoon and gently crack a ring around the pointy end about 1/2 inch down, pop the shell off, pick off one or two loose shell fragments and eat. It was like getting to play with your food without being chastised for it.

This is what my Gramma's looked like. The big end is for hard boiled eggs - the small end is for soft.

 

[Addie]

Why didn't they have all these neat little kitchen tools when I was raising my family? Of course Woolworth's only carried the least expensive items. And with four kids, it became my favorite store.

 

[Jing]

OMG I have never thought of eating soft boiled eggs any other way but in an egg cup! How do you eat them if you don't use an egg cup??

Rick, I have a couple of egg cups like that, but we use the large end to keep a second egg warm while we eat the first. We always have two soft boiled eggs....and toast soldiers on the side, of course!

 

[Steve Kroll]

OMG I have never thought of eating soft boiled eggs any other way but in an egg cup! How do you eat them if you don't use an egg cup??

We always had them on toast or hash browns when I was a kid.

 

[Jing]

We always had them on toast or hash browns when I was a kid.

That must involve a lot of rather messy unpeeling for the person serving, surely?? Doesn't the yolk run all over the place if you aren't careful??