Here is my tale of woe.
There's a lot of good stuff to read about eggs and sous vide. Serious Eats provides a detailed description of how eggs respond to temperature, as does this guy, who does it specifically in the context of sous vide, and this site, which gives a nice breakdown of the proteins, etc. Finally, this post received a comment about a finishing technique that I try to replicate here.
So I read all this stuff, and I thought I was good to go. As I did in my comparatively successful rib smoking adventure, I reasoned that if I could get the science right, then the hardware didn't matter, and the thermos container could work nicely.
I decided at the outset that I'd cook two eggs to 145 degrees for 45 minutes. That's enough time for the temperature gradient to even out, and for semisolid whites and yolks. In fact, this guy points out that others have described the 145-degree egg as the perfect sous vide egg.
Ok, here we go.
 | We have this Rubbermaid cooler that we take to the beach sometimes. It's good enough for holding lunch and snacks for two cool for a whole beach day. The eggs can go right in; the shell means they don't need a plastic seal. Since there's no vacuum, it's not really sous vide, but that's a technicality. |
 | This pot is 3.5 quarts. I used the candy thermometer to know precisely when the water is at 145 degrees. I let it go a hair's width over 145. |
 | Ok the water's poured in and the timer's set for 45 minutes. How do I pass the time? |
 | I pass the time by some turkey bacon! As a side note, turkey bacon doesn't have that much fat. So unlike regular bacon, it benefits from a quick spray of oil before cooking. This way it gets darker and firmer. |
 | 45 minutes has gone by. I scooped the eggs into this small pot of boiling water and left them for exactly 60 seconds, before depositing them in a lukewarm water bath. The idea is that 60 seconds in boiling water would further solidify the whites, but not affect the 145-degree yolks. I think of this the same way I think about giving sous vide steaks a quick sear on a very hot grill. During that 60 seconds, I checked the temperature of the water remaining in the cooler. 125 degrees. That's not good. Which was unexpected, because every few minutes I checked and the cooler never felt hot. The red sides and bottom remained room temperature to the touch, and the white lid felt only a little warm. So I was surprised it lost so much heat. |
 | This is the result of egg #1. It isn't the perfect sous vide egg. It's what the professionals call "raw." Bummer. |
 | My toast and bacon are awfully lonely. The careful observer will notice there are three slices of bacon on this plate, but four in the pan pictured above. The observer who knows me will realize I can't sit by cooked bacon for 45 minutes without eating it. |
 | Perhaps things are salvageable. Using the small pot, I started with new water and heated it to 150 degrees. Egg #2 is retained, and egg #3, still raw, is pressed into service. As with the grill with the ribs, a gas stove is remarkably good at maintaining a consistent temperature. After heating the water to 150, I cut the heat to as low as possible. Every ten minutes or so, the temp reached 153 or so. I stirred in a little cold tap water to bring the temp back down to 150. For good measure, I left them in the 150 degree bath for an hour. |
 | These are the results. Egg #2 looks a little better than egg #3, but both actually look pretty good (#3 had some speckles, #2 did not, so I could tell them apart). The whites are partially solid, a bit runny, and defninitely slippery. The yolks are still soft and moist and not at all crumbly. A little salt and paprika, and these eggs were not bad. This isn't my favorite mode of preparation; I would ideally prefer a more solid white and more runny yolk, something more like a perfect poached egg (which I have consistently failed to do at home). But it's pretty similar to the "perfect sous vide egg" described before, and it wasn't even done sous vide. I just wish I had some toast to eat them with. I ate the toast and bacon while waiting for eggs #2 and #3 to cook, and that was my last roll. |
Post game analysis:
There are lots of places I could have gone wrong. I suspect i didn't use enough water at the beginning. I think I'd try it again with at least three times as much. Also, maybe the cooler leaked more heat than I thought, and that it's just not up to the task.
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