My toddler loves a soft boiled egg and soldiers and when he wants them for breakfast he asks for ‘dippy eggs’. The name has stuck I am happy to say :).

The problem was that I had always cooked hard boiled eggs, using this method, growing up. So I had to ask my wife if she knew how to cook a runny egg. Ironically, even though she only eats poached eggs, she remembered a recipe from BabyMac’s blog (see it here).

I gave it a try and was amazed at the results. Now I cook a couple of eggs for the kids’ brekkie (that is what we call breakfast in Australia) and a sneaky extra one for dad. Add a couple of pieces of toast to make “soldiers” and you are done in under 10 minutes!

We try and source ethically produced eggs with middling success (we now have a good supplier in Gale Force Farm Organic Free Range Eggs ) but that is a story for another day.

 STEPS:

1. Gather the ingredients
2. Boil the eggs and cook the toast
3. Serving

You will need:

• Ingredients:
  • several slices of toast per person
  • one chicken egg per person
  • butter, margarine or butter blend for the “soldiers”
• Equipment
  • a chopping board
  • a butter knife to cut the top off the eggs, butter the toast and cut them into “soldiers”
  • a small saucepan
  • a toaster
  • a timer
  • a small plate for the toast
  • several egg cups

Gather the ingredients

Steps:

1. Put aside a few slices of bread for each person and pop them in the toaster but don’t start toasting them yet.
2. Take an egg or two per person out of the fridge and let them start to warm up to room temperature.
3. Take the butter out of the fridge.
4. Fill a saucepan with water, enough to cover the eggs (one layer deep). Bring it to a rolling boil.
5. Set your timer to 5 minutes.

Boil the eggs and cook the toast

Steps:

1. I used a slotted spoon to lower the eggs into the boiling water and pressed start on the timer. Be very careful not to put a crack in the shells.
2. At 2 minutes left, lower the bread into the toaster. We have our toaster set to make semi-frozen bread into golden brown toast in two minutes.
3. At 0 minutes take all of the eggs out off the boiling water.
4. Butter the toast and cut into 1.5cm wide strips.

Here is a video of what I think a rolling boil looks like:

Serving

My wife says commit when it comes to taking the top off an egg. Take a butter knife and slice the top part off. It isn’t so much a chopping motion as it is a slow but forceful movement from one side to the other all the way through. Previously I used a teaspoon to crack it all the way around and then scoop off the top but never again. My wife’s way is so much better as you get less broken shell in the yolk :).

A very important note: take the tops off all of the eggs. If you don’t they will continue to cook past the runny egg stage that we are trying to achieve.

Thanks to Beth from BabyMac,

PK