The recipe for soft boiled eggs says to cook for 13 minutes at 167F. But when do I start timing for 13 minutes?. Cooker reaches 167 but when I add the eggs which are still cool, it goes down a few degrees and takes a minute or two to get back to 167. With such a short cook time, I needed to be accurate.
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Where did you get that recipe, Carlak? Cooking Things the Hard Way?
And yes, at that high temperature you need to be accurate, but why do them your way when unboiled SV soft cooked eggs are so easy to prepare? Precise SV cooking always begins when the water bath containing the food reaches the set point temperature.
I wonder if the yolk would be even partially set after 13 minutes. You must have to scoop them out of the shell with a spoon.
One way to avoid a temperature drop is to use a container with more water. If you have three litres of water or so for your eggs (more is better), adding the eggs won’t significantly affect the water temperature because water has high heat capacity. (In plain language, that means that water won’t heat up or cool down easily, because it takes a lot of energy to change the temperature either way.)
So, use lots of water, drop your eggs in when the water is at the temperature you want, and start the timer. If you find that your eggs are are a little too firm or too runny that way, just take note of it and, next time, try for the same amount of time at one degree Celsius lower or higher. Or, alternatively, shorten or extend the time by two minutes.
You’ll quickly home in on how to cook your perfect egg that way.