****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I will begin by sayinng that I have NO REGRETS about buying this thing!First time I saw someone use an egg cooker was at work about 20 yrs ago. I thought that is the silliest thing I've ever seen. What a gimmick! How hard is it to boil eggs? Well I've learned, it can be very difficult. To make matters worse, I live at high altitude where water boils at a lower temp. Thus, getting the science right is a challenge: Standard sea level recipes don't work up here. And I don't have time to sit and watch eggs boil. It shouldn't be this difficult!I love jammy eggs. That's really my prefered way of eating boiled eggs. How do I define "jammy"? It's a completely cooked egg white, about a millimeter of custardy yolk, and the rest is creamy and runny. Sadly, while trying to achieve this on my (gas) stove using boiling water in a pot, my success rate to actually getting JAMMY EGGS is about 1 per dozen at best. Extremely frustrating, especially when they are undercooked. I have tried the following techniques: Bringing the eggs to room temp first and/or starting the eggs in cold water first, or adding them when there is a rapid boil and cooking for a certain amount of time, or adding them to a rapid boil, shutting off the heat, and letting them sit in a covered pot. Oh yeah, I've also tried sous vide (this method works, but is hugely impractical if I only want to eat 2 to 3 eggs for breakfast). I am currently on a diet plan where I eat a ton of eggs, so the fact that I only have a success rate of about 8% is extremely frustrating. I was extremely frustrated...and kinda desperate.It was time to suck up my pride and my skepticism and see if these egg cookers really work. I heard that they are plug and play and that the results are consistent. But a lot of the models and reviews were around their ability to cook mainly hard boiled eggs very well. What about my jammy eggs? Will I ever find the solution to consistently perfect jammy eggs every time? Or am I just asking too much from the egg world?Along comes the Chef's Choice egg cooker. Pricier than most, but the process is timer based, not water level based as other models had. I was especially interested in it's claim that it has a variable cook feature: You can cook soft, med, or hard boiled eggs in one batch. I got it on a Black Friday sale for a bit of a discount, and decided it's time to give this thing a test drive. I was still skeptical.This morning, hubby and I tested it out. We set it right smack on MED setting and filled it with water. We tried 2 eggs first. The alarm when finished is LOUD, but I like that. I can be in my office at the front of the house and hear it easily in the kitchen, which is a plus. Again, I want to know when it's done cuz I don't want overcooked eggs! The cooker doesn't stop automatically when it beeps either. You actually have to manually shut it off.We noticed minimal water was used when our eggs were done cooking. A quick plunge in cool water to stop the cooking and we dug in. EASIEST EGGS TO PEEL EVER. How? What is this sorcery? And we didn't even have to prick the bottom of the eggs to make a hole first? Wow! And oddly satisfying.You probably already know how this story ends. The eggs were cooked essentially perfectly. And again, so easy to peel! So delicious! We inhaled the first two. The water in the cooker was still hot so we decided to see what would happen if we immediately made a second batch. Would it throw the timer off? I backed it down to one hashmark below MED (that would be a "9" on the slider scale) to see what would happen. Turned it back on and away it went. Result? Could an egg be cooked even more perfect? Yes, YES it can! So from now on, this is my setting: a 9 on the scale and the ideal jammy egg every time! Why is this so simple? Why have I been a fool for 40+ years?So in conclusion, here is my summary:a) If you eat a lot of boiled eggs and you want a quick, reliable way to make them (unattended) that doesn't require standing over a stove. then buy this cooker.b) If you struggle with peeling eggs after they're done and are sick and tired of eating warm but mangled looking eggs, then buy this cooker.c) If you're a family where everyone likes their boiled eggs cooked in different ways, then buy this cooker.d) If you're a gadget lover, then buy this cooker.e) If you're not a gadget lover but are willing to invest in simple technology that will last seemingly forever, then buy this cooker.Note: I haven't tried the poach feature yet, but I suspect the results will be equally impressive. I don't have struggles with making poached eggs so my goal was to solve my jammy boiled egg crisis. Also, there is a very faint mark on the slider knob that is hard to see when you're positioning it to your desired setting. I took a dab of white nail polish and made a line over it so that it's easier to see it and position the slider to the exact setting that I want. This step is not necessary at all but it makes it easier for me to see and makes me feel better.Lastly, be careful when removing the lid. Like the warnings say: the steam underneath can scorch you if you're not careful. Other than that, I'm embarassed that it took me so long to get one of these. Could've saved me dozens of eggs and years of disappointment.
