Give Your Breakfast An Elegant Touch With Coddled Eggs

With egg prices as capricious as they can be, you want to cherish those precious shells. Pamper them. And even coddle what's inside. But coddling is a cooking method in this case, rather than the exceedingly kind and caring treatment one might reserve for a princess, or at least for a TikTok-famous pet.

Coddling as an egg preparation, however, does share a certain sentiment with that red carpet treatment granted to our monarchical or internet royalty. And its slight turn from the expected makes those mornings at home a little bit lovelier. It's a dainty, languid process absent the stirring of a scramble, the whirlpool of easily ruined poached, or the acrobatics of over easy. Coddling, instead, steams the egg low and slow. But how does one steam an egg? Ask it for the infinite time what came first, itself or the chicken. All existential joking aside, you can steam, or coddle, your eggs with little more than some extra equipment.

We'll get cracking in a moment, but first, we must be the bearers of both some cheery sunny side up news, as well as some gloomier sunny side down details. On the bright side, coddled eggs are pretty easy to execute, in spite of their refined reputation. But you will need to employ those dastardly single-purpose kitchen items in their creation. The tools literally titled coddlers are petite, lidded vessels — barely any larger than the cracked eggs they'll cradle — designed for this purpose and very little else. You might come across suggested alternatives like mason jars, but they don't present the same way, and the egg can be harder to extract if you prefer to move it to a separate dish. Coddlers, rather, are intended for cooking and serving.

Once you've committed to the equipment bit, brush each coddler with a nice coat of butter before cracking an egg right into each. Salt and pepper if you wish, but nix any mixing; the whole point of coddled eggs is that they're undisturbed. That means any additional flavors — herbs, crumbled bacon, blue cheese — will also need to sit on top. Secure the coddler lids. You will then remove each to a deep saucepan filled with enough water to almost cover the coddlers, heat, and simmer for a few minutes before removing from the flame, covering, and leaving to steam for a few minutes more. Coddled eggs are ideally fashioned for toast, or any other item suited to dipping into their velvety centers.