Onsen Tamago, Defined in the Kitchen

1.5 weeks after my return from Japan, the recipe for the world's greatest egg, the onsen tamago has been discovered without the use of an immersion circulator. Onsen tamago actually comes in two varieties, distinguised by the texture of the yolk. Variety one, lets call it the "topper" in codespeak, is what you would use to top off a pasta dish, a burger, anything you want a thickened, runny yolk on top of. The egg holds its shape out of shell, and when the yolk is broken, a thick, molten wave of goodness oozes out of it. Number two, lets call it the "spreader." Nicknamed spreader, not because it spreads out, but rather should you want to, you could cut the yolk much like a stick of butter and spread it on your bread. The yolk holds it shape when broken, but is not solid. It's quite amazing. Both of these preparations can be reached pretty easily from the same point. And that point is.

25 mins in a 63-67 degree celcius water bath. How do you get this water bath? Using an electric probe thermometer of course, I heated up a good quantity of water in my cast iron dutch oven. Both water and thick cast iron are excellent for maintaining an even temperature throughout the cooking process. At the same time I turned my oven to the lowest setting (200F) Once it hit 68 degrees, I put the ROOM TEMP LARGE eggs in and waited for the temperature to stabilize once again at around 66/67. At this point I covered the dutch oven and stuck it in the oven. The water temp dropped slowly to 64 degrees, held, then climbed up to 68 right around the 25 minute mark. No adjustments to the oven or eggs were necessary. At this point, all the eggs are "toppers." Place all eggs in an ice bath immediately to get the temperature down. For "spreaders" remove after 1 minute and place in the fridge. The point of the ice bath is to stop the whites from cooking anymore because both the whites of toppers and spreaders are the same consistancy, you just want the yolks of the spreaders to get a little more solid...