The Unique Way Martha Stewart Prepares Her Favorite Eggs

Martha Stewart has a knack for making even the simplest dishes refined and elegant, with many of her favorite recipes being timeless classics like a well-made salad or a good porterhouse steak. This philosophy carries over to her Paris Las Vegas restaurant The Bedford. When the good people at Tasting Table sat down for an exclusive interview with Martha Stewart at The Bedford's opening, they got the culinary queen to open up about her new restaurant's menu and drink choices, the experience of opening her first eatery in Las Vegas, and, interestingly enough, how she likes her eggs.

In true Martha Stewart fashion, she pointed to the humble soft-boiled egg, but added that it must be delicately steamed. "You put the eggs on a rack over water in a covered pan and bring the water to a boil ... cover, and do either three minutes, three and a half minutes, four minutes, or five minutes. The eggs not only are perfect for your taste, but they also peel perfectly." We dug a little deeper and found that steamed eggs may just be the best way to make boiled eggs. Now how's that for elegant simplicity?

While not on her restaurant's brunch menu, Martha Stewart's favorite type of soft-boiled eggs are a more luxuriant version of regular soft-boiled eggs because of how they are cooked. It's a method perfected by another food icon, J. Kenji López-Alt, Stewart explained, saying, "He said he spent 10 years developing the steamed egg thing. I do it exactly the way that he told us to do it." 

J. Kenji López-Alt, with his signature scientific approach to cooking, spent over a decade unraveling the nuances of the perfect boiled egg. His search culminated in a sprawling experiment involving 96 volunteers and over 700 eggs, which he detailed in his first column for The New York Times. The winner? Steamed eggs. While there are easier ways to go about it, like soft boiling eggs in an air fryer, the gentle heat from steaming them results in tender, non-rubbery whites and luscious yolks without any hints of chalkiness. They're also easier to peel.

When asked how long she liked hers done, Stewart definitively stated, "My perfect egg is four minutes. The white is set, but the yolk is still beautiful, gold, and runny." For best results, use an egg timer and shock the eggs with cold water as soon as they are done steaming to stop the cooking process. As is the case with boiling eggs in water for the perfect jammy yolk, timing is everything.

Static Media owns and operates Chowhound and Tasting Table.