How to Boil an Egg in the Microwave

I know this sounds really simple but humour me for a second. I still get people telling me ‘omg! you cannot possibly put foil and egg in the microwave!’

There are only about 3-4 things I make in the microwave (in fact I only make boiled egg in the microwave when there is only one egg or two eggs involved – anymore than that I use the stove), otherwise the poor thing just sits there as a defrosting machine.

Everyone knows that putting a whole egg into a microwave is a bad idea. I, of course, tried it. Simply because it’s harmless explosion fun* (I mean let’s face it, how often do you get harmless explosion fun! Very messy though).

The idea behind boiling an egg in the microwave is that the foil covers the egg. The foil acts as protective layer which the microwave frequency does not penetrate. So when you put in a foil-wrapped egg in a cup of water, the microwave will heat up the water and not the egg itself. Hence, it takes more or less the same time to boil an egg in a microwave compared to boiling it on the stove top. The main difference is the water heats up a little faster and there’s less washing up to do.

So cover your egg individually and completely with aluminium foil. Do not leave any part of the egg shell exposed.  Try to make the foil as smooth as possible. Cover it with water in a microwave-safe mug.

Put the mug in the microwave on high. 8-10 minutes for hard-boiled, 6-7 minutes for medium and about 5 for soft-boiled egg.

Important: you must watch out that the egg always remains covered with water. There’s a possibility that there water will slosh out of the mug leaving no water. You might need to either turn the heat down or keep topping up the water. It depends on much water is in there and what container do you use. Microwave rice cooker is fabulous. Mugs are sometimes not so great.

* Do not try this at home. Because if you don’t know what you’re doing, it wouldn’t be harmless explosion fun. Although I still strongly recommend browsing through YouTube for all microwave-related fun. Watch. Don’t repeat.