How to choose an egg cooker: what to look for? Reviews of the best models

If you reg­u­lar­ly like to cook egg dish­es, such as steamed omelets or poached eggs, then the eas­i­est way to do this is with an egg cook­er. It is espe­cial­ly use­ful for peo­ple on a pro­tein diet, because their menu includes a large num­ber of egg dish­es. But how to choose a real­ly good egg cook­er to great­ly sim­pli­fy the cook­ing process, find out fur­ther.

5 selection criteria

The egg cook­er is a sim­ple struc­ture that con­sists of a body, lid, elec­tron­ics, egg hold­er, egg tank and con­trol pan­el. At the same time, var­i­ous options for such struc­tures are pre­sent­ed on the mar­ket, so in order to make the right choice, it is worth under­stand­ing the key para­me­ters.

Number of cells

This refers to how many egg hold­ers the device con­tains. They can be from 1 to 8 pieces. With mod­er­ate use of eggs, the opti­mal num­ber of cells is 3–4 pieces. Ath­letes or peo­ple on a pro­tein diet can choose a device with simul­ta­ne­ous cook­ing of 4 or more eggs (usu­al­ly 7–8).

It is also worth not­ing here that the eggs vary in size. So, they can be from the largest chick­en to small quail. It is worth choos­ing a device with larg­er cells, since they can cook both small and large eggs.

Power consumption

The pow­er of a stan­dard egg cook­er is 250–400 watts. Depend­ing on the num­ber of cells, and hence the vol­ume of heat­ing, the amount of elec­tric­i­ty con­sumed changes. So, the few­er eggs are cooked, the less elec­tric­i­ty is con­sumed. It should be borne in mind that an egg cook­er with 8 cells will con­sume more elec­tric­i­ty, regard­less of whether you boil one egg or eight there.

Housing material

Typ­i­cal­ly, man­u­fac­tur­ers use three types:

• Plas­tic. It is used most often and has proven itself well, but it is not always of high qual­i­ty. So, a plas­tic device may have a syn­thet­ic smell that does not dis­ap­pear for a long time. In addi­tion, cracks in plas­tic, most like­ly, can­not be avoid­ed.
• Stain­less steel. This is a more expen­sive plea­sure, due to the greater strength of the mate­r­i­al. Such an egg cook­er will be heav­ier, but it will also look more ele­gant.
• Heat resis­tant glass. It holds the tem­per­a­ture well, but does not always with­stand a fall on the floor from tiles, or even more so from porce­lain stoneware. So, this is a frag­ile device and requires care­ful han­dling.

Plas­tic and stain­less steel egg cook­ers are most often cho­sen because they are more durable.

Control Panel

Sim­ple mod­els have only “On / Off” but­tons. It is very con­ve­nient if they are equipped not only with a light indi­ca­tor, but also with a sound sig­nal. More sophis­ti­cat­ed mod­els have an elec­tron­ic timer. This func­tion makes it pos­si­ble to cook eggs in dif­fer­ent ways — soft-boiled, hard-boiled, etc.

It is note­wor­thy if the device is equipped with an auto­mat­ic shut­down func­tion in case of over­heat­ing (if the water sud­den­ly boils away). Cheap mod­els must be turned off mechan­i­cal­ly.

Accessories

To cook steamed eggs, man­u­fac­tur­ers com­plete egg cook­ers with var­i­ous remov­able attach­ments:

• small tray for poached eggs (with­out shell);
• noz­zles for omelet (they are por­tioned and, as a rule, designed for two serv­ings);
• wire rack for steam­ing (can also be used for cook­ing oth­er dish­es, such as meat­balls).

So, con­sid­er the com­plete set of the egg cook­er for the pres­ence of cer­tain noz­zles and make a choice based on per­son­al pref­er­ences.

Overview of popular egg cookers

In pop­u­lar brands, such types of house­hold appli­ances are rare. Most often, such equip­ment is pro­duced by not very well-known man­u­fac­tur­ers, which does not detract from the qual­i­ty of the goods. Con­sid­er a few pop­u­lar brands:

• Polaris. Man­u­fac­tur­er — Rus­sia. The egg cook­er is designed for 6 eggs, there is a timer, 3 cook­ing modes (hard-boiled, soft-boiled, in a bag). You can cook an omelet. Suit­able for prepar­ing baby food. Among the short­com­ings can be not­ed the absence of a sound sig­nal of readi­ness. In addi­tion, plas­tic is poor­ly washed from fat­ty foods when cook­ing an omelet. The price is quite low — up to 1000 rubles.
• Kit­fort (Kit­fort). Man­u­fac­tur­er — Rus­sia. A device with 6 cells of large size, so you can cook even the largest eggs. It has a nice design (high-qual­i­ty plas­tic with a met­al-like coat­ing) and rub­ber­ized legs. Attached are attach­ments for scram­bled eggs and scram­bled eggs with­out oil, as well as a steam­ing tray. The end of cook­ing is accom­pa­nied by a sound sig­nal. The price is about 2000 rubles.
• Caso (Caso). Man­u­fac­tur­er — Ger­many. The egg cook­er is designed for 8 eggs. The body is made of stain­less steel. It has a non-stick coat­ing of the pan­el, an elec­tron­ic timer, a sound sig­nal. The price is almost 3000 rubles.

The fol­low­ing video offers an overview of the unpack­ing of the Turk­ish man­u­fac­tur­er Sin­bo SEB-5803 egg cook­er:

How to choose an egg cooker for a microwave oven?

For a long time, boil­ing eggs in the microwave was unac­cept­able due to a pos­si­ble explo­sion. Now this prob­lem is solved. So, if you do not want to pur­chase a spe­cial egg cook­er with a timer (and it costs more than usu­al), but you have a microwave avail­able, you should buy a microwave egg cook­er.

Ease of use and low price make such a device as afford­able as pos­si­ble for every­one. Actu­al­ly, the cheap­ness of the price is explained by the fact that such an egg cook­er is just a con­tain­er of water in which eggs are placed. This con­tain­er is her­met­i­cal­ly sealed and placed in the microwave. The elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion comes not from the egg cook­er, but from the microwave.

The choice of device depends on your pref­er­ences. If you just need a brew­ing con­tain­er, the price is quite inex­pen­sive. For a more sophis­ti­cat­ed design (most often in the form of a cute chick­en), you will have to pay a lit­tle more. Here are mod­els of such egg cook­ers:

• Polimer life — a con­tain­er for cook­ing eggs in the microwave. Man­u­fac­tur­er — Rus­sia. Cook­ing time for eggs is from 3 to 7 min­utes. You can cook no more than 3 eggs at a time. Depend­ing on the num­ber of cells for eggs, the price can range from 40 to 70 rubles.
• Microwave egg cook­er “Kurochka”. The man­u­fac­tur­er is usu­al­ly Chi­na. The con­tain­er has an orig­i­nal design and is designed for cook­ing 4 eggs. The price is approx­i­mate­ly 600 rubles.

An overview of the egg cook­er in the form of a chick­en is pre­sent­ed in the fol­low­ing video:

An egg cook­er is not the most essen­tial device, but wor­thy of pay­ing atten­tion to it. It can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce cook­ing time. In addi­tion, this device is portable, so you can take it with you even on trips and use it to pre­pare deli­cious egg snacks.