Best Boiled Eggs Recipes for Marbled Eggs, Kopitiam Eggs, Devilled Eggs, Scotch Eggs and More

Our best boiled eggs recipes include everything from a Chinese tea eggs recipe for perfumed marbled eggs almost too beautiful to eat and a half boiled eggs recipe for the classic Singaporean and Malaysian kopitiam eggs to go with your kaya toast to a Thai son-in-law eggs recipe and a traditional Scotch eggs recipe with a Thai-inspired pad kra pao twist.

Whether you’re a lover of soft boiled eggs or hard boiled eggs we have plenty of boiled eggs recipes for you. Many were created for our Weekend Eggs series of quintessential breakfast eggs from around the world and we have boiled egg recipes for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, snacks, and supper.

Our collection of 16 of our best boiled eggs recipes include everything from a bacon and eggs breakfast congee recipe for an East-West savoury rice porridge with soft jammy eggs to a Russian salmon potato salad with soft-boiled eggs, gherkins, capers and dill.

We also have a guide to how to boil eggs perfectly every time. If you want to find out how long to boil eggs for gloriously runny or deliciously jammy soft boiled eggs, or you prefer hard-boiled eggs that are firm but not crumbly, we have egg-boiling tips for you.

We also have collections of our best scrambled eggs recipes and best fried eggs recipes for egg lovers. But before I tell you about our best boiled eggs recipes, I have a favour to ask.

Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve cooked our recipes and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee. Or you could buy us a coffee and we’ll use our coffee money to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing.

Another option is to use links on our site to buy travel insurance, rent a car or campervan or motorhome, book accommodation, or book a tour on Klook or Get Your Guide. Or buy something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers, James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, travel books to inspire wanderlust, and gifts for Asian food lovers and picnic lovers. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay any extra.

Lastly, you could browse our Grantourismo store for gifts for food lovers, including food themed reusable cloth face masks designed with Terence’s images. Now let me tell you all about our best boiled eggs recipes.

Best Boiled Eggs Recipes for Marbled Eggs, Kopitiam Eggs, Devilled Eggs, Scotch Eggs and More

How to Boil Eggs Perfectly Every Time for Perfect Soft Boiled Eggs and Hard Boiled Eggs

Not really a recipe, but more of a guide to how to boil eggs perfectly every time – whether you want to find out how long to boil eggs for soft boiled eggs or how long to boil eggs for hard-boiled eggs, we have the answers right here.

How long to boil eggs for soft boiled eggs and how long for hard boiled eggs are some of the most often-asked questions of home cooks these days, which is how this post came to kick off our re-booted Weekend Eggs recipes series on breakfast eggs dishes from around the world.

Some people see making soft- and hard-boiled eggs as a bit of a lottery. Those who like soft-boiled eggs often end up with a runny mess and uncooked whites, while those who like hard-boiled eggs end up with an unattractive green ring around dry yolks.

Over the years, Terence has tried every method for boiling eggs perfectly, having scoured countless cookbooks and spent many hours of internet research. He;s marked up endless fresh eggs with cooking times and stuck myriad post-it notes to cutting boards. And, yes, we’ve eaten a lot of egg sandwiches during his research.

Even if you’re not a breakfast eggs person and prefer to slurp a noodle soup or tuck into a plate of pancakes, it’s still handy to learn how to boil eggs perfectly. We use soft-boiled eggs in our creamy curried egg sandwiches and semi hard-boiled eggs in our ohn no khao swe recipe for the wonderful Burmese chicken coconut noodle soup. Boiled eggs have so many delicious uses.

How to Boil Eggs Perfectly Every Time for Perfect Soft Boiled Eggs and Hard Boiled Eggs

Half Boiled Eggs Recipe for Classic Kopitiam Eggs to Go With Your Kaya Toast

This half-boiled eggs recipe makes the classic kopitiam eggs tailor-made for having with kaya toast in a Singaporean or Malaysian coffee shop and it’s one of our best boiled eggs recipes. The just-set, still runny yolks and milky whites are perfect for dipping toast ‘soldiers’ into.

The secret is getting perfectly soft eggs every time. Terence’s technique is flawless for achieving the perfect soft boiled eggs every time. He uses a stainless steel vacuum insulated coffee mug. He has more tips for making half boiled eggs in the post. 

This half-boiled eggs recipe, like many of our recent Weekend Eggs recipes, came from a place of missing our former life of travel and the opportunities it gave us to experience local rituals, particularly of the culinary kind.

We’ve especially been missing the experience of lingering over a long, slow, weekend breakfast or brunch at a local cafe or coffee shop and whatever that entails wherever we are in the world, and this half-boiled eggs recipe is a result of us craving the quintessential kopitiam breakfast in Singapore and Malaysia.

Half Boiled Eggs Recipe for Classic Kopitiam Eggs to Go With Your Kaya Toast

 

Chinese Tea Eggs Recipe for Perfumed Marbled Eggs Almost Too Beautiful To Eat

This Chinese tea eggs recipe makes marbled eggs – aromatic boiled eggs that have a marbled appearance when peeled – and it’s one of our best boiled eggs recipes.

Steeped in a stock of five spice, star anise, soy and tea flavours that perfume the eggs, marbled eggs are a tasty snack when eaten on their own, or add soy sauce, chilli sauce and steamed rice and you have a lovely light breakfast.

You might see this Chinese tea eggs recipe presented as ‘Cha Yip Dahn’ in cookbooks, such as Charmaine Soloman’s The Complete Asian Cookbook. More correctly it is spelt wǔxiāng cháyè dàn or 五香茶叶蛋 in Mandarin, which translates to 五香 – Spiced, 茶 – Tea, 叶 – Leaf, 蛋 – Egg.

If you don’t have any, now is a good time to buy some cooking chopsticks and get used to using them in Chinese cooking, as you’ll need them to crack the eggs as you want small, precise cracks all over the exterior of the boiled eggs.

Chinese Tea Eggs Recipe for Perfumed Marbled Eggs Almost Too Beautiful To Eat

 

Thai Son-in-Law Eggs Recipe for Fried Boiled Eggs with Sweet Tamarind Sauce

Our Thai son-in-law eggs recipe for kai look keuy makes golden-brown fried soft-boiled eggs with an ever-so-slightly crispy skin and it’s another one of our best boiled eggs recipes.

They’re drizzled in a sweet and sour homemade tamarind sauce (although you could be very generous with the sauce and drown the things in it if you like) and sprinkled with fresh coriander (cilantro), spicy dried chillies, and crunchy fried shallots and crunchy fried garlic.

It is important to make the eggs soft-boiled. We need the egg whites to be firm enough not to break or fall apart, but we still want soft yolks, so around 5 1/2 to 6 minutes is perfect. You also need to use a high smoke point oil, such as rice bran oil. The reason we’re deep-frying at such a high temperature is to make the surface of the eggs golden brown while keeping the yolks soft.

You can eat these crispy boiled eggs on their own as a light breakfast or snack, or as the Thais do with steamed rice to make a meal out of them.

Thai Son-in-Law Eggs Recipe for Fried Boiled Eggs with Sweet Tamarind Sauce

 

Russian Buckwheat Kasha Recipe with Bacon, Caramelised Onions, Mushrooms and Eggs

My hearty Russian buckwheat kasha recipe with caramelised onions, bacon lardons, pan-fried mushrooms, and soft boiled eggs makes a comforting savoury Russian porridge (kasha) made with buckwheat groats (grechka) that is based on my Russian grandmother’s recipe.

Despite the rustic appearance, it is perhaps the least traditional of all my Russian family recipes but it’s one of my favourite buckwheat recipes. Buckwheat or grechka is the key ingredient of this kasha, a savoury porridge that I serve with a dollop of sour cream and plenty of fragrant dill.

I have to confess that of all the traditional Russian breakfasts my baboushka used to make, kasha was not one of my favourite breakfasts as a child. While I happily tucked into Baba’s French toast, blini, potato cakes, and buckwheat pancakes, I politely resisted her offer of kasha.

As a little kid, it was the strange smell that put me off more than the nutty taste of the ancient grain, and it wasn’t until I was a young adult going to university and visiting my grandparents for overnight stays that I finally appreciated kasha. Now I love it and could live on this porridge, particularly in winter.

Comforting Russian Buckwheat Kasha Recipe with Bacon, Caramelised Onions, Mushrooms and Eggs

 

Bacon and Eggs Breakfast Congee Recipe for a Comforting East-West Savoury Rice Porridge

Our hearty bacon and eggs breakfast congee recipe makes a comforting East-West savoury rice porridge that’s inspired partly by the classic Australian breakfast of bacon and eggs with sautéed mushrooms, and partly by Chinese and Southeast breakfast porridges with pork and boiled eggs. This is another one of our best boiled eggs recipes.

Breakfast porridges, both savoury and sweet, are, like other rice dishes, eaten right around the world. Porridges are not only made with rice, of course, but with oats, buckwheat, barley, maize, mung beans, millets, oats, semolina, and sorghum.

Porridges are also not only eaten for breakfast, but for brunch and lunch, a warming winter dinner, as a sweet dessert, a late-night supper to stave off a hangover, or when we’re ill. Rice porridges are probably the most widely consumed porridge, eaten everywhere from Europe and the Middle East to Asia.

Originating in India – in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, plain rice porridge is called kanji, which comes from the word for ‘boiling’ – China is perhaps the country we most associate with rice porridge or congee, although I’d wager that most Asian countries have a congee.

My East-West bacon and eggs breakfast congee recipe was partly a result of lockdown boredom and partly a result of nostalgia – which explains a lot of our recipes lately, from our classic Australian café-style avocado toast with poached eggs, to my avocado pasta, both of which were born in the Eighties. But let’s face it: I also have a thing for rice porridge.

Bacon and Eggs Breakfast Congee Recipe for a Comforting East-West Savoury Rice Porridge

 

Breakfast Salad Recipe with Soft Boiled Eggs, Bacon, Avocado, Sautéed Mushrooms, and Pickles

Who doesn’t love a deliciously filling breakfast salad? Our breakfast salad recipe makes a healthy-ish breakfast salad with soft boiled eggs, avocado, crispy bacon, mushrooms sautéed in the bacon juices, crunchy lettuce, sweet cherry tomatoes, and bright tangy pickles.

It’s for those of you who can’t decide between a healthy breakfast or comforting bacon and eggs. Guilt-free bacon, eggs and mushrooms, lightened up in a fresh fragrant salad, made all the healthier with zingy pickles, which are so good for our gut-health.

If there’s one thing that I learnt as a child growing up in Australia who was lucky to straddle two culinary cultures that there’s so much more to breakfast than cereal, porridge, toast, and eggs, as delicious as all of those things can be.

My Russian grandfather essentially ate deconstructed breakfast salads every morning of his life. While I’d be sitting at the dining table tucking into Russian pancakes or porridge, papa would be munching on fresh juicy cucumbers, crunchy red radishes, sweet plump tomatoes, zingy dill pickles, and a boiled egg or two – all washed down with homemade vodka…

Best Breakfast Salad Recipe with Soft Boiled Eggs, Bacon, Avocado, Sautéed Mushrooms, and Pickles

Creamy Curried Egg Sandwich Recipe with Soft Boiled Eggs on Sourdough Toast

This creamy curried egg sandwich recipe made with soft boiled eggs and served as an open sandwich on lightly toasted sourdough is our take on the traditional curried egg sandwich we grew up eating as children in Australia and it’s another of our best boiled eggs recipes.

Who would have thought you needed a recipe for a curried egg sandwich? I didn’t until Terence made this creamy curried egg sandwich for me, which I shared on Instagram, and a few people asked for the recipe.

Made with perfect soft-boiled free-range eggs and served as an open sandwich on lightly toasted sourdough it’s Terence’s take on the traditional curried egg sandwich that I ate as a kid growing up in Sydney‘s western suburbs in Australia, only it’s so much more decadent and addictive.

Terence’s eggs are soft-boiled, rather than the hard-boiled eggs of my childhood. He then roughly chops and gently combined the soft eggs with mayonnaise, sprinkling Waugh’s Curry Powder, and chives on top.

Creamy Curried Egg Sandwich Recipe with Soft Boiled Eggs on Sourdough Toast

 

Russian Salmon Potato Salad Recipe with Soft-Boiled Eggs, Gherkins, Capers and Dill

I love a salad you can eat year-round and this Russian salmon potato salad recipe with soft-boiled eggs, capers, gherkins, and fresh fragrant dill fits that bill. This is easily another one of our best boiled eggs recipes.

In the cool season, you can work quickly and serve it with warm potatoes and seared salmon straight from the pan, and add the soft-boiled eggs while they’re still warm.

Or if you’re making this salmon potato salad recipe for picnics, barbecues or summer meals, then follow the instructions below and refrigerate it.

This salad generally only made appearances on holidays, when it would get topped with dollops of Russian caviar. We rarely get caviar here, but if you can, jazz it up for a special occasion.

Russian Salmon Potato Salad Recipe with Soft-Boiled Eggs, Gherkins, Capers and Dill

 

Traditional Scotch Eggs Recipe with a Thai Inspired Pad Kra Pao Twist

This traditional Scotch eggs recipe for the classic British picnic snack has a Thai-influenced twist inspired by the Thai stir-fry favourite, pad kra pao or pad gaprao.

Scotch eggs are traditionally made with a boiled egg wrapped in seasoned sausage meat, which is crumbed and deep-fried. Here, I’ve given the minced pork a pad kra pao flavour.

The base recipe for pad kra pao is minced meat – this can be beef, pork or chicken – mixed with a paste of chillies and garlic, and seasoned with light soy sauce and dark soy sauce, fish sauce, and in many recipes, oyster sauce.

Some pad kra pao recipes include long beans, onions, sugar, and stock, but it’s really up to the cook what they include. At the last minute, holy basil is tossed in, and, at some stalls, a fried egg cooked over high heat is plopped on top.

More basil is added, and as you tuck in, you can add some prik nam pla, a classic dipping sauce that is a mix of fish sauce, lime juice, chopped bird’s eye chilies, and garlic.

For this recipe, we like to boil our eggs to a time of 5-6 minutes. If you try and keep the yolk super runny, the eggs can be a little too fragile for the coating and mince mixture to stick without breaking the eggs. The eggs in the photo were boiled to six minutes.

Traditional Scotch Eggs Recipe with a Thai Inspired Pad Kra Pao Twist

 

Thai Grilled Eggplant Salad Recipe with Red Shallots, Fragrant Mint and Soft-Boiled Eggs

This Thai grilled eggplant salad recipe makes a delightful dish of smoky pieces of creamy eggplant with sweet red shallots, aromatic mint, the umami of fish sauce, a sublime soft-boiled egg, and a kick of chilli, and it’s another one of our best boiled eggs recipes.

Light, fragrant and flavourful, this Thai salad of smoky grilled eggplant with shallots, mint, chilli powder, and a soft-boiled egg makes a fantastic side dish, one of an array of dishes if you’re cooking up a Thai feast, or a filling main course if you add a five-minute egg and a bowl of jasmine rice, as we often do.

You won’t find this David Thompson dish on a cookie-cutter Thai restaurant menu so you’ll need to make this smoky grilled eggplant salad yourself. While David Thompson’s Thai grilled eggplant salad recipe calls for steamed eggs, we prefer runny soft-boiled eggs done for five and a half minutes.

This salad is best when the eggplant is straight from the grill or barbecue, and combined with the other ingredients just before serving.

Delightful Thai Grilled Eggplant Salad Recipe with Red Shallots, Fragrant Mint and Soft-Boiled Eggs

 

Russian Devilled Eggs Recipe for a Zakuski Table Fit for a Russian Tzar

My Russian devilled eggs recipe makes very moreish Russian stuffed eggs with a creamy filling of the yolks of hard-boiled eggs mashed with mayonnaise, mustard, paprika, dill pickles, purple shallots, and perfumed dill.

Dating back to Roman times, devilled eggs were a feature of Russian imperial cuisine, laid out on the elaborate spreads of zakuski or hors d’oeuvres on buffet tables overflowing with silver trays of snacks and small plates. Guests would enjoy some bites before they’d enter the sumptuous dining room for the extravagant sit-down banquets of Russia’s emperors.

Popularised during Russia’s Soviet period, devilled eggs, like chicken Kiev and beef Stroganoff, travelled the world, featuring on formica trays of finger food at every swinging soirée from Sydney to San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s.

Super easy to make – the yolks of hard boiled eggs are combined with the most quintessential of Russian ingredients: mayonnaise, mustard, dill pickles (pickled gherkins), and fresh dill – probably the hardest things about this recipe is peeling the eggs so they’re perfectly smooth. See Terence’s guide to boiling eggs for egg-peeling tips; link above.

Russian Devilled Eggs Recipe for a Zakuski Table Fit for a Russian Tzar

 

Devilled Eggs with Smoked Salmon and Caviar Recipe for Elegant Cocktail Party Canapés

Our devilled eggs with smoked salmon and caviar recipe makes the ultimate elegant cocktail party canapés or a luxurious treat to savour with sparkling wine.

Traditionally served as part of a festive Russian zakuski spread, you could save these retro hors d’oeuvres for special occasions but why not indulge yourself from time to time? You deserve it. We all do after the last two years!

Another of our best boiled eggs recipes, this devilled eggs with smoked salmon and caviar recipe makes a particularly luxurious take on my zesty Russian devilled eggs recipe, above.

These retro hors d’oeuvres, which were popularised in the 1970s along with other Russian dishes, such as beef Stroganoff and chicken Kiev, have never gone out of style for me, as they’re so much a part of my culinary heritage.

We snacked on these devilled eggs with smoked salmon and caviar as we sipped glasses of sparkling here in Siem Reap and watched the New Year’s Eve fireworks in Sydney on TV. It was a delicious indulgence after two years of living frugally in this seemingly never-ending pandemic hell.

Devilled Eggs with Smoked Salmon and Caviar Recipe for Elegant Cocktail Party Canapés

 

Sweet Pork Belly with Boiled Eggs Recipe – Traditional Cambodian Dish, Modern Presentation

This sweet pork belly with boiled eggs recipe is a firm favourite when placed on the table in a typical Cambodian feast. It’s a simple recipe, but one that has everyone eyeing off that last piece of pork belly and mopping up the remaining sauce.

Our recipe makes the classic Cambodian dish plated as a more contemporary-styled appetiser – a bite-sized piece of sweet unctuous pork belly topped with half a hard boiled quail egg and a small sprig of coriander. We created this for a spread of modern Cambodian canapés for New Year’s Eve a few years ago.

While the presentation was modern, the dish itself is rooted in tradition. The dish is made for new mothers, to help them regain their strength. While this is still a belief and practiced in the countryside, in the modern cities of Cambodia, such as Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, it’s a special occasion dish, brought out for family gatherings, such as Khmer New Year.

You could serve it in a more classic style or try it this way as one of an array of canapés if you’re entertaining or as a small appetiser.

Sweet Pork Belly with Boiled Eggs Recipe – Traditional Cambodian Dish, Modern Presentation

 

Padang Style Eggs Recipe for Gulai Telur Pedang, a Spicy Coconut Egg Curry from Sumatra

This Padang style eggs recipe for gulai telur Pedang is another one of our best boiled eggs recipes. It makes a spicy coconut milk-based egg curry from the Indonesian island of Sumatra – ‘gulai’ is curry, ‘telur’ is ‘egg’ and Padang is the capital city of West Sumatra.

Home to the Minangkabau people, the cuisine is called Minang food or Padang food, or masakan Padang to Indonesians, and it’s incredibly delicious.

Made with boiled eggs simmered in coconut milk and an aromatic spice paste pounded from fresh galangal, turmeric, ginger, garlic, shallots and chillies, this fragrant egg curry is served with crispy shallots and steamed rice – or it might come as one element of a full spread of breakfast dishes that typically includes fried fish in batter, potato fritters and a tomato-based sambal.

Indonesians favour hard boiled eggs for this dish, but we prefer our soft-boiled eggs. We think they work well in this dish and don’t impact the integrity of the dish or affect the flavour. However, do cook your boiled eggs as you wish.

Padang Style Eggs Recipe for Gulai Telur Pedang, a Spicy Coconut Egg Curry from Sumatra

 

Indonesian Egg Curry Recipe with Fragrant Lemongrass and Funky Shrimp Paste for Telur Petis from Java

This Indonesian egg curry recipe with fragrant lemongrass and funky shrimp paste for telur petis comes from the Indonesian island of Java although variations can be found right across the archipelago.

This dish is called telur petis on Java where it originates. ‘Telur’ means ‘egg’ and ‘petis’ is the shrimp paste that adds a subtle funkiness to this spicy egg curry.

While this rendition makes a gently-spiced boiled egg curry that’s eaten as breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack, the spiced eggs (without the gravy) are also used to decorate a festive rice dish.

Made from a freshly pounded spice paste with lemongrass stalks adding fragrance and flavour to the spicy gravy, we recommend using a mortar and pestle to pound the spice paste. It really doesn’t taste the same prepared in a blender. 

 

Indonesian Egg Curry Recipe with Fragrant Lemongrass and Funky Shrimp Paste for Telur Petis from Java

 

Please do let us know in the comments below if you make any of our best boiled eggs recipes, as we’d love to know how they turn out for you.