How long to soft boil an egg
Soft · Large · Fridge
Get the ice bath ready. Yolks keep setting after the pan comes off.
Duck, quail, altitude and more
Exact soft boiled egg times for your egg size, starting temperature and altitude, with a built-in timer. Runny yolk, set white, every time.
The short answer
A large, fridge-cold egg lowered into boiling water at sea level needs 6 min for soft, runny yolk. Liquid yolk, just-set white. For dipping soldiers or topping ramen.
| Egg size | From the fridge | Room temperature | Cold water start |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 5 min | 3 min 30 sec | 2 min 30 sec |
| Medium | 5 min 30 sec | 4 min | 3 min |
| Large | 6 min | 4 min 15 sec | 3 min 15 sec |
| Extra large | 6 min 30 sec | 4 min 45 sec | 3 min 30 sec |
| Jumbo | 7 min | 5 min | 3 min 45 sec |
Soft, runny yolk at sea level. Use the calculator above to adjust for altitude.
What a soft boiled egg is for
The breakfast egg in an egg cup, and the one you dip toast into. It also goes on top of ramen when you want the yolk to run into the broth rather than sit in it, and alongside asparagus in spring. The white is only just set, so it will not survive being sliced. Serve it in the shell and take the top off with a knife.
How to tell it worked
Crack the top and the white should be opaque and set but still wobble. The yolk underneath should be completely liquid and bright. If the white immediately around the yolk is still translucent and slippery, you are thirty to sixty seconds short. That inner ring of white is the last part to set, because it is furthest from the shell and closest to the cool yolk.
The usual mistake
Leaving it standing. A soft egg has the narrowest window on this page, and the shell holds enough heat to take a runny yolk to jammy in about ninety seconds after the pan comes off. Have cold water running before the timer ends, and eat it straight away.
Eating it out of the shell
A soft egg cannot be peeled. The white is barely set and the membrane is still gripping it, so any attempt takes half the egg with it. This is the one doneness that has to be served in the shell, which is why egg cups exist at all.
Take the top off rather than cracking it. Hold the egg in a cloth, tap around the crown with the back of a teaspoon until a line of cracks joins up, then lift the cap off with the spoon. A serrated knife works too, drawn across in one movement. Cracking a soft egg the way you would crack a raw one collapses the top into the yolk.
Salt goes on at the table, not in the water. Salted cooking water does nothing for the inside of an intact egg, whatever the internet says: the shell is not permeable to it on this timescale. What salt in the water does do is make a cracked egg leak less messily, because it helps the escaping white set faster.
Other boiling times
Egg guides
Common questions
Should the eggs go into cold water or boiling water?
Boiling water gives you far more control, because the clock starts at a known temperature. Cold-water starts work too, but the time depends on how fast your hob heats the pan, so treat the cold-start numbers as a guide and check one egg. Pick "cold-water start" above and the times adjust for you.
Why does my timing keep coming out wrong?
Usually egg size or starting temperature. A jumbo egg needs about two minutes longer than a small one for the same result, and a fridge-cold egg needs roughly a minute and a half longer than one left on the counter. Altitude matters too: above about 1,500 m the water boils below 100 °C, so everything takes longer.
Is a runny yolk safe to eat?
For most people, yes, particularly with pasteurised or high-welfare eggs. Food safety agencies advise that people who are pregnant, very young, elderly or immunocompromised cook eggs until both white and yolk are firm. If that applies, use the hard-boiled time instead.
How do I stop the cooking at the right moment?
Move the eggs straight into iced water. The shell holds a lot of heat and the yolk keeps setting for a minute or two after you drain the pan, which is what turns a jammy yolk chalky. An ice bath also contracts the egg away from the shell and makes peeling far easier.
What causes the grey-green ring around the yolk?
Overcooking. Iron in the yolk reacts with sulphur in the white and forms iron sulphide. It is harmless but it tastes flat and chalky. Use the time above rather than a generic one and cool the eggs immediately and you will not see it.
Egg times come from the thermal-diffusion equation for a spherical egg published by Charles D. H. Williams (University of Exeter), calibrated so a large fridge-cold egg at sea level matches the times cooks actually use. Size, starting temperature and altitude then follow from the physics. Treat the result as a very good starting point, not a guarantee, because pans, hobs and eggs all vary.