The Genius Reason You Should Add Water to Your Scrambled Eggs (2024)

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The Genius Reason You Should Add Water to Your Scrambled Eggs? ›

In this case, the water heats and steams the eggs, yielding fluffy perfection. The flavor may be a bit blander compared to adding milk and cream, but nothing is stopping you from dousing your finished product with fancy crème fraîche or your favorite shredded cheese.

Adding water to eggs essentially steams them, as the water evaporates during cooking, and this yields a fluffier scramble. If you add too much water you can dilute the eggs, and that will result in a bland mess, so stick to a tablespoon per egg and no more.

Add Moisture and Mix

Adding approximately 1 tablespoon of liquid per egg—milk or cream are delicious, but water works, too—will help create steam and keep the scrambled eggs moist.

The milk dilutes the eggs' flavor, making them rubbery, colorless, and similar to what you would find at a school cafeteria. When asked if adding milk to scrambled eggs is a good idea, Robby Melvin, Southern Living Test Kitchen Director, simply and unequivocally said, "Nope."

Whisking incorporates air, which produces fluffier scrambled eggs, and fluffy eggs are the end goal. These eggs are whisked twice: once to blend the eggs together and a second time once you add the milk. For best results, whisk until your wrist is tired! The mixture should look pale yellow and frothy with bubbles.

Adding milk or plain water to scrambled eggs is an optional step that affects the texture of your finished dish. For creamy scrambled eggs, you'll add up to 1 tablespoon of milk for every egg. For fluffy scrambled eggs, you'll add up to 1 tablespoon of water for every egg.

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Whisk your eggs with the salt until they're well-mixed and uniform. Count on about two eggs per person, so this scrambled egg recipe (which calls for six eggs) serves about three people. Warm butter in a skillet set to medium-low heat. Once it's juuuuust beginning to bubble, pour the eggs in.

But you don't need that much water to achieve fluff. Even a little makes a difference. As cookbook author J. Kenji-López-Alt explains it in The Food Lab, adding water to scrambled eggs “means more vaporization occurs, creating larger bubbles in the eggs and lightening them.”

To avoid getting a green yolk, cook your eggs just long enough to reach the desired doneness—no more. And quickly plunge the cooked eggs into cold water to stop the cooking process and minimize the iron-sulfur reaction. Some people also say that the cold-water plunge makes eggs easier to peel.

Why add water to sunny side up eggs? ›

Kelsey explains that this technique helps you avoid rubbery whites and underdone yolks, because steam from the water helps the eggs cook evenly, transferring heat all the way through to the tops of the eggs. That means you don't need to flip your eggs — or risk breaking those delicate yolks.

Undercooked egg dishes such as soft-scrambled eggs have an inherent risk of food poisoning caused by Salmonella. What is the Source of Salmonella? The Hen or the Egg? Salmonella infects hens and contaminates the eggs.

It was found that water weakens the egg shell whether it gets in from the outside of a normal egg or from the inside of an emptied egg. This weakening caused by water is not permanent and the shell recovers its strength on drying in air.