I love the way the steam oven does hard boiled eggs, although since they're actually steamed, I think the whites turn out to be more tender. I've had my oven for about 4 years and use the 20 min/210 degrees/100% moisture you described above - it's great for Easter eggs and doing lots of deviled eggs. I've done it in the solid pan, too. I just looked in the Gagg spa cuisine cookbook that came with my oven - did you get that, too? In there, it says to cook the eggs in the paper egg carton but doesn't say on what, so I'm assuming they meant the wire rack - which would allow the steam to fully circulate. Sounds weird but I bet it would work just fine!

Thanks so much for the egg instructions -- my DW eats quite a few (although she mostly discards the yolks). My combi is sitting on my workbench in my shop/garage. So far, I have just run the calibration cycle and reheated some steamed veggies..-- kitchen tearout will start some time in September.

Thanks, Deegeegirl! This started in a thread about boiling eggs that wandered into steaming and a question about using the combi-steam for them. I don't have the spa cookbook or any other. Mine only came with the manual and the clue wheel. I keep the latter in the drawer right next to the oven. The only thing it has been wrong about is green beans. Either the ones in Germany are really really tough, or they like theirs mushy.

In the carton is an interesting idea. :) No rolling around! I'm not sure it would matter what you put the carton on, though it might dissolve in the solid pan. Egg carton paper is very short fiber and turns to mush pretty easily when soaked. :) A gross is probably too wide, but if the flat isn't too hard to cut, I bet one could do two half grosses at a time.

When I was catering luncheons, we would buy a half gross of boiled peeled eggs because just the boiling part--which we were required to do on site--was such a PITA. We had a ruling that we could use my little automatic egg steamer at home if we peeled the eggs on site, but it was still a big PITA. I bet we could have steamed the eggs in the flats, too, and peeled them on site! It's only a few dollars more for the pre-cooked ones, but they're overcooked and not as fresh as we'd like. Perfectly healthy food, but not yummy.

Attofarad, do you have the clue wheel? It's a great resource for starting one's experiments with the combi-. Best wishes with the coming demolition.

No clue wheel here, and I haven't seen anywhere to get one. I bought a display model, which had the pans and rack, but I had to order a supply hose.

And I don't have a clue. ;-)

I did find a Gaggenau cookbook online. The first 75 pages use the combi oven.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gaggenau recipe book

Cool!! Thanks for the link!

The clue wheel is a standard style wheel chart, two sided, that has a window that you put over the chart column to see time, temp, and steam settings, as well as which pan and rack height. It's really useful!

If your appliance store doesn't have the manuals and clue wheel, you might try your distributor. Purcell-Murray in California, for instance, are very helpful. If you can't get one, I suppose I can copy it out for you, but it would be a lot better to have the real thing.

BTW, check out the Purcell-Murray website for recipes and stuff too, if you're interested. They have demos and classes, and have a lot of info posted online.

Thanks, p111og, Purcell-Murray is local (sorta) to me.

Update:

I searched out this thread to remember how I did the eggs in the combi-steam. My hope was to get an easier peeling egg by starting it hot, as Kenji Lopez-Alt said was the big difference. I also tried the egg carton in the oven thing, and as I suspected the cartons were waterlogged and ready to fall to bits, but it worked. I just tried a sample egg. It came out fully cooked and tender, with no gray ring, and, for the most part, peeled easily. If I'd been more careful, instead of just pulling, it might have been perfect. As it was, I pulled a big gouge out of it. Also in interest of an easy peel, I got the regular cage-free eggs at Trader Joe's, which are probably older than the ones I usually buy.

Eggs: Cage-free, veg-fed, extra large brown eggs (thin shells).

Method: Hole punched in fat end, stood in opened paper egg cartons, hole side up.

Oven: Gaggenau combi-steam, 210° F, 100% humidity, 20 minutes.

Cooling: In the wet cartons on the rack from the oven (for support) on the counter, then transferred to meat drawer in fridge while still warm to the touch but not hot.

For this latest try, were your eggs straight from the fridge, or room temperature?

-Gary

They had been in the fridge. I really don't remember, but probably close enough to straight from the fridge to count as that, though they sat out while the oven heated.

I tried some last night, and they did very well. Peeled cleanly. Oven well preheated, eggs pricked and in the fridge. 20 minutes at 210F @100% steam, cooking 4 eggs in the carton, then into an ice bath. Next time I will try 18 minutes.

Excellent. I did 2 dozen. :) I was a bit worried about the timing because of the mass, but the test one was just right.

I'll be interested in your experiment. Especially, I'm thinking lower time in oven, more time on the counter, no ice bath. Is there a reason for the ice other than to stop them continuing to cook?

I don't know how many times I heard or read that once you cook eggs in the combi steam you'll never boil them again. I thought yeah, yeah. Today I tried it, and I'll never boil eggs again. Perfection. Thanks for resurrecting this thread!

I spoke too soon. Only about a quarter of the eggs peeled nicely. The others often peeled better on the wide end but badly at the point. Makes me think there's something about the cartons that interferred. Some were just all around awful. I do think that the thinner brown shells are part of the problem, and will experiment with white eggs.