How to boil an egg without heating: a brilliant life hack

If you think that you can only cook eggs by boiling or frying them, you're wrong. It turns out that they can be cooked without heating processes.

According to ScienceNotes,cooking eggs occurs when proteins are denatured, so any process that causes a chemical change in a protein can "cook food."

Read also: What to do to prevent eggs from cracking during cooking and how to cook a broken egg

Essentially, all that is needed for this process is a raw egg and alcohol - vodka, rum, or spirit.

"The higher the percentage of alcohol, the faster the chemical reaction and cooking," the publication writes.

How to "boil" an egg without boiling:

Pour the alcohol into a glass or other small container. Crack the egg in so that it is completely submerged in the liquid. After the egg white turns white, wait for the yolk to "cook".

Depending on the percentage of alcohol, the reaction takes at least an hour. The egg will boil much faster if you "boil it in the usual way," in which case you need to wait until the alcohol penetrates the egg.

"An egg boiled in alcohol is edible, but it contains a high concentration of alcohol. If you decide to eat it, it's probably best to use it in a cocktail," the report says.

Scientific explanation

Egg white is mainly composed of albumin protein. A few minutes after adding an egg to alcohol, the translucent egg white begins to become cloudy. The alcohol takes part in a chemical reaction, denaturing or changing the conformation of the protein molecules so that they can form new bonds with each other. When the alcohol diffuses into the egg white, the reaction continues and the egg white turns white.

The egg yolk contains some protein, but also a lot of fat, which is not as affected by alcohol. Within 1-3 hours, mainly depending on the alcohol concentration, the egg white turns white and the egg yolk becomes solid.

Cooking in this way also kills unpleasant pathogens that can cause food poisoning. Alcohol, like heat, is an excellent disinfectant.

As a reminder, we have already written why eggs should be sprinkled with salt.

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