How to soft boil an egg
Very few people have tried a perfectly cooked soft boiled egg.  There is a tradition among chefs of trying to show each other how perfectly they can cook something as simple as an egg.  Chef Fernand Point, who serves as inspiration for the affable chef Gusteau in Pixar’s animated movie Ratatouille, would test his apprentices by asking them to fry an egg.  With a responsive thermometer, such an infrared one, you can approximate their work at home.

If you ever get that mad scientist feeling, try cooking the egg in a bowl of water placed in the oven.  Start with cold tap water in the bowl, place the eggs in the water and the ensemble in an oven set to its lowest setting.  Every five minutes, check the temperature of the water in the bowl.  If you are using an infrared thermometer, stir the water before measuring.   Let the water hover between 65&deg;C to 68&deg;C for an hour. In most ovens you will have to turn the oven off and on to keep the water in that range.  The result will be a bright yellow firm gel.  I have a picture of the gel for the fried version of the mad scientist egg (what I call Eggs Mondrian):



If you want the yolk runny, then the temperature of the water should be between 63&deg;C (to cook the whites) but below 66&deg;C to keep the yolk runny.