Boiling an egg is an art form: getting it right makes for a happy breakfast table, but get it wrong, and experience the writhing discomfort of failed egg-spectations. Sadly, we’ve lost count of the number of times we have tried boiling an egg, cracking the shell after a few minutes to find a messy disaster of shells and green yolks. But whether you dig soft-boiled or hard-boiled, cooking eggs to perfection can be done if you follow a few easy steps.

Here’s what you’ll need: eggs, timer, water, saucepan with a lid, stove, patience

Soft Boiled:

1 Fill your saucepan with water, and bring the water to a boil
2 Gently lower your eggs into the boiling water, and let them sit there for 3 minutes
3 Drain water, and place the egg in an egg cup. Crack the shell and remove the top half from the eggs, then enjoy!

Hard Boiled:

1 Place the eggs in the saucepan, and fill the pot with water until the eggs are just covered.
2 Put the saucepan on the stove, on high heat until the water begins to boil, then set your timer for 3 minutes
3 When the 3 minutes is up, take the saucepan off the heat, cover with lid, and reset the timer for 8 minutes
4 After 8 minutes pass, drain pot of hot water, and run eggs under cold water for a minute or so to cool off
5 Let them cool completely then crack open, peel, and enjoy!

Some egg-cellent (okay, we’ll stop with the “egg” words now) recipes using hard-boiled eggs:

• Smokey Smashed Potato Salad

• Smoked Tuna Niçoise in a Potato Cup

• Grilled Chicken Cobb Salad