One uneventful morning, I sat eating a breakfast of quiche with a side of hard boiled eggs accompanied by a pile of scrambled egg, chased down with an egg-coated bread (french toast). My friend across from me chomped on an omelet. It occured to me that we eat tons of eggs at MIT.

I eat probably 3-4 a day, and since ~42 days have passed, I’ve eaten ~150 eggs so far. I will have eaten ~750 eggs by the end of my first year. With this eggstensive experience, it would be a waste to not rank them! 

General MIT egg ⁠01 Fun fact: eggs are a near perfect food! They have a full amino acid profile, almost every essential vitamin the body needs, choline, healthy fats, and antioxidants. stats:

• All eggs are cage free, if that matters to you. My mom’s super meticulous about eggs, but to me eggs are eggs. I’m not falling for the free-range pasture-raised antibiotic -free propaganda.
• MIT carries white, brown, and bagged liquid eggs.

I’m judging on : 

1. Taste
2. Presentation
3. Availability in dining halls (because if we can’t get them then what’s even the point

…but the the final # of egg stars/ ranking is based on my holistic vibey determination of what I like, unrelated to subcategory scores

S- tier:

Shakshuka egg-

I am completely biased. I am such a sucker for shakshuka. Yes, I know the photo looks chopped. But the mixture of tomato + feta + runny egg is so good. I would do unspeakable things for a good shakshuka. Unfortunately, this one is mid, but in my mind even a mid shakshuka is an S.

Taste: 5/5 

• The eggs were runny and it was actually seasoned well! It totally felt and tasted like canned tomatoes, though. 
• Basil and feta was a nice touch

Presentation: 1/5

• Bro. Just look at it. It looks like shakshuka after I digested it for an hour. I would eat tasty slop anyday though!

Availability: 1/5

• Genuinely a shiny pokemon. I saw her twice and never again. Can we petition for more shakshuka :(
• And it ran out so fast…

Fried egg-

A classic! You kinda gotta get lucky with how well the chefs cook your egg, though. You can also ask for any cook type (sunny side up, over easy/medium/hard) . 

My go-to is a sunny side up for the runny dippable yolk. and if you order over-hard eggs… I’m silently judging you.

Taste: 4.5/5 

• Not much to say, fried eggs are always good! Crispy edges and super hot and fresh.
• Sunny side ups are always a little raw, but the salmonella risk is so worth it to me.

Presentation: 5/5

• LOOK HOW PRETTY

Availability: 4/5

• You can get them at any omelet station, and they’re speedier than omelets

 

A- Tier:

Omelet-

Most dining halls at MIT have an omelet station for breakfast and brunch. They have tons of toppings like ham and veggies and cheese, and in Vassar they let you cook your own! There’s also supposedly a famous omelet chef in Vassar who makes elite omelets, but I’ve yet to try one.

Taste: 4.5/5

• It’s so nice having a hearty fat hot veggie egg dish in the morning
• Unseasoned so season on your own
• Sometimes too oily 😞
• ITS HUGE

Presentation: 3/5

• But I don’t think anyone is ordering an omelet for the looks. IMO, pretty omelets don’t (and shouldn’t) exist!

Availability: 3/5

• Sometimes there’s a bit of a wait, but generally I can get an omelet in <5 minutes

Fluffy scrambled egg (with cheese):

The best scramble you can find at MIT! You can get it cheesed or un-cheesed, and these are  the least dry, most standard scrambled egg (they get so much worse).

Shoutout to my friend Will for letting me taste test his eggs because I was too lazy to wait in line for them.

Taste: 4/5

• A nice, standard scramble,  made of bagged eggs.  
• salt it urself

Presentation: 4/5

• Like omelets, scrambled eggs are always a lil chopped. Still, this is the prettiest scramble you’re gonna get here… under the heaters they look like piles of gold 

Availability: 5/5

• Always at vassar brunch!

B- Tier: average 

Quiche (broccoli and cheddar):

Quiche is just mid in general? Like I’ve never had a life changing quiche. This isn’t the best quiche I’ve had but it’s not bad!

Taste: 3.5/5

• It tastes and looks like an egg pie with broccoli and cheese. Needs salt
• The cheese forms a hard dry layer
• Crust is good though

Presentation: 3.5/5

Its holey 😖

Availability: 3/5

I see it 1-2x a week at Simmons Dining, sometimes at Vassar. Sometimes triangle and sometimes square form 

Microwaved sunny side up: the MIT way-

News about people getting their faces blasted by exploding microwaved egg particles has given me an irrational fear of microwaving eggs….

But! my fellow blogger Sara put me on to this method, which hasn’t exploded on her yet!

 “I crack open two eggs on a stack of three paper plates and toss it in the microwave for idk how long but I go in 30 sec increments. Boom fried egg.”

I microwaved my egg for 1 min total as I stood in the opposite corner of the room, just to be safe. There was a lot of ominous popping going on in the microwave, but it turned out okay. 

(I still need to try other blogger egg recipes, like Vera’s domino pizza omelet and Petey’s microwave scramble.)

Taste: 4/5

• NGL it was surprisingly similar to a fried egg , just without the fry, and I kinda achieved a runny yolk
• The sides of the egg overcooked and got rubbery though. Next time I would use a little bowl instead of a plate or add some water to prevent this
• Next time I’d also center the yolk so it doesn’t overcook while waiting for the whites to cook.

Presentation: 4/5

• Some minor explosions but not bad!

Availability: 5/5

• It just took a minute plus no cleanup. Way easier than boiling or frying my own eggs. Would use this method again if short on time.

Hot hard boiled egg-

There’s a strange sense of joy and fulfillment that comes with eating a nice hot hard boiled egg with salt and pepper. Plus, they’re very portable, and ours are relatively easy to peel! 

Taste: 4/5

• I’ve never had to deal with the weird sulfury smell some boiled eggs get.
• It’s SUPER well cooked though, and imo, soft boil << hard boil 

Presentation: 3/5

• Grey yolk is kinda nasty
• The beautiful pristine piles of eggs give me joy

Availability: 4/5

• Always there at brunch, sometimes during the week.

Egg salad-

ewww egg saladdd 

I hate mayo.

But I sometimes see people with full bowls piled with this stuff, so there’s some demand i guess

Taste: 4/5

• Standard egg + mayo flavor, with nice evenly sized chunks of egg white dispersed throughout
• sometimes if you’re lucky they’ll add parsley! wow!

Presentation: 3.5/5

• I’m realizing that egg dishes are maybe just always chopped. I’ve definitely seen ugly egg salads, though, and ours actually look to be on the appealing side of the spectrum 

Availability: 3/5

• Unremarkable so I never pay attention to it

Cold hard boiled egg:

Pre-peeled, so you can get quick protein for mega gains! I see a lot of people eating these, but imo they’re just boring, and there’s always some better form of egg to eat.

Taste: 4/5

• Exactly how you’d expect. Needs sauce

Presentation: 3/5

• Sometimes they’re suspiciously deformed and dented. Can’t blame them. sometimes I feel like a deformed cold boiled egg too.

Availability: 5/5

• Almost always at the salad bar!

 

C-Tier: would not eat unless no other option…

Layered scrambled egg

This is the scramble method where they make flat crepe-like layers and just stack them to make a scramble. The extra surface area makes it super dry and rubbery. 

Taste: 2.5/5

• Dryyyy, weirddd. flavorlessss.  When I get desperate and have to eat it, I DOUSE it in ketchup
• It’s also somehow wet and soggy at the same time. Pools of liquid collect at the bottom

Presentation: 2/5

Yellow layered brick that you carve/shave chunks out of 

Availability: 3/5

Lets bring that number down 

D-Tier: how do you even achieve this form of egg

Powdered scrambled egg 

Like egg gravel. Egg pellets. Idk if we can even consider this a scrambled egg

Taste: 2.5/5

• Imagine eating dry rice-like egg chunks. You sort of have to dig past a crusty dry layer to get to the edible parts, which you then discover are also hard and dry. The ketchup to-egg-ratio I need to use is kind of horrifying.

Presentation: 1/5

• I’m getting the ick.

Availability: 2/5

• Not often seen in simmons but it’s a sad day when I do

 

The eggs I’d dream of seeing at MIT:

soft boiled, poached. Omg. eggs benedict. I can only dream…

 

That’s the end of my ranking so far! The dining staff has been giving me a lot of concerned looks because I keep taking pictures of their eggs. I need a break!

I might do a follow up later in the year with more eggs and more egg expertise. I’d love to hear of any disagreements anyone might have as well. I usually have pretty controversial food takes.