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off heat, cold pan

eggs + salt, hard enough that no streaks of white remain — unmixed albumen sets firmer and faster than yolk, so any ribbon you leave behind shows up as a tough white fleck in a tender curd. Salting now rather than at the end is deliberate: salt disrupts the protein bonds slightly, so the network traps water instead of squeezing it out. If you have ten idle minutes, let the salted eggs stand; they will be measurably more tender.