The perfect hard-boiled egg

[Jenise]

As someone who spent the vast period of my life from ten years old to about a year ago not eating eggs, mastering the hard-boiled egg has represented a bit of a challenge to me. Pre-age 10, I only knew my mother's. They were long-cooked, powdery-textured, with palid yellow yolks rimmed in an unappetizing blue-gray. Of course since then I learned to avoid that by shocking the just-cooked eggs in ice water, but I had no impetus to dial down the exact timing AND figure out how to get the shell cleanly off a fresh egg until I started eating them myself.

We're there.

Got the idea from the Food Lab book (don't own it, but briefly perused a friend's copy) and instantly grokked that his method would work--but I think mine's better. Who wants to measure ice cubes?

Here's what I did. Brought water to a very low simmer. Lowered just-purchased fresh eggs in with a slotted spoon. Pre-cooked for one minute. Removed eggs with slotted spoon and dropped into a bowl of ice water. Rested them for another minute. Returned them, again via slotted spoon, to the same pan of barely-simmering water. Increased heat slightly to bring water back to bare simmer, then set timer for eight minutes. When done, I spooned the eggs back into the ice water.

About five minutes later, here's the egg I made with proof via the shell of just how beautifully they peeled:

DSCF2004-001.JPG

THAT, is a perfect hard-boiled egg.

I'm sort of a barbarian when it comes to hard-boiling eggs. But I think they come out pretty well if the eggs are fresh.
I put them in cold water to cover, bring to the boil quickly, turn down the heat so they're just boiling enough to roll around a bit, wait 7 or 8 minutes (for "large" eggs) and immediately chill them in cold running water, and leave them in cold water after they've cooled to the touch.
Works fine for me.

Seems like we have discussed this before but I eat HB eggs regularly and I do 3 or 4 at a time.

Bring water to full rolling boil, insert eggs, turn off flame and cover pan, set timer for 20 minutes.

At 20 minutes transfer to a bowl of cold water (I put in some ice cubes).

Eggs are cooked the way I like them -- sometimes they peel easily, sometimes not so easily.

I use a slicer and put them into half a whole wheat pita with mayo, mustard, and capers for a portable breakfast.

Of course I also like a soft boiled egg for breakfast and sometimes in curry sauce or other contexts. A soft boiled egg on top of some cheesy grits is a pretty nice breakfast. For a really runny yolk, boil 5 minutes. My son prefers 7 minutes, yolk is just soft but firm enough not to run all over.

What I remember from previous discussion -- I said I poke a hole in the large end of the egg to prevent cracking, and Jenise said she'd never heard of that. Of course it's also true that they don't really crack that often and I am probably doing it out of habit or superstition or something.

[Jenise]

I remember that old thread, and that no one could say definitively that their method produced easily peelable eggs every time so we had the discussion about older eggs being easier than fresher eggs.

And that's essentially the point of this post: this method, the rapid succession of heat/chill/heat again, releases the membrane which now clings to the shell, not the egg. THE SHELL JUST SLIDES OFF. John's method, which is how I cooked hardboiled eggs until this week, does not guarantee that result, nor obviously does Frank's. I provided the times and the picture to show you what level of doneness results. I used to do eight minute eggs. Well, even with the added steps, eight minutes still produces the result I want. I expected to find that I needed to back off a minute on the second cook but no, eight minutes was perfect.

Just yesterday on the interwebs I read to put a wedge of lemon in the water when boiling eggs and they will peel easily.

It doesn't really make any sense to me and I haven't tried it, but there's that.

Eggshells do have some porosity. Maybe the acid starts coagulating the white, similar to how it works in poaching eggs. If so, vinegar would work the same. Might be worth a try, next time I boil eggs.

I used vinegar for a while but once again I thought it was a precaution against "cracking" and bleeding. You make the eggwhite clot before too much spills out.

I see the point of your technique now Jenise and I will have to try it. I wonder if doing 3 or 4 eggs at once would derail it? I suppose it shouldn't -- and peeling a day or 2 later also shouldn't matter.

[Jenise]

I see the point of your technique now Jenise and I will have to try it. I wonder if doing 3 or 4 eggs at once would derail it? I suppose it shouldn't -- and peeling a day or 2 later also shouldn't matter.

I did four in this batch. And it won't matter when you peel it. They're as good a day later as immediate/when warm.