Do you have trouble with shells sticking to your boiled eggs? Here's the fix

[LearnedCoward]

That’s the longest cock I’ve ever seen.

[dfaris]

Cock? I don’t think those are eggs you’ve been eating.

[Grey_Devil]

Rocky Mountain Oysters?

[messana]

Eggsperiment complete! I will say that the eggs done in the pressure cooker were consistently easier to peel, but only to a very modest degree - not enough of a difference for me to absolutely recommend pressure steaming over regular steaming for peeling the shells.

Raw materials: eggs purchased a local supermarket - both were Grade A Large. “New” eggs were purchased five days ago with an eggspiration date of Dec 29. “Old” eggs were purchased 12 days ago, with an eggspiration date of Dec 14.

Eggs from each sample were given one of four treatments with the “old” eggs being done first, and with the target of a medium-boiled egg as the outcome:

1. Pot steamed for 7 minutes with 7 minute ice bath
2. Pot steamed for 7 minutes with no ice bath
3. Pressure steamed for 6 minutes with 7 minute ice bath
4. Pressure stemed for 6 minutes with no ice bath

Shelled eggs are shown below. The ‘old’ egg that got pot steamed without an ice bath was a bit of a disaster, but given that the new egg with the same treatment turned out better, I’m inclined to believe that individual egg might have been a odd duck. If we were doing true science, I’d get all the eggs from the same chicken - but we do what we can with what we have.

And now the final results - how close do we get to the desired goal of a medium boiled egg with the various techniques. Et violà!

Notice that none of the yolks appeared to have that greenish tinge around the regardless of technique applied to it. Interestingly, the older eggs were consistently closer to medium boiled eggs - and heavens to murgatroyd, the old egg with pot steaming and an ice bath is just this side of soft boiled! Surprisingly, all of the newer eggs land much more toward the hard boiled end of the spectrum. It also appears that eggs that do not receive an ice bath will continue cooking due to radiant heat. Only the old egg that was pressure steamed with an ice bath appears anywhere near medium boiled.

Why? Because we like to do science to it!

ps - I took closer shots of each egg (both peeled and halved) can create an album out of it if anyone is really interested in the details.

pps - Yes, I had some time on my hands today.

[Grey_Devil]

You’re doing God’s Carl Sagan’s work