Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/26/how-to-cook-perfect-hard-boile.html
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no man can cook 50 perfect hard-boiled eggs
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I’m eating a hard boiled egg right now.
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Did folks miss the treatise that Kenji did on this?
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The trick is not to immerse them in cold water after boiling them, though that helps a little. The trick is the hot start - either cooking them in already-boiling water, or steaming them.
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This. Kenji (of seriouseats, but before that, of freakin’ Cooks Illustrated fame) did an expansive experiment on all of this. Steam them (or boiling water), immediately shock them in ice water, let them sit until completely cool (15 minutes). Easy peel, every time.
I have one of those egg steamers, and we use that method, along with an icewater bath. Easy peel eggs every time, no guesswork.
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Agreed. This is how I have been cooking eggs for a long time now with very good results. No ice water involved.
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Here’s what I found works:
Boil the water, then put the eggs in.
After about 5 minutes, stir the eggs around. After another minute, stir them some more. The trick here is to separate the egg matter from the shell by stirring, and to introduce very slight cracks in the egg. The cracks allow a bit of boiling water to seep in, which gets between the slightly hard-boiled egg (at 5 minutes) and the shell. Hot water, chemistry, and physics do the rest.
I gave up on hard boiled eggs and I switched to sous vide eggs. I make a batch of 150F eggs and eat just the amazing yolks.
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Well, maybe. Everyone who cooks has an opinion, and everyone who makes a video says theirs the perfect method. But were with/without cold immersions compared, age of the eggs controlled, etc.? Even when a method yields good results, some components could be merely confirmatory superstitions.
My experience: I tried the “start with boiling water” method posted once here at boingboing, got rid of the ice bath and other rigmarole (salt, vinegar, punctures, timing), and now get better results than with any of the many methods I used previously.
Happy peeling!
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My new favorite way to make super-easy, always-excellent hard boiled eggs with shells that pop off with no effort at all:
• put as many eggs as you want in an Instant Pot with about a cup of water. The little rack the pot comes in is good for this.
• cook them on high pressure for four minutes.
• let the pot release ‘naturally’ for about five minutes when cooking is done, then release pressure.
• take the insert out & fill with cold water.
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I’ve become a fan of steaming the egg. 15 minutes of steaming gives me a perfectly cooked, easy to peel egg.
Thank goodness I can count on the internet to give me the 15 secrets of boiling eggs…
We go through about 3 dozen eggs every two weeks in our house. We found this thing works great for the 5 of us.
Also makes great soft boiled eggs, just reduce cook time and release time.
We love em so much we bought one of these (thx BB!)
Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher
I’m going to try making pressure cooker pozole.
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The correct answer is to carefully make a small hole in the fat end of the egg. I use a safety pin; there are specialized implements for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_piercer. Because of the way eggs form there is an air bubble here - opening this up allows the air to escape, does not break the membrane of the egg, and lets hot water enter and separate the membrane from the shell. Then, lower the eggs into boiling water, cook for 5 minutes, turn off the heat, let the eggs sit in the hot water for 5 minutes, drain, and peel. The eggs will be perfectly cooked and will separate easily from the eggshell.
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I prefer to fly to Tokyo and buy them in the 7/11 less effort
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Yeah, boil the water first, then drop them in (easily, that is). This video is wrong on that point.
Seconded. The Instapot makes AWESOME hard-boiled eggs!
I have one of those egg steamers and even without ice water after, they peel perfectly 99% of the time.
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