How To Make Easy Peeling Hard Boiled Eggs
Would you like to know How To Make Easy Peeling Hard Boiled Eggs every single time?
How about hard-boiled eggs that have no green ring around the yolk? Do you like eggs that are creamy and mellow and taste great?
Would you like to know the secret?
If you were to ask ten different cooks what they considered to be the best way to create the perfect hard-cooked egg you would likely receive ten different responses. There seem to be as many recommended methods of cooking those eggs as there are cooks.
Believe me, I’ve tried them all! Over the years I’ve cooked thousands of hard-cooked eggs!
I’ve tried all the cooking methods and all the additions. Even oven baking and pressure cooking plus additions like vinegar, baking soda, salt, etc.
I’ve tried them all.
So what’s the big secret that I’ve learned to perfectly cooked easy peeling hard-boiled eggs? Well, the truth of the matter is there is no 100% fool-proof method.
But you can come darned close. I do it all the time! Rarely do I run across an egg that’s not perfectly cooked or that refuses to peel cleanly.
Are you ready to learn How To Make Easy Peeling Hard Boiled Eggs? It’s not that difficult. The entire procedure consists of just easy 3 steps:
- The Eggs
- The Cooking Method
- The Peeling Method
The steps are really easy. So easy that it takes longer to explain than it takes to do. Ready? Let’s get started.
How To Perfectly Cook Easy Peeling Hard-Cooked Eggs: The Eggs
Peeling eggs is always the tricky step, isn’t it? Far too often, the shell crumbles in a million pieces and the whites cling tenaciously, giving us a stubbled, moon-cratered unsightly egg.
Our aim is beautiful, pristine hard-boiled eggs for deviled eggs or a similar dish.
Now it’s a fact that older eggs peel easier than fresh eggs.
As eggs age, they gradually lose moisture through the pores in their shell and the air pocket at the tip expands. The pH of the whites also changes, going from a low pH to a relatively high pH, which makes them adhere less strongly to the shell.
Grocery store eggs are already old enough that they would probably work just fine right out of the carton. But farm-fresh eggs will always be tricky to peel.
Ideally, buy your eggs a week or two before you plan to boil them and let them age in the fridge.
Regardless of where you got your eggs, we’re going to use a procedure that will give us even more of an edge. We’re going to artificially age the eggs.
My favorite Food Network star, Alton Brown says, that for eggs, one day on the counter is like one week in the refrigerator. So a day before you plan to boil your eggs take them out of the fridge and set them on the counter on their sides.
The next day when you’re ready to hard cook you’ve artificially aged the eggs by one week!
This takes away the option of boiling eggs on the spur of the moment but it’s very important to our procedure.
But there are other reasons for doing the eggs on the counter trick.
Have you ever hard-cooked eggs and when you cut them in half the yolk was to one side? You had an extremely narrow white with the yolk right next to the edge? Not suitable for deviled eggs right?
Well, allowing the eggs 24 hours on the counter also fixes that problem. While sitting on end in the carton gravity pulled the yolks out of position. Sitting on their sides on the counter will allow the yolks to center themselves. No more thin-walled whites!
One more reason for 24 hours on the counter is that you know for sure that the eggs are at room temperature through and through. There will be less shock when they hit the heat and they’re less likely to crack.
Ok. That takes care of the egg preliminaries. On to cooking the eggs!
How To Perfectly Cook Easy Peeling Hard Boiled Eggs: The Cooking Method
As much as any other factor, the thing that makes a big difference in how clean eggs release from their shells is the cooking method.
There are many cooking methods for hard-cooked eggs. All of those methods can be divided into two categories. Hot start and cold start.
For instance, if you were boiling your eggs and started the eggs in cold water that’s a cold start. Starting in boiling water is a hot start.
A hot start method produces easier-to-peel eggs by far. Hot starting eggs make them strikingly easier to shell than those started in a cold pot.
I discovered this quite by accident and can’t explain it. But cold-started egg whites seem to create a bond more strongly with the membrane inside the shell than hot-started eggs.
Do you want to know the best way to hot start hard-boiled eggs? Steam them!
That’s right, forget about boiling the eggs, steamed eggs are the way to go. Some of the air from the hot steam permeates the eggshell making the egg easier to peel.
Steam’s relatively lower density means that steamed eggs actually cook a little more gently than boiled eggs.
The gentleness of steam and the ability to load up a steamer insert and lower it gently into a pot also has the advantage of reducing your chances of shells cracking and whites leaking out.
Finally, steaming eggs has the advantage of being the fastest method around. Instead of waiting for a pot of water to come to a boil, all you need to do is boil a half-inch of water.
Simply throw your steamer insert in, cover the pot, set your timer for 11 or 12 minutes, and you have perfectly steamed hard-boiled eggs.
All that’s left is peeling your hard-cooked eggs. Not very tricky but an important step.
The Peeling Method
While your eggs are steaming you should prepare an ice water bath. I like to freeze some ice in a plastic food container. This makes one big chunk and it is easier to navigate around than ice cubes would be. But whatever.
The thing you really want with the bath is a pretty good volume of extremely cold water. The eggs are done when they come out of the steamer. Dumping them in the ice water will stop any residual cooking quickly.
Dump the eggs straight from the steamer basket into the ice water.
As soon as you can handle the eggs begin cracking. You want a fine crack matrix. The finer the better. I crack all around and then use the counter rolling method to crack even finer.
Put the cracked eggs back in the ice water and cool for about 15 minutes.
Note: If you’re hard cooking eggs to dye for Easter you certainly don’t want to crack them. Do put them in the ice water bath to cool and stop the cooking, however.
During this cooling time, water will seep into the cracks of the eggs and further separate the membrane from the egg white.
Another thing. You know the dimple you get at the big end of eggs? The older the eggs the larger the dimple. This means that the eggs that are most suitable for boiling also happen to come out the ugliest. Not nice for deviled eggs!
Well, the ice water bath cures that also.
When you pull the hot egg out from the steamer, the yolk and white have yet to firm up completely. By shocking it, you very rapidly cause the steam that has built up inside that air pocket to convert to water, instantly dropping to about half of its original volume. The still-malleable boiled egg moves in to fill its place.
Ok. The eggs have cooled and it’s time to peel. Start from the large end of the egg and under running water, start removing the shell.
Just pull the shell from the large end and be sure you get your thumb under the membrane. The shell will almost fall off as you rub your thumb against the egg and twist the egg around and around.
That’s How To Perfectly Cook Easy Peeling Hard Boiled Eggs in a nutshell.
Like I said it takes longer to explain than it actually takes to do. To recap three easy steps:
Choose older eggs and counter age for 24 hours
Steam the eggs, don’t boil – Use an ice water bath to stop the cooking process
Peel under running water
That’s How To Perfectly Cook Easy Peeling Hard Boiled Eggs. Give the method a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Up Next:
This Southern Egg Salad Recipe is just one of many that lay claim to the title of “Southern”. This is one of the better ones though. Absolutely delicious!
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