Step 1: Boil a pot of water to a full boil, it should take about 8-9 minutes
Step 2: Use a spoon to put the eggs in one at a time, but hover each one just above the water for about 5 seconds before gently putting it in. This prevents the shells from cracking due to shock of the hot water.
Step 3: Set a timer for 8:30-9:00
Step 4: While the eggs are cooking, get a bowl filed with ice water
Step 5: When timer goes off, put the eggs but not the hot water in the ice water. Let them sit for about 45 seconds. This step will make sure the egg shells peel off of the egg without sticking
Step 6: Remove the eggs from the ice water. I like to do this before they cool down much, so they are still warm when I eat them.
I’ve looked at dozens of articles online that don’t work. This combines two methods and adds some improvements. If you put the eggs in and then bring the water to a boil the shells stick when you try to peel them. If you don’t hover the egg over the hot water for a few seconds some eggs will crack and raw egg fills the water. If you don’t put the eggs in ice water they will be tough to peel. I like to eat boiled eggs with salt and pepper and I put mustard on the side of the plate to dip them in, tastes like a deviled egg.
enjoy
I should say that the main goal of this method is to make eggs that you can peel the shells off of very easily, whether or not the eggs are very fresh. If the eggs you buy don’t have problems peeling then this method might not be the best for you.
The correct way to hardboil eggs is actually to steam them, which is what the majority of the world does (have you ever seen someone selling hardboiled eggs? They are usually in a steam container). If you time it right, you don’t even need the ice bath to achieve an easy peel egg (though this takes practice lol).
Boiling is just a alternative method that is slightly less effective but very common because not everyone keeps a steamer basket at home.
Yup. I have pots with pressure cooker lids, and I just add a tiny but of water in the bottom and basically just steam them for 6 or 7 minutes. Even if I get distracted they are usually still easily peeled and just barely soft in the middle.
That’s a hard steamed egg, though…
Technically correct, the best kind of correct.
The temperature of boiling water depends on your altitude. Water boils at 212F (100C) Miami but only 202F (94C) in Denver. This makes a big difference when boiling eggs. It’s why specific times for boiling eggs are so unreliable for people from different altitudes.
You missed the last important step, which is to throw the eggs in the trash because hard boiled is nasty as fuck.
This is such an odd post. So many details that are highly debatable, not many important details.
For example, is the egg refrigerated or room temperature? That changes the timing a lot. Talking about accurate timing is pointless without at least some idea of the initial temperature.
I don’t use a ice bath, or any kind of cooling down for hardboiled eggs. I don’t really have a problem peeling them, unless they are very fresh.
Agreed, ice bath is only important for me if eggs are super fresh, which makes them harder to peel, or if I need them to stop cooking fast, like if I am making soft boiled eggs or have the sudden realization I started boiling the eggs and walked off at least five minutes ago but neglected to set a timer.
I’m not ADHD, you’re ADHD!
but hover each one just above the water for about 5 seconds before gently putting it in. This prevents the shells from cracking due to shock of the hot water
If you want to keep your eggs from cracking from the temperature shock, put them in a bowl, fill the bowl with the hottest water you can get from the tap and let it sit for a minute before you put the eggs in the boiling water. Unless you have some crazy volcano of a hot water heater, the tap doesn’t get hot enough to crack the shell, but will warm the shell up uniformly to much warmer than you’d get hovering the egg, or doing that weird thing where you try to lower the egg into the water a teeny tiny bit at a time.
Perfect hard boiled eggs- Take cold eggs and put in pot of cold water. Turn pot on high, let it reach a boil and turn pot off. Leave the pot on till the water calms down, then put the pot under a stream of cool water in sink. Let the eggs cool off to room temp then peel under the sink for easier shell removal.
Its the keave pit until territory that people struggle with
Someone should make a book called “Life. Beginner’s guide” and put stuff like that there.
I guess everyone has their own way of boiling an egg!
I’ve been very happy with the steamed egg method. I put a steamer basket in a pot with just enough water that it touches the bottom of the basket, bring it to boil and then put as many eggs as I want in to the basket using a pair of tongs with silicone grippies. I set a timer for 11min, put it on medium heat, cover the pot and set up an ice bath. After 11min the eggs go in the ice bath for a minute or two and I crack them and roll them on a cutting board to loosen the shells. They come out exactly how I like them with a golden yolk with a soft orange center and the shells are super easy to peel as long as I get my thumb under the membrane.
I’ve made them this way with fresh eggs, week old eggs, month old eggs, home chicken eggs, storebought eggs, and never had issues with peeling.
Question for step 3: is that 8:30-9:00 AM or PM?
It’s 8:30-9, not 20:30-21.
So you must use a 12 hour clock for this, not a 24 hour? (/s)
Only if you want to be able to cook them in the evening.
Yes
If you have an instant pot or something similar, pressure cooking eggs using a 5-5-5 method is also super great.
Put the eggs in a steamer tray or little rack- as long as they’re not touching the bottom. Pour in a cup of water, then seal the lid and make sure it’s not set to venting. Set it to cook on high pressure for 5 minutes (I do 4, actually because I like it a little jammy in the yolk).
It takes ~5 min for the pressure to come up, 5 min cook time, then you give 5 min for the pressure to naturally come down before venting and taking eggs out to put in cool water.
I’ve personally never used an ice bath and my eggs come out gorgeous every time.
We do 6 minutes cook time then vent immediately and put in cold water. Works great.
It’s even easier than that
- put eggs in cold water
- bring to a boil then turn off
- cover and let sit for X minutes based on chart
- then sit in ice water for 10-15 minutes
Hard to peel eggs just means it’s fresh. Older eggs peel easier
With my method you won’t have hard to peel eggs regardless of if they were fresh or not
This is how we do it. Works great!
My tired brain thought these were images of omelettes on a plate, not a cross section of egg
Eggs will be easier to peel regardless of age if you drop them into boiling water water instead of cooking from cold. It causes the whites nearest to the shell to cook quickly and pull away from the shell.
If I recall correctly it’s because the proteins in the whites go through two phases as they cook. First they relax like spring partial uncoiling and then they either tighten back up and tangle with each other like, or they cross link with each other like a polymer (I forget which). Regardless of the exact mechanism, if you cook them fast enough, the proteins in the whites bind with each other before they have the chance to settle down and bond significantly with the shell lining.
Having worked in a restaurant kitchen boiling many eggs, there must be more to this.
This is the method we used, and every egg in the same boil would be different, so clearly this method has little to do with it.
Age is the big factor. It does two things:
- Eggs gradually lose water, which introduces more air into the air cell and between the membrane and the shell, making it all a bit looser as you peel.
- The pH increases, reducing the attraction/attachment of the boiled egg white to the membrane, which is why fresh egg shells are more likely to tear strips of white off as you peel.
Eggs in the US can be up to 60 days old at the time of packaging, then are considered good for another 45 days. Large flats of eggs can contain eggs from multiple batches of varying age, so some eggs might be two weeks old and others two or more months.
Its been proven the shells sticking depends on the age of the egg. Older is less sticky. The cooling down part is about stopping the egg to continue getting harder which is not relevant if you want them hard boiled anyways. Instead of hovering you can use a pin and put a small hole in the shell instead, but that sometimes results in some eggwhite escaping until it plugs the hole.
I use a pressure cooking when doing hard boiled eggs, I’ve found regardless of the egg age they are always easier to peel.
If one really wants perfect, they should read Periodic cooking of eggs from the journal Nature earlier this year. Everybody that has implemented it, claims it works great.
For the periodic method, scientists alternated submerging the eggs for two minutes in boiling water at 100 C (212 F) and lukewarm water at 30 C (86 F). This cycle was repeated eight times for 32 minutes.
— from: Scientists developed a new method for the perfect boiled egg, and you can test it at home
I’m sure it works, but its it’s not the only way to to cook a perfect egg. And it is hilariously inefficient both in terms of energy spent to boil water for 32 minutes, and effort required to direct one’s focus primarily to boiling eggs for 32 minutes (plus prep time).
What is funny to me is that this process is just pulse width modulation which is exactly how electric stoves work. But instead of applying the duty cycle to the water to keep it at a steady sub-boil temperature, they applied it to directly to the egg to even out the temperature gradient inside the egg.
You achieve a very similar result by just doing a 2 minute flash boil to set the outer whites and then dropping the temperature with cold water or ice and just walking away while a sous vide stick controls an even temperature for the rest of the time. Now, I don’t have a sous vide stick, but I did get a variable temperature electric kettle for tea, so I have been using that for several years now.
What makes the periodic method consistent and ripe for virality is:
- It reduces the impact of the most common unregulated variables: like pot size, burner power, egg:water ratio; it uses self regulating temperatures; and it’s hard to forget about the eggs since you are constantly monitoring them.
- It is accessible. It doesn’t require any special equipment and it is easy to remember: 2-in, 2-out, x8.
You’re probably correct that there are other methods for perfect eggs, but I believe that is a bit reductive. Boiling first then reducing the temperature, while similar, is definitely not the same as periodic temperature change, aside from it adding the same total energy to the system. But the rate that energy is added is the critical variable.
Don’t get me wrong, your method is good, but I don’t think the method in the paper only has the advantages you list. The periodic temperature change is important, and they detail precisely why that is.
Having said all that, I’m certainly not doing this. I’m all about easy and don’t need eggs to be a certain way. I just thought it was neat.
Jesus Christ, you can produce a Q1 article with nothing but math and a bunch of eggs?
I really need to up my publishing standards.
P.S. Of course they got some fancy measuring equipment in there
Set a timer for 8:30-9:00
My sleepy ass at 8:99: 😪😪
