Monday, August 29, 2016

Peel that Egg!

A story is making its way around my facebook feed about how to peel hardboiled eggs. From the odd ("blow" the egg out...meh. Why bother?) to the maybe scientific (add baking soda to the water), I wanted to know this, especially since just about two weeks ago I made sorry looking deviled eggs, eggs with whites that looked as though they had been hacked at and hacked away. They tasted great, but I could not have served those in a pro kitchen.

So after reading some of the discussion, I had to go it alone.
I've always been taught that the best thing is to put the eggs into cold water, bring the water to a boil, cover pot, remove from heat, wait 10 or 11 minutes and you have perfect eggs...and the yolk IS a lovely-never-gray-green color. But that was the method that I used two weeks ago. Not. Good.

So yesterday morning, I dropped a room temperature egg (so very unAmerican, to keep my eggs on the counter) into rapidly boiling water. Lowered the heat, cooked it 10 minutes and peeled it immediately under cold, running water so I could handle it. Perfect egg.

But the request had come out: try the other methods. So I put the eggs back into the fridge (because face it, most Americans DO keep their eggs in the fridge).

Egg 1: Cold egg into cold water. Poor results. As expected. (This is how I cooked them two weeks ago.)




Egg 2: Cold egg into cold water with about 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. Maybe marginally better, but still ugly and difficult to peel.


Egg 3: Cold egg into cold water. Based on some Youtube love, put egg into glass with some water and shake. Unmitigated disaster. Who thought this one up?


Eggs 4and 5: Cold eggs into rapidly boiling water: They didn't explode! And they peeled so easily! I left the shells on the plate so you could see how big the pieces I took off were.

Eggs 6 and 7: Room temperature eggs into rapidly boiling water (just be make sure yesterday's egg wasn't a fluke). I peeled one under running water and used the glass shake method on the other--withOUT the disaster. The egg on the left is the one I shook--there is a tiny ding in the white, but that wouldn't bother me...


I have read a lot about the age of the eggs mattering--the eggs from two weeks ago were local eggs. These eggs are NOT local, so who knows how old they are. This week I will buy local and drop room temp eggs into boiling water. Watch for the results!