Believe it or not, there is an art to cooking eggs in the shell. Find out how to cook them perfectly to your tastes without that gray-green tinge or losing half the egg to the shell when peeling. Remember, hard-boiled eggs is a misnomer as they should not be boiled for any length of time. Get tips on how to hard-cook eggs for Easter or any recipe.
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Hard-Boiled Eggs Recipe Photo © 2007 Peggy Trowbridge Filippone, licensed to About.com, Inc.
Comments
i also add some vinegar to the water when i boil which also helps them be peeled….
add a tbl os salt the eggs are very easy to peel,
I read you should not add salt to the water as this raises the temperature and will increase the likelihood of a rubbery texture or a gray-greening of the yolk.
I followed these steps and left the eggs for 17 minutes. I added some vinegar to the water. Although they were cooked perfectly, they were impossible to peel and most of the whites came off with the shell. I tried peeling them under standing water, running water, and no water. Nothing worked.
Diane, the peeling problem with your eggs is that the eggs were too fresh. Do your best to buy eggs for hard-boiling at least a week in advance.
Peggy
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The secret to being able to easily peel hard boiled eggs, is to plunge them into very cold water when they are finished cooking and leave them there until they have cooled. I also put some vinegar into the water when they are cooking but this is to prevent the eggs from ‘splitting’ their shells.
the secret to peeling the eggs, even if they are very fresh is to crack the shells thoroughly and leave them in the cold water for a few minutes. The cold water seeps in between the shell and the egg and helps you peel them without a problem. I read this and I have tried it and it really helps!
My Gar has a way to peel eggs I’d never thought of before. It’s no good if your recipe calls for a whole egg, but perfect if you’re going to 1/2 it, cut it or mash it…
Ready for it…
Cut egg in half.
scoop out with teaspoon.
voila!!!
To remove eggs from shell after they are cooled, crack one end and use a tsp. turned upside down, put the tsp under the shell and lift it off. Works like magie =)
Knowing eggs very well-the biggest misconception is fresh eggs are harder to peel-the opposite is actually the truth-cold water immed. after boiling is the only difference maker.
The ability to peel an egg easily relies largely on a mix of biology and chemistry.
The albumen of an egg is a membrane that separates the shell of the egg from its contents. In order to be able to peel an egg easily, this albumen needs to be separated from the shell.
An older egg will have this quality more frequently than a new one, and it is because of the alkalinity that develops as the egg ages. As the egg gets older, the alkalinity rises, the albumen separates from the shell, and voila! – deviled eggs.
But what about the vinegar? I’m not sure why vinegar is recommended, but I think that it might contribute to the alkalinity and speed up the separation. Vinegar is acidic, so a drop in the pH of the water might cause the pH in the egg to rise. Not sure about this, but I would appreciate some help from those with a deeper knowledge of chemistry.
There is actually another method in which the eggs are really boiled, which I prefer. When done correctly, the eggs do NOT become rubbery. And, I like adding salt to the water, it makes the eggs peel better and prevents the whites from seeping out if there is some breakage.
If your eggs are too fresh you will never be able to peel them. Use the eggs that have been sitting in the fridge for a few weeks to boil and they will peel easily.
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I have followed every recipe known to man to try and get easy peel eggs. None work. What does (and I figured it out by accident because my sink was full that day due to all the cooking I was doing) is to let the eggs cool naturally on a plate on the counter. I don’t care how you cook it, how long , vinegar or not. New egg or old egg. If you let them cool naturally , then just put in the fridge, they peel perfectly! At least at my house they do!