Hahahahaha! What a difference 15 years make! Since Mrs. L.A. has been here, we eat eggs every Saturday. And sometimes on Sunday too, if I make SOB or omelettes instead of pancakes.
We have soft boiled eggs most sundays. I buy the eggs at the same store and look for the longest dates and check for damage. They are never chilled.
I put them (carefully) into boiling water for six minutes and that seems to provide the desired ratio of hard white and soft yolk.
Sometimes they crack for no apparent reason. I have noticed that if one cracks then another often will, so it is my belief that the problem is that some chickens, from some producers, are laying weak shells. None of today’s eggs cracked.
ISTM that the temperature difference between the boiling water and refrigerated eggs would far outweigh any minor addition of chemicals from the burnt matches. It might be a case of confirmation bias. Like when someone repeatedly presses a crosswalk button and says, ‘See? If you keep pressing it, it changes to WALK.’
I lived in Europe for a decade and eggs were never refrigerated at the store.
The risk of salmonella is much lower here it seems. None the less, the elderly and pregnant are usually advised to avoid eating soft eggs.
Check your eggs for faint gray lines. Those will always crack.
According to Cooks Illustrated, the best way to make boiled eggs is to steam them. When you drop eggs into hot water, the eggs cool the water, and it takes a few minutes for the water to come back up to temperature. This also makes the eggs harder to peel. Instead, boil the water, then put the eggs in a steamer basked for 13 minutes, then transfer to an ice bath for 10 minutes.
If you must boil them, the recommended method is to put the eggs in cold water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let sit in the hot water covered for 10 minutes, then transfer to an ice bath. Don’t ever put cold eggs into boiling water.
I agree, the “weird” match technique can’t possibly work.
I put eggs in boiling water. Other than the gray lines I mentioned, I seldom lose an egg.
Boil water.
Turn off water before adding eggs.
Timer for 20 minutes, cover on pot
After starting timer, return water to barely starting to boil.
Turn off heat.
When eggs finish, drain water, crack eggs and into ice water.
I rarely have an egg that’s hard to peel.
20 minutes?! Your eggs are way overdone.
The water is not boiling the whole 20 minutes.
Assuming 1 to 4 eggs …
I start with refrigerated eggs and “cold” = room temp tap water. Put the eggs in the pan, add water until they’re just floating, then onto the stove on high uncovered. At 8 minutes the eggs are soft boiled and at 15 they’re hard boiled. After the time expires, dump the boiling water & refill the pan with “cold” tap water again. Let them soak only long enough so you can handle them. That’s 15-ish seconds for soft boiled and maaaybe 1 minute for hard.
I like it because it’s a very simple procedure with no fiddling in the middle and no nebulous steps like “just barely boiling”. Being able to leave them alone & know exactly when they’ll be done gives free time to prepare the rest of the breakfast while they do their thing unmolested.
For round numbers my water begins to boil at 6-1/2 minutes. If you stove is faster or slower adjust accordingly.
Assuming no latent cracks, I rarely have one crack. As to hard-to-peel hard-cooked eggs that’s a different story. I can take two eggs from the same carton, cook them in the same pot side by side for the same time, then have one peel very easily and the other peel very badly.
There are certainly ways to screw up the cooking and make hard-to-peel eggs. But I’ve concluded that there’s not much way to make guaranteed easy-to-peel eggs.
There are no guarantees in cooking, but Cooks Illustrated’s steaming method produces very good results. This is what they say about it:
If you’re not familiar with CI, they are a very science-based cooking lab. They do extensive experiments with different ways of cooking each recipe. They say they’ve cooked hundreds of eggs in coming up with their method.
A science-of-cooking site I found agreed with markn+'s cite: put the eggs straight into boiling water (mine usually come right out of the fridge), and after 15-16 minutes at a boil, dump the boiling water and refill the pan with cold water and lots of ice.
I’ve been using this method ever since (almost a year, I think) and the eggs always peel perfectly.
ETA: Here’s the page.
Thank you both. It seems like commasense’s cite’s method is gaining “easy to peel” at the expense of “lots of cracked leaking eggs”. Ref our now-ancient OP. I’ll give the steamed eggs method a try; that’s certainly how I prepare about 90% of my vegetables.
I wonder how much of the success of either method is the ice bath? By cooling the eggs aggressively you shrink the whites which may pull back gently from the membrane everywhere. So the membrane is internally “peeled” from the white before you remove any of the shell.
When I’m making HB eggs it’s usually for immediate consumption hot. I don’t want to cool them to room temp or below before eating. That would certainly be no obstacle if one was making egg salad, deviled eggs, eggs to take to work for lunch, etc.
This issue comes up a lot, how to hard boil eggs for easy peeling. Don’t boil them. Steam them, as markn+'s article suggests.
The hardest eggs to peel are the freshest ones, because there has been no time for the air pocket to develop between shell and membrane that allows for easier peeling. I keep chickens and I regularly hard cook eggs with steam straight out of the hen. They peel so easily using this method. I’ll never go back to boiling. No poking, no cracking, no fuss.
Use any kind of steamer you like that will hold the number of eggs you want to cook. Fill your pot with just enough water to boil and create steam but not touch the eggs. Place eggs in steamer, cover the pot and steam for 13-14 minutes for hard cooked. Plunge eggs into cold water and ice to cool quickly so as to avoid the blue sulfur ring around the yolk.
The difference in peeling between boiling and steaming really is remarkable.
Moderator Action
Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society, which did not exist when this thread was initially created.
I’ve used Alton Brown’s method (eggs into cold water, bring to boil, turn off heat allow to cook in heated water 8 mins (mostly 10 mins for me), then stop cooking in ice bath (I don’t usually do this, but run cold tap over them instead). Works fairly well as long as the eggs aren’t too old. Old eggs, while still edible, are unpredictable as far as peeling goes.
https://twitter.com/altonbrown/status/188731859809734657?lang=en
Use a sharp needle or pin and drill a tiny hole in the middle of the big end of the egg before putting it in the water. There is an air pocket in there, and thermal expansion of said air is what cracks the shell. The tiny hole will let the air out. Since the air pocket is there, the pin can penetrate the shell without breaking the shell membrane, and the egg won’t leak.
I got one too, and though I’ve only used it once, it did a perfect job.
Here it is.
It had always seemed to me that boiled eggs cracking in the pot was due to the physical action of the bubbles knocking the eggs around and hitting the bottom of the pot that cause them to crack and leak. Mind, I’ve never thought it was necessary to let the eggs warm first.
Anyway, I’m totally seconding the steaming method. Ever since I adopted it they always come out phenomenal. Every time I’d boil I’d always manage to overdo it somehow, and they’d come out all sulphury and with that gross grey line around the yolk.
So yeah, steaming is my go to method. Although I find use of a steamer basket isn’t strictly necessary. Just place them into 1/2 in. to 1 in. of boiling water and you’re good to go. And if your pot lid rattles around because it isn’t heavy enough, wrap a tea towel around the lid and place it on the pot. Just be careful not to let the ends fall into the burner, natch.