I do the following, which works more often than not. Week-old eggs. Place in pot, cover with cold water, bring to a boil. Cover and remove from heat. Let stand for about 15 minutes. Drain out hot water and shake the pot vigorously to crack the eggs. Fill the pot with cold water and let the eggs cool. Peel under water and rinse them off to remove any remaining shell bits.
I tried that method and almost blew my eardrums out.
Agreed. This almost always works for me. Cold water is best, hold the cracked egg low so the weight of the water will get under the membrane. I’ve peeled eggs this way and gotten the whole shell off in one piece! Also poke a pin-hole in one end of the egg before cooking. Keeps it from cracking all over.
I’ve done it all altho’ I haven’t visited the links yet. I always start with room temp eggs as well which makes me no genius as you can see. What I haven’t done is consider boiling in a LOT of salt (mild dehydration) which makes some sense.
When I was way younger I used to put the cleaned shells in ground coffee before perking. I don’t know why–it was just something one might do. Why was that???
Oh, that looks COOL! I’ll try that next time. I only saw this hours after I made, and peeled this morning’s batch of eggs. They were perfect by the way, and I ate some of them with a dab of creme fraiche with Maya Kaimal spicy ketchup (kecap) on top.
How do you make an egg hard boiled?
First you have it walk the mean streets of the city as a beat cop. It sees the ugly side of civilization, poverty, violence, hopelessness. Day after day of some creep’s sobbing wife trying to hide a shiner, begging him to go, pleading that she doesn’t want to press charges.
Then, a hard fought transition to detective. Forcing him to get into the mind of the scum he used to just have to clean up after. It’s hard.
Then, his marriage falls apart. He doesn’t even blame his wife for falling into another man’s arms. He’d come home every night haunted by what he’d seen during the day. It’s not so much for a woman to want a little sunlight in her life.
The egg leans heavy on a bottle, and finally is drummed from the force. Justified or not, it doesn’t matter. The fact is the only thing that gave that egg a moment’s peace and some semblance of meaning was the job, and now that’s gone. The only thing the egg knows how to do is be a detective, so now he chases philandering husbands, crooked business men and lost little girls. Earning his money once case at a time, watching the clock and drinking the grave ever closer.
That’s how an egg becomes hard boiled.
Damn!..
Double damn!
So then he takes up with a peeler named Flossie, who gets him out of his shell…
Good show, Lobohan, for that bit of Ova Noir.
Aw shucks, glad I went through the trouble. 
Sir, or Madam, I salute you. If you can point me to your publications, I would read.
Same here. Perhaps some breeds of hens make eggs that are harder to peel than others?
It’s possible that the shells are different, even with the same breed of chicken. Commercial egg producers in the US know exactly how to feed a chicken so that the eggs she lays have an intact shell, but a thinner one - feeding them more of whatever else is needed to make a harder/thicker shell would be an inefficiency. I don’t know how eggs are produced in the UK and Europe, but I’m guessing it isn’t quite the same as in the US.
Eggs sold in stores can be up to 45 days old already. It’s unlikely that any supermarket selling “Fresh Eggs” has newly-laid eggs in the first place.
I was planning on having hard boiled eggs for dinner. Will this process take that long?
You’ll want to double up on the whiskey to speed the process along…
Might they be using a steamer? When I was in college I worked at the hub, and they had a gigantic steamer that they used for their eggs. They’d come out, we’d let 'em cool for a few minutes, and then we’d peel them–the shells came off easy as a glove.
I can’t speak to their sitting around, though, as we usually peeled ours right away.