I googled how to peel a hard boiled egg easily. I absolutely suck at peeling them. The thing is, sometimes they peel easily and sometimes they don’t. (I once read that older eggs peel easier.) Either way, I often end up smashing or wasting an entire egg.
Almost every video that came up for how to peel one easily mentioned the peel and blow method…you peel a bit of shell from each end and then blow on one end to push the egg through. (Every vid had comments about how it’s great if YOU are eating the egg…lol.)
Anyone ever tried this? I just now did. And…it worked! Almost too well…next time I’ll blow it into paper towel so I don’t have to clean up egg shell off my white tile backsplash.
One tip I learned from Julia Child which almost never fails- start peeling from the fat end. There is a little bubble inside the shell there, and you can get under that membrane that is just beneath the shell. The rest of the shell usually peels off pretty easily from there.
I might try that blowing thing next time I’m eating the egg, though.
We’ve also read the “older eggs peel easier” thing, but according to my wife, the key to making eggs more easily peelable is to make sure they all cool off fast. Use enough cold water so they’re all under water.
I smash them on the counter (just hard enough to crack the shell, not make egg salad), then I roll it to crack it all over and loosen the membrane. Then I peel it, the cracked shell bits stay attached to the membrane and it peels off easily.
ETA: The blowing method sounds like a good way to spread disease. Would rinsing the eggs afterwards be enough to get rid of germs? Does everyone rinse their eggs after peeling them?
Which is also why peeling them under running water works, and thoroughly mashing the shell works. If you can get some water under that membrane, it all slips off easily. I would imagine that blowing the egg out would only work if water has gotten under the membrane. I am going to try it next time.
I think this might be related to how they were cooked (or cooled off, as stated above), but there have been times where I haven’t been able to get the shell off without huge chunks of egg white coming off along with it. Even running it under water. It’s like the egg white, membrane and shell are all fused together, rather than the membrane keeping the white and shell separated.
Other times the shell just slips right off. Go figure.
This is how I do them (and hit them in an ice bath immediately after boiling) and, as others have stated, sometimes the shell comes off easily in large chunks, other times it’s a pain in the ass.
While I appreciate the power and utility of YouTube, and the democratic potential of the “everyone can make a TV show” idea, the video really sucked. It was shot from too far away, handheld and totally didn’t show what was happening. We never saw what it was supposed to show - an egg flying out of its shell. What would be so difficult about shooting two different angles with two eggs and editing them together? Every modern OS includes free video editing software.
And Ferriss did mention he added baking soda to the water. I have my doubts that that by itself would ease the peeling. The book in the above link mentions exposing uncooked eggs to sodium hydroxide fumes! That’s much, much more basic than baking soda.
This works for me if you’re planning to use the eggs right away: after cooking, dump off the hot water bath, roll the eggs fairly vigorously around in the empty pot to crack the shells, then run cold water continuously into the pot while it sits in the sink until the eggs cool. Seems to make the shells come off more easily, perhaps because a bit of water gets under the shell. I also peel them right in the water bath. The shells stay in the pot, then can be strained out with a collander and dumped.
Then it could be that the eggs aren’t cooked enough. Do you get the grey film on the yolk after cooking? If the yolks are still bright yellow, they aren’t hard boiled yet.
I boil eggs in two stages. Put the eggs in the pan, boil the water. Before the water boils fully, turn down the heat until you barely get any bubbles. (If the water is boiling too much, the eggs will crack and you will get egg white soup.) Let them simmer for a while, I usually leave them for 15-20 minutes at medium heat.
To check, give them a shake afterwards. Soft boiled eggs will move around in the shell, hard boiled eggs will not.