How To Make Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs - Once Upon a Chef (2024)

FAQs

How do you cook hard-boiled eggs so they peel easily? ›

Bring to a boil, then cover the pot and turn off the heat. Let the eggs cook, covered, for 9 to 12 minutes, depending on your desired done-ness (see photo). Transfer the eggs to a bowl of ice water and chill for 14 minutes. This makes the eggs easier to peel.

Once water is boiling, add the eggs and adjust the temperature to maintain a rolling boil. Start a timer for 12 minutes and prepare an ice bath. When the timer goes off, remove eggs from the pot and immediately place into ice bath for at least 10 minutes before peeling.

Lower your eggs straight from the fridge into already-boiling water, or place them in a steamer insert in a covered pot, steaming at full blast on the stovetop. If boiling, lower the heat to the barest simmer. Cook the eggs for 11 minutes for hard or six minutes for soft. Serve.

According to our friends at Delish, adding a teaspoon of baking soda to your boiling pot of water will help the shell peel off seamlessly. Why? The alkaline in the baking soda will help your egg whites loosen up from the shell, making it easier to peel.

The fresher the egg, the more difficult it is to peel after hard cooking. That's because the air cell, found at the large end of the shell between the shell membranes, increases in size the longer the raw egg is stored. As the contents of the egg contracts and the air cell enlarges, the shell becomes easier to peel.

Here's Paula's tried and true method:

Next, bring the water to a boil, and right when it starts to rumble, remove the pan from the heat, and cover it with a tight-fitting lid. 3. Now time for that kitchen timer; set it for exactly 20 minutes.

Lower the heat slightly – so the eggs don't crack due to being bashed around but water is still at a gentle boil. Start the timer – 6 minutes for runny yolks, 8 minutes for soft boiled, 10 minutes for classic hard boiled, 15 minutes for unpleasant rubbery whites and powdery dry yolks.

You might have heard that you should drop your eggs into room temperature or cold water and then bring the water to a boil. This is a myth. In our tests, bringing the water to a boil first and then lowering the eggs into the bath made for easy peeling and more accurate timing.

After 17 or 20 minutes (depending on size of your eggs), remove lid and drain off water from the eggs. Watch the time when cooking the eggs carefully. Overcooking causes a green layer to form around the yolk. This layer is caused by a reaction between the iron in the yolk and the sulfur in the white.

The vinegar in the water makes the eggs easier to peel. Here's why: The vinegar's acid not only dissolves some of the calcium carbonate in the shell, it also helps the whites set faster. Running the hard-boiled eggs under cold running water as you're peeling, meanwhile, helps the shell separate from the membrane.

Why salt is added to boiling eggs? ›

Egg white solidifies more quickly in hot, salty water than it does in fresh. So a little salt in your water can minimize the mess if your egg springs a leak while cooking. The egg white solidifies when it hits the salt water, sealing up the crack so that the egg doesn't shoot out a streamer of white.

After trying several methods to determine if an egg is cooked or not, there were a few that came out on top. Contrary to what you might have heard, hard-boiled eggs do not float—but they do act differently when you spin them or shine a flashlight through them.

Keeping Hard-Boiled Eggs Fresh

For maximum freshness, leave them in their shells until you are ready to eat or prepare. The shell will help to protect the egg from bacteria, and can help prevent them from absorbing odors from other foods in your refrigerator.