If I was giving out ingredient awards, the beauty of free-range farm fresh eggs would be hard to beat. They outrank battery eggs by a mile on taste, colour, size, richness, and they behave better in any recipe you care to name. Whip-ability to protein content to Omega-3, Gamma-42b, or whichever Greek alphabet of nutrients you decide to measure will score higher with fresh free-range eggs. And all this before you even mention how happy chickens are about the situation.
A popular myth says there is however one place you might be less satisfied with fresher eggs, namely when you need them hard boiled. Or to be more precise when you need them peeled easily and cleanly without leaving half the egg stuck to the inside of the shell and the remainder looking like a white meteor cratered by centuries of orbiting the kitchen. If you’ve ever aimed for perfectly smooth devilled eggs and ended up closer to chopped egg salad, read on.
To be clear, this is about making eggs easy to peel. Cooking them for perfect taste and texture is an entirely different conundrum that centres on cooking time to egg size ratios which are best defined by personal preference and a few dozen practice eggs. The method taught by French oeufs experts will tell you to start with your eggs fully immersed in cold water. Bring them to the boil for a highly debated amount of time, usually under three minutes, and then remove them from heat and cover to sit for another highly debated amount of time, anywhere from nine to eleven minutes longer depending on your desired yolk texture. This method will indeed consistently produce perfectly cooked eggs but if you try to peel them afterwards, ice bath or not, you’ll often be sorely disappointed and overwhelmingly irritated with the great hunks of white ripped from the exterior because it’s stuck to the shell.
Confusing nuggets of egg-peeling kitchen science had haunted me for years. To borrow from Peter Jackson and company “wisdom became legend, and legend became myth…” I heard all manner of tricks from amateurs and professionals alike. Dump heaps of salt in the boiling water, add vinegar to the pot, add baking soda to the pot, add even more vinegar AND baking soda to the pot, prick the end of the shell with a pin, shock them in ice water after cooking, rattle them in the pan to make a multitude of small cracks… every bit worthless culinary hokum that made little if any real difference in the ease of peeling. I was to the point of embarking on a quest to a pickled egg factory and disguising myself in a lab coat and safety goggles just to steal industry secrets. Thankfully I couldn’t find my poofy fake moustache or forge an ID card to gain entry into what is obviously a high security facility hellbent on hiding the boiled truth from the masses.
As defeat on that front set in, the science nerds clamoured with discussions of albumen pH levels and why some of this chemical trickery works. They’re sure it does despite the fact that no one can reproduce their theoretical results successfully. Next come marching in the egg industry experts that talk about the age of the eggs and how older specimens will peel easier because of detached layers of whatsits and contracting levels of kitcherykoo. Professional chicken wranglers ride in on their ostriches and start ranting about how the eggs should be stored for a minimum of nine turns of the moons of Saturn at specific humidity levels that can only be achieved in the arboreal rain forests of Peru in the year of the Perspiring Mongoose and blah blah blah… They were all wrong. Every one.
!!! If you want your eggs to peel easily, get the water hot FIRST, then add the eggs. !!!
That’s all you need to know.
Use a long-handled implement like a kitchen spider or slotted spoon to ease them into the hot bath because steam burns hurt like hell and a crack on touchdown at the bottom of the pot will get you egg drop soup in a hurry, but otherwise just use a timer and you’ll be in the hard boiled clear. Yes it will help if they’re not gathered from the coop the same morning you cook them but after only a few days, age is a minor factor. Yes you can put salt or baking soda or the tears of rabid lizards in the pot if it makes you feel better. It won’t make any difference. If you want to toss ice into a bowl for them to swim in afterwards, do whatever makes you happy but know that running cold tap water over them for two minutes is probably plenty.
The size of your eggs will have an impact on what the perfect length of time to let them boil should be for your tastes – I aim for a range between seven and eleven minutes – but as long as you put cool eggs in hot water instead of bringing them up from cold together, they’ll peel like a charm. You don’t even need them fully submerged in the water because steam will cook them just as well. My old food science buddy Alton Brown of Good Eats fame advises storing your hard boiling stocks in their carton on its side so that the yolks stay more centred and a quick test shows that trick does indeed have merit.
I absolutely admit that I was suckered into all the other gimmicks and for more than a decade massacred my boiled eggs at the peeling stage. My standard approach used to be ‘boil a dozen to get six pretty’. And honestly I can’t take credit for my salvation from this shell-sticking purgatory. In a complete fit of egg serendipity, I met an elderly woman of frugal German immigrant stock at a county fair years ago who happened to have brought a huge tray of devilled eggs to the ‘cooking from the coop’ event I was invited to judge. I’m certain my name was well down on the list after hundreds of better qualified and more popular food types had declined the offer.
This woman was an absolute delight, not because of her delicate and charming personality (that she had apparently left at home) but more for her rigid eye surveying every other entry on the table. “Zat is not the right pan” and “zere ist too much butter in dat crust – you can tell from across the room”. She wasn’t being cantankerous out of spite or pride, she was merely pointing out that everyone else was wrong. Plain and simple. There is ONE way to do things and no one should deviate, obviously. Her wiry old hands poked and prodded the display table entrants one by one passing judgment with her expert eye without even the thought of actually tasting something crossing her mind. “If eet is done wrong, what is zee point?” Her logic was impenetrable.
When I came to her tray to taste in my temporary official capacity, she stood with arms crossed and a stoic look on her face that could have out stared the Sphinx. The distinct feeling that I was being allowed to taste her perfect creation was unavoidable. Bugger me if they weren’t the most perfect devilled eggs I’ve ever tasted. Shame she didn’t apply her talents to a proper Scotch egg I thought to myself at the time and later saw her make an appearance over a gigantic bowl of egg-enriched potato salad with a perfectly creamy dressing. In her defence she did seem to think the point of the contest was to feed anyone and everyone who happened to show up under the tent that day and not a soul left without at least some small sample of her egg-laced prowess and a newfound appreciation of the talents she had hiding behind the scowl.
Only after I gave her the winning ribbon and bribed her with some of my smoked paprika stockpile did a small crack in her armour (or tough as nails personal egg shell) appear long enough for me to ask not only for her recipes but also my niggling egg peeling science question. Her answer was exactly four words long. “Hot water, cold eggs.” I immediately dashed home and proceeded to test several dozen to see if really was that simple. Ever since, my boiled eggs have peeled easier than bananas fitted with zippers.
Now wasn’t that easy?
Devilled Eggs from the County Fair
Recipe coming soon when I test it once more… and after I remember to write down proper measurements next time. I can only eat so many of the blasted things in a week you know.
