Background: Sometimes people give me farm fresh eggs when I already have eggs in the fridge. Sometimes eggs go on sale. I love this because eggs are awesome. Can you have too many eggs? Probably. But a small surplussss of eggs is a good thing. It’s time to hard boil some eggs.
- Get a surplus of eggs. Look at the dates on cartons or ask the person who gave or sold them to you about how fresh they are. Use the oldest ones for hard boiled eggs.
- Put as many eggs as you can/want in 1 layer on the bottom of a pot with a tight fitting lid. Test the eggs by covering them with water. If the eggs stand up, they are old, but fine. If they float, they are bad. Remove eggs from water with a spider strainer and bring the water to a boil.
- Set a timer for 13 minutes, lower the eggs into the water with a spider strainer, cover with lid, remove from heat and start the timer.
- While the eggs are cooking, get a bowl full of water ready to lower the eggs into. When the timer goes off, use the spider strainer to move the eggs from the hot water to the regular water for 2 minutes.
- Test one right right away, make notes about the results, and store in the fridge for later.
Why It Works
- Many people claim the older eggs are easier to peel because the membrane shrinks. That may be true. I like to hard boil old eggs because you can see how old they are by putting them in a pot of water.
- As eggs age, water inside evaporates and is replaced by gases. This creates an air bubble that makes the egg either stand up or float.
- Technically, these eggs are poached in their shell in water that starts out boiling, not hard boiled eggs.
- This may seem like a lot of moving the eggs around and if you don’t like that, skip step 2, but don’t skip this step. You are gently stopping the cooking.
- This method should result in an egg that’s immediately peel-able. When you make notes, write down the cooking time, the cooling time, the consistency of the yolk, the color of the yolk. (There should never have a green ring around it. That means it’s overcooked.) If it’s perfect, great. If not, next time, adjust the cooking time based on your preferences.
Mods:
- This way is good if you want to test the eggs and you don’t mind moving eggs from place to place four times. Also, it uses more water than necessary. If these things bother you, here’s another method:
- Start a full electric tea kettle to boil.
- Put as many eggs as you can/want in 1 layer on the bottom of a pot with a tight fitting lid.
- When it boils, pour the entire tea kettle into the pot, being careful not to pour directly onto an egg.
- Set a timer for 15 minutes, cover with lid, and steam them.
- Remove them from the water and store them in the fridge.
* None of the methods used here technically boil the eggs. The move above poaches them and the mod steams them.