How To Boil The Perfect Egg: Happy Easter

With Easter 2016 right around the corner, parents everywhere are getting ready to color some eggs. Often times with the kids help. A fun activity for the family, sure, but a little messy as well.

Eggs are fun for the hunt. I loved it when we colored the eggs and I loved it when mother hid them all around the house and or outside in the yard. I loved looking for them. Great times!

One of things I hated though, was trying to peel those suckers. It took like five minutes and in the process, I would rip away half the outer egg.

It would seem, in hindsight, mother didn't know how to properly cook an egg. However, by the time little Ami came along, she figured it out.


For me having grown into quite the cook, I too figured it out. There appears to be a secret to boiling an egg in so that when you go to peel it, it comes right off, almost naturally.

Some would say there is no secret, you just boil and let cool.

NO! Bad cooks. There is a secret! So allow me to reveal to you how to boil the perfect egg.

It's simple, right? Well, not quite. I like to place no more than a dozen eggs in my pan. (Mostly because that is all it can hold unless I stack them, which is a big no-no. If you stack them, there is a bigger risk for breakage / leakage. You don't want that. Noboody wants that. Unless that's what you want in which case, knock yourself out.)

Once the eggs are in the pan, I then add water. Now, some people believe you need to completely cover the eggs, but this is a myth. I like to only cover 3/4ths of the egg, leaving a little white belly showing.

Now that we got that part resolved, we then place it on the stove burner. Hopefully, you don't have it on high. For stoves that have numbers, 8 will do fine. Either way, gas or electric, or in some cases, out here where I live, wood burning stoves, you just want to boil the eggs on a medium boil. That's it. Nothing more fancier than that. lol

I never time my eggs for boil. I use the sense of smell. For me, I let the water boil at least 95 percent away into evaporation, or 99 percent. But I know when my eggs are done because for a brief few moments, I can smell them all over the house. It smells like someone is cooking up some scrambled eggs or maybe, eggs over easy, or sunny side up.

The point is, you really let eggs boil. But when you finally take them off the stove, you must quickly place them in the sink and under the faucet and begin pouring cold water over them. The objective is to cool the egg-shells as quickly as possible.

I run cool water over them for about 30 seconds to a minute. One way to tell if you cooled them correctly is to take one out of the pan and hold it for about ten to fifteen seconds. If they feel about mild to luke warm in your hand, then they are cooled. You can start placing them back in the carton to be placed in the refrigerator. And yes, I recommend you put them back in the fridge and cool them for another hour at least before coloring them. It is very important to cool them properly as it is to cook them properly. (Which is thoroughly)

You could peel one or two right after cooking them to eat, but you have to be careful because while the outer part of the egg is medium warm when you take a bite, the inner portion of the egg, most notably, the yoke, will be extremely hot, so be careful. Keep something cold close by to wash it down with.

But before I wrap this post up, please let me say that there is a proper way to peel the egg also. I like to crack one of the ends on the counter, then with it in my left hand, I gently spin the egg around and with my right hand, I gently squeeze the top where I cracked it. I squeeze it all around and slowly work my way down the egg, about halfway. The egg shell begins to break apart on its own and before you know it, it breaks apart in big sections and slides right off. Do this for the entire egg and once you get good at it, you can peel an egg in a matter of seconds and without tearing off any chuncks from the egg.

You see, there's a film inside the egg that forms when you boil it and if you don't boil it correctly, it will stick to the egg and or to the egg and shell. What you want it to do is stick to the shell only. The only way to achieve this is to cool it down immediately after boiling them.

Hopefully I have saved to from another hard boiled egg peeling disaster. Now, go out there and show Easter what you're made of. lol

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE