A Holiday for Eggs
Happy Easter. I can’t imagine anyone will be reading the blog today. But posting is more of a compulsion than anything else.
Sundays have always been a tricky day for the FLB. For a while the day was reserved for wine posts. Then it moved to the subject of breakfast. Most recently I’ve been running a backlog of press releases received over the week.
But sometimes it’s nice to try and do something topical. I’ve already warned those of you lucky enough to be in the presence of a HoneyBaked Ham today to make sure it is never ever put in the oven. Not even on low. Not even for just a minute.
So it’s eggs. And not just any eggs. Today it’s hard-boiled eggs. I don’t know if most people hard-boil eggs for the purpose of decorating, or if they poke holes in the tops and bottoms to drain the shell of its precious cargo before they turn it into an object of art.
But I haven’t written about hard boiled eggs. And while they are easy to do, most people screw them up. Restaurants too. It’s time for this to stop.
You can overcook a hard boiled egg? Absolutely.
When hard boiled eggs are cooked for too long whites get rubbery and yolks get chalky. Now maybe you think that most people don’t have the palate to tell. That may very well be true. But there is an unavoidable visible cue to an overdone hard boiled egg, and that’s the greenish gray layer that can form between the yolk and the white.
Seeing one of these emerge from a restaurant kitchen raises an immediate red flag about their quality standards. I find it more appalling than an errant hair in my food. Hairs can be sneaky. The green-gray ring cannot be ignored.
Now there is a whole lot of science about the formation of ferrous sulfate in cooked eggs. And there are lots of complicated techniques floating around for making perfect hard-boiled eggs.
Honestly, I don’t even remember where the technique I use to make hard boiled eggs comes from. It could be Julia Child. But it flies in the face of the preferred method from the good folks at Cook’s Illustrated.
They prefer starting eggs in cold water, bringing it to a boil, and letting the eggs sit covered off heat for 10 minutes.
Usually, their methods are so precise. But there are far too many variables in this approach. There is the volume of water, the temperature of your cold water at the start, the performance of your stove (in how fast it takes to bring water to a boil), the heat-retaining properties of your pot, and the vagaries of identifying when your water is at a full boil.
That’s not to say you couldn’t triangulate your way to great hard-boiled eggs by following their instructions. But I prefer to eliminate as many variables as possible.
The only piece of special equipment you need is a pot with a pasta insert.
That’s the secret. It allows you to lower all of your eggs into already boiling water, and pull them all out precisely at the same moment. There are two things to keep in mind.
One, you want to use a lot of water. Well more than just an inch over the eggs, because you want to make sure the boiling water doesn’t drop in temperature when you lower in the basket of eggs.
Two, make sure to limit the number of eggs to those that will fit in one layer inside the basket.
When the eggs go in, set a timer for ten minutes. When the timer rings, pull out the basket of eggs. Easy peasy.
Okay. I go trough another couple of steps. But if you are using the pasta basket, it’s still easy. Set up an ice bath in a bowl in the sink, and dump the cooked eggs in there to stop the cooking. That’s not hard. Nor is throwing the eggs back into the basket for another 10 second soak in the boiling water to loosen their shells. Then it’s back into the ice bath.
However you can skip that reboiling step if you use the peeling technique suggested by the American Egg Board:
To peel a hard-boiled egg: Gently tap egg on countertop until shell is finely crackled all over. Roll egg between hands to loosen shell. Starting peeling at large end, holding egg under cold running water to help ease the shell off.
Are these eggs perfect? Well, here’s what they look like. Some people may find them a hair underdone. Personally, I’d prefer them a smidge less done still. But because so many of the variables have been eliminated with the use of the pasta basket, adjusting the results is as easy as tinkering with the cooking time in thirty second increments.
The only downside to cooking gorgeous hard-boiled eggs at home is that you too will have no patience for lesser eggs when eating out. Keep an eye open for them. Over cooked hard boiled eggs are everywhere. And there’s no excuse for a professional kitchen to serve them.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 
I prefer to start them in cold water, bring them just up below the boil, and then move them to another place on the stove for precisely 13 minutes. Helps if you add a bit a bit of apple cider vinegar or white vinegar… seems to seep through the shells to keep the whites solid. The key is that the eggs are cooked essentially off-heat – they steam in the water, and you’ll never have to worry about overcooking. And you’ll never get those ugly green whites that sometimes occur when you’re in the early stages of learning how to hard-boil eggs.
I’ll have to try this method. My method is a slight variation of Daniel’s method above, though mine come out slightly more done. I think it is because my ice bath isn’t cold enough. :) (Still – no grey ring, which is the key.)
That’s my preferred method — just up below the boil (with some vinegar and salt), move them off heat, and throw on a lid for 13 minutes. I run ’em under cold water at the end and call it a day — they look like Daniel’s, just maybe a hair more done.
While you are at it, a truly well done soft-boiled egg is a thing of resplendent beauty.
I should add that another key is taking the eggs out of the hot water immediately and soaking them in cold water with ice cubes, which you should refresh three or four times before the eggs have cooled thoroughly. Plenty of hot water. Then, just stick them in the refrigerator dry… drain off the water, then cleanse with a paper towel or two. Also, when cracking the eggs, I find it’s best to roll them gently on a cutting board and pry the shells off so as to not form cracks in the whites. But if you do the hard-boiling process successfully, you probably won’t have that problem at all.
(I mean… plenty of hot water while you’re cooking the eggs in the first place… along with a bunch of kosher salt. ;) )
Yeah, that looks like an undercooked egg to me. I’ve had no trouble with the Cook’s Illustrated method, though.
Couple of things I’d like to know: are the eggs right out of the refrig or at room temp? And, how many can go in that pasta basket before you have to adjust the 10 minutes cooking time?