Easily peel hard boiled eggs, guaranteed

The secret to easily peeling eggs is to steam, not boil the eggs. Yes, you read right, steam those cackleberries. It doesn't matter if they are fresh or older eggs. 

I first heard of this from my foodie friend Barb Schaller, here's her experiment in steaming eggs. 

I did a little different experiment. I made soft steamed and hard steamed eggs. 

 

Get out your vegetable steamer basket, you are going to love this. 

 

 

Set the vegetable steamer basket in a saucepan. Add water until it comes just to the bottom of the steamer. Turn on the heat, as the water is coming to a boil, add the eggs. Cover and steam the eggs for 10 minutes over medium high heat. Watch water level so you don't boil your pan dry. 

While I was experimenting I thought I'd experiment even further. I cut out a couple of egg cups from a cardboard egg carton and placed eggs in them and put them in the steamer. I was wondering if that would keep the yolks centered.

It didn't and the yolks settled down toward the bottom of the egg leaving very little egg white at that end. 

 

Halfway through the steaming time (5 minutes) I took one egg out to check how steaming them would work for soft cooked eggs. 

I ended up with a beautiful soft cooked egg. I mixed some of the yolk in with the egg white, there was very little uncooked white. If you can't stand any runny white, let it go about another minute before removing from the pan. 

I finished eating the egg with a spoon and the egg came totally clean from the shell. 

I think I need one of those fancy schmancy egg cutters. 

 

After they steamed for 10 minutes, I removed the eggs from the heat. At this point, I took out another egg and cooled it slightly under cold running water and peeled it right away. The shells came off slick as, well...slick. Look no grey around the yolk. 

Barb's experiment included leaving the eggs covered in the steamer for an additional 10 minutes after they are taken off the heat. I did that also but discovered that in the interim they started to turn grey around the yolk. 

So there ya go, volunteer to bring deviled eggs to the next potluck. 

And that's that

 

Comments

[Serene]

I'll try it, for sure, even though my method works well for me. Right now, though, I'm just admiring the beauty of the white eggs in the brown shells. Gorgeous photos!

[koko]

Thank you Serene I appreciate the compliment.

One thing I did notice about the steamed eggs is that they are tenderer than boiled eggs, not as "rubbery"

[Ted Lonnberg]

I'm very grateful for this posting. This method of hard boiling eggs has worked perfectly every time! I'll NEVER using the water boiled method again...

Thanks much!

[koko]

Thank you so much Ted, I appreciate you letting me know how it's worked for you.