Question: How Do I Hard Boil an Egg?

Before we jump in head first, here’s what you can expect out of this post: how to perfectly hard boil an egg every time, how to quickly boil an egg, how to peel a boiled egg, random egg facts, and some good old fashioned tom foolery. Fellow pinners, feel free to share any of these pictures, but I have created a Pinterest-friendly egg infographic-esque image that you might find handy. You can find that just below. Now on to the main eggvent!

In retrospect I think these nightmares stemmed from beheading chickens through the years on my grandpa’s farm. Actually (and I chuckle as I write this), we have a family video where my grandpa tossed a beheaded chicken towards us 3- to 5-year old kids as we stood around captivated by the scene before us. We scattered while screaming for our lives. I’d like to digitize that video.

Hopefully that nightmare doesn’t come back to haunt me. *shudder*

Now let’s get back to business and learn one of the easiest, yet misunderstood, ways to prepare the amazingly versatile egg: hard boiling.

How to Make a Perfect Hard Boiled Egg

Boiling an egg isn’t too difficult, it’s really just a matter of heating an egg in hot water, though I have found that most people overcook their eggs. I can understand this, as we’ve been trained to fear raw eggs. The following method is how I hard boil my eggs (we’ll go into another method later). Using this method you won’t have to worry about your egg being either raw or overdone. It comes out just right every single time—I’m not kidding. My kids and I had fun drawing faces on these eggs before boiling them, but you’re not required to do that… but you can if you want. It is kind of groovy.

Step 1: Place your eggs in a pan and fill it with cold water until it’s at least an inch over the tops of the eggs.

Step 2: Add about a teaspoon of salt to the water (it’s not important to measure this accurately) and turn the heat to high. In my experiments I have found that adding salt to the water really does make them easier to peel later on. If you’re using older eggs adding salt becomes negligible (read about peeling eggs below)

Step 3: Once the water reaches a mid-range boil (210°F-212°F, or just as it begins to reach a vehement boil), cover the pot and pull it off the heat. Let it sit for 10 minutes.

Step 4: While the eggs are sitting covered, prepare an ice bath for the eggs.

Step 5: When the 10 minutes is up, scoop the eggs out with a slotted spoon and add them to the ice bath and leave them there for a few minutes so that they stop cooking completely. This takes 2-4 minutes.

Step 6: At this point they’re ready to eat! Peel them or dry them off and put them back in the fridge… or anything, really (toss them off a balcony?). I figure whatever a person does with their eggs is their own business. Here’s a picture of what an egg prepared this way looks like. Notice that the yolk is a soft yellow and remains moist. The center pulls in a little bit and forms a nice little whip, which is exactly how I like them.

Have you prepared your eggs this way? If not, give it a shot. I’m positive you’ll find the results of this method very satisfactory. There is a downfall, however to this method, and that’s time. It takes a bit longer to cook an egg this way than just pure boiling them. The benefits, though, is that your egg remains soft… the key to working with eggs after all is handling them with a little TLC.

Boiled Eggs vs. Time Cooked

Perhaps you’re in a hurry and want your hard boiled eggs done in half that time. You can do that by not removing them from the heat and letting the eggs cook in a rolling boil for 4 to 6 minutes. You should still prepare an ice bath for them though or you’ll wind up with severely overcooked eggs.

The steps are practically the same as outlined above:

1. Place your eggs in a pan and cover them with cold water (at least an inch over the tops).
2. Add a teaspoon of salt or so and turn up the heat!
3. Once the water reaches a full boil, start the timer (see images below)
4. Pull the eggs out at your desired time (I like 5 minutes) and immediately place them into an ice bath to prevent further cooking.
5. Peel and serve, yum!

The pictures and times below are based on time cooked immediately as the water reached a full (a.k.a. rolling or complete) boil. In other words, the water is past the simmering or gentle boil stage; steam is likely visible and the bubbles are dancing about more energetically. You can learn more about boiling water from this article (like what “full boil” means): How to Boil Water. It’s surprisingly interesting. On to the pictures!

1-minute

4-minutes (good)

7-minutes (overdone)

10-minutes

13-minutes

16-minutes

2-minutes

5-minutes (good)

8-minutes

11-minutes

14-minutes

17-minutes

3-minutes (not yet done)

6-minutes (good)

9-minutes

12-minutes

15-minutes

18-minutes

Here is a quick and dirty break down of what to expect at the different stages:

• 1 to 3 minutes (not done): Yolk remains gooey and orange. Egg white is cooked by 1 minute.
• 4 to 6 minutes (done): Yolk changes to a lighter yellow and center is more pulled together and creamy. At 6 minutes the yolk begins to dry out.
• 7 minutes (overdone): Yolk is noticeably dryer and chalky. This is when the grayish green starts to form around the edges of the yolk.
• 8 + minutes (way overdone): Go ahead and do it, but your egg will be more akin to rubber than an egg.

How to Peel a Hard Boiled Egg

I’ve been experimenting with ways to peel hard boiled eggs through the years and the method I show below is the best way I’ve found to date. I can get the shell off without much of a struggle nearly every time (there are always exceptions).

To peel an egg quickly and without getting shell all over the place you’re going to need a regular-sized dinner spoon and a hard boiled egg… but you knew that last part already. To demonstrate how awesome this method is, my little kiddo is going to demonstrate how it’s done (pictures below).

Begin be cracking the shell all over with the spoon. Be gentle, you don’t want to accidentally split the egg white. Leave no shell uncracked!

Pinch off shell at the fat end of the egg and then work the spoon underneath the shell, gently sliding and pulling it up around the egg’s parameter. The shell will start to come off in large chunks. Let it shed, let it shed.

And that’s pretty much it. Rinse it off when you’re done. Here’s a picture of the many eggs we shelled for this ridiculously long egg post. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be shelling eggs faster than anyone in your neighborhood. Careful though, or your neighbors might start bringing their eggs to you (I would charge at least 50 cents per egg).

Egg Nutrition Facts and Information

Just in case you’re interested, I’ve gathered the nutritional data for a whole egg, an egg yolk, and just the egg white. I’m not going to claim any expertise in what it all means though. I do know egg yolks have a lot of cholesterol, so even though I eat eggs every day, I avoid eating too many yolks. If you have any egg health knowledge you’d like to share, please do in the comments below.

The following nutritional values are for 1 large Egg. The Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Information from NutrionData.com.

You can find additional egg nutritional data on Calorie Count, MyFitnessPal.com, FatSecret.com, and IndredibleEgg.org.

10 Chicken Egg Facts and TidBits

I’m the kind of guy who enjoys learning all sorts of random things, and in the spirit of that, I decided it might be fun to gather a few “fun egg facts” to share with you… I did say eggs were versatile, right? Enjoy!

1. Eggs are known to help with weight loss, especially when eaten in the morning as they help you feel full longer and give you energy. Yay for high-quality protein! (IncredibleEgg.org | Retrieved 16 Feb 2013)
2. An egg shell can have as many as 17,000 pores on it’s surface. These allow oxygen to get in and out of the egg but will also cause the egg to take on the flavors, smells and ultimately tastes of things around it. Wouldn’t that be an interesting experiment? (DidYouKnow.org | Retrieved 16 Feb 2013)
3. It’s said that only 1 in 10,000 eggs contain salmonella. This means that the chance your raw cookie dough and brownie batter has salmonella is pretty small, but there’s still a chance. The question then becomes, “Is this bite of cookie dough worth the risk?” Psshh, heck yeah! (SafeEggs.com | Retrieved 16 Feb 2013)
4. Eggs have rich symbolic history. Across many cultures they’ve been used to “symbolize birth and are believed to ensure fertility. They also symbolize rebirth, and thus long life and even immortality.” So eat up. (FoodTimeline.org | Retrieved 16 Feb 2013)
5. Recipes that ask for eggs but don’t specify the size are typically referring to large eggs as they weigh ~2 oz. and make cooking by either mass and volume nice and easy.
6. Dreaming about eggs could symbolize all sorts of things, but some interpretations include your cosmic potential, the fragility of a certain situation in your life, or if your dreamed of cracked eggs it could symbolize the disappointment of broken dreams and desires. I personally dream of food all the time, but I have yet to dream of eggs… I probably will after writing this post. (Suite101.com)
7. That white stringy thing in eggs is called the chalazae (chalaza singular). (That’s a fun word!) There’s one chalaza on each side of yolk, spun in opposite directions; their job is to keep the yolk centered. I prefer not to think about it when cooking as it seems a bit grotesque to me, but you can scramble it, pluck it, hard boil it, or mix it in with your egg whites without and problems. (Imagination Station | Retrieved 16 Feb 2013)
8. Bloody Egg! Ack! Fear not my fine feathered friend, a little bit of blood in your egg is still okay to consume as long as it’s cooked. Blood in eggs still grosses me out, so I prefer to pick it out with a the tip of a knife or fork. The blood is caused when a blood vessel ruptures during the formation of the egg. Every once in a while I get a really bloody egg, and I just toss those. (IncredibleEgg.org | Retrieved 16 Feb 2013)
9. Before you buy your eggs, always check by moving each egg to see if it’s cracked. If you DO wind up with a cracked egg anyway (hey, it happens), chances are it’s still okay to eat. Eggs have two inner membranes that help protect the egg even if the shell is cracked (remember, the shell does have pours in it already). If those membranes are broken, the egg will likely already be leaked out. I throw out any eggs whose membranes have ruptured.
10. You can test if an egg is hard boiled or raw by spinning the eggs on a flat surface. Hard boiled eggs have a nice smooth spin whilst raw eggs wobble. I hear that another effective test is to take an egg between the palms of your hands and squeeze as hard and quick as you can. When it breaks, if egg splatters everywhere, it’s raw. I’m not sure how useful the egg will be to you after the second test.

A Special Thanks to These Egg Heads

I had a lot of fun planning out and drawing faces on these eggs. I felt it would be a shame doing all that work and then not showcasing them, after all, these eggs performed a great service to me (and they tasted great!). In loving memory… R.I.P.:

Duane Pype

Ferris Wheeler

Jo King

Molly Kuehl

Jeene Poole

Howie Doohan

Les Payne

Jay Walker

Nick O. Time

Pat McCann

Reid Enright

Warren Peace