Hard boiled eggs are one of those things that really need to be cooked just right. Under cooked, they are runny and gooey, over cooked they are chalky with a green tinge to them.
Growing up, I was taught to boil the eggs for 7 minutes. As a child, I loved hard boiled eggs cooked that way but now, I prefer them cooked a little less but still well done.
If you search the internet, there are a ton of instructions out there for cooking hard boiled eggs and it seems that everyone of those is slightly different!
I have tried out a bunch of them but never found just the right one. In the end, I went with a combination of my mother’s way and Martha Stewart’s way.
There are also a myriad of old wives tales about cooking and peeling hard boiled eggs. I use a couple of them in my instructions because…why not? Lol
Here’s my version:
Place cold eggs in pot and cover with cold water. Sprinkle kosher salt over each individual egg.
Place on stove, lid off, on high temperature and bring to a boil.
Once boiling, boil for 3 minutes.
Turn stove off. Remove pot from heat, cover with lid and let sit for 7 minutes. In the mean time, fill a bowl or empty pot with ice and water to create an ice bath. Once the 7 minutes is up, use a slotted spoon to move the eggs from the hot water to the ice bath.
Let the eggs cool in the ice bath until the majority of ice has melted and the eggs feel cool.
To peel, gently crack eggs all the way around. Turn on cold water and begin peeling the egg from the bottom, while holding the egg under the running water.
The Old Wives Tales:
Sprinkling kosher salt over each individual egg is an old wives tale that my ex-mother-in-law was adamant worked to make the eggs easier to peel. Personally, I don’t think it makes a difference but it doesn’t hurt, so I still do it.
The ice bath is something I read in Martha Stewart’s method of making perfect hard boiled eggs. It cools them very nicely so you don’t burn your fingers peeling them.
I’m not sure where I read about running the eggs under water as you peel but it does seem to help. The idea is that the water will get under the shell and help to seperate the shell from the egg. I don’t always peel the eggs that way because it does use a lot of water but it does seem to help so if I’m only peeling 1 or 2 eggs, I usually peel them that way.
Let me know if you like this method or have another method that you think works well!
