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Eggs: Hard-cooked Egg Tips




Source of Recipe


AEB
1. Coddled eggs made by very briefly immersing an egg in the shell in boiling water are not sufficiently cooked to satisfy today’s food safety concerns. Eggs cooked in coddlers (porcelain, heat-proof glass, pottery or ceramic cups with screw-on lids) submerged in simmering or boiling water should be cooked until the whites are completely set and the yolks have begun to thicken but are not hard.
2.Whether hard- or soft-cooked, this method is incorrectly called boiled eggs. Although the cooking water must come to a boil, more tender, less rubbery eggs without a green ring around the yolk are produced, and less breakage occurs, when the heat is turned off or the pan removed from the burner, allowing the eggs to cook gently in hot water. This method is also more energy efficient and is food safe.
3. Shell cracking is most likely when eggs are cooked for too long and/or at too high a temperature because steam builds up more rapidly than the eggs can “exhale” it. Too rapid cooking is why eggs cannot be cooked in the shell in the microwave – they’ll very likely explode. Overcooking produces enough steam to rupture the shells; proper cooking alleviates the problem. Cracking is particularly likely to occur if more than one layer of eggs is cooked at a time in rapidly moving boiling water which causes the eggs to bump against one another.
4. Piercing, puncturing the large end of the eggshell with a sharp tool before cooking, may allow some air to escape to help avoid cracking and water to enter which may make peeling easier. But, piercing also creates hairline cracks in the shell through which bacteria can enter after cooking, making piercing a food safety concern. Unless sterilized, the piercer, thumbtack, pin or needle itself can introduce bacteria.
5. To avoid a harmless, but unsightly, greenish ring around hard-cooked yolks, avoid overcooking and cool the eggs quickly after cooking by running cold water over them or placing them in ice water (not standing water) until they’ve completely cooled. The ring is caused by sulfur and iron compounds naturally reacting at the surface of the yolk. It’s usually brought on by overcooking or a high amount of iron in the cooking water. Once the eggs have cooled, refrigerate them in their shells until use.
6. Very fresh eggs may be difficult to peel. The fresher the eggs, the more the shell membranes cling tenaciously to the shells. Though many techniques to make peeling easier have been tried, the simplest method is to buy and refrigerate eggs a week to ten days in advance of hard cooking. This brief “breather” allows the eggs to take in air which helps separate the membranes from the shell. 7.Before peeling, it’s important to crackle the shells until they have a fine network of lines all over. Eggshells usually come off much more readily, without tearing the whites, when they’re in small pieces rather than large chunks.
8. Hard-cooked eggs in the shell can be refrigerated up to one week. Hard-cooked eggs out of the shell should be used immediately.
9. Unfortunately for mountain-top residents, it’s almost impossible to hard cook eggs at altitudes above 10,000 feet.