Great way to peel boiled eggs
I loved medium boiled eggs with salt and pepper and a pat of butter as shown above (my breakfast this morning), but I don’t have them all that often because it’s a real pain to peel them. Not only is it a pain for me to peel them, I seem to always end up with pieces of the shell in with the eggs, which I hate. Then I came across the video linked below.
At first I figured this was one of those things that looks easy but in reality is really difficult. But it’s not. It works pretty much as portrayed in the video with one caveat: you have to blow much harder than it looks like this guy is doing. And it helps if the eggs aren’t boiled until they are truly hard. If they are semi-soft, they come out pretty easily. When they do come out, they come out shell free.
If any of you try it and have a different experience (or the same experience) or if you have any refinements of the technique, comment away, and I’ll post or all to read. As for me, I’ll be having my little balls of protein and good fat much more often now that I don’t have to fool with the peeling.
Addendum: Here is a link to a blog post by Tim Ferriss showing him performing the same operation.
I huffed and I puffed but the dang egg stayed in the shell!! I sent that link to my sisters and they were all able to do it! Grrrr. I will try again though! I MUST master this fine art of Egg Blowing!
That really is a fun site – thanks for sharing!
Diane
I can tell you that you really have to blow hard.
Cheers–
MRE
Well now I can’t wait to try this! Looks like the EggsTractor method – one of those great “As Seen on TV” gadgets – that I bought. Worked exactly ONCE and never again! It promptly went into the recyle bin. But I’m gonna give this one a good try with my next HB egg!
LOL at Marly’s comment, and thanks for not editing it out, Dr. Mike! Gave me a really good chuckle!
Hey Char–
Let me know how the BJ method works for you when you finally give it a try.
Cheers–
MRE
way off topic, but as if we needed more convincing that Jane Brody is dumber than a sack of hammers…
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/health/09brody.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin
As if we needed convincing.
I tried it this morning. My mistake on the first egg, was I cracked it too hard, creating hairline cracks throughout the shell. I usually get brown eggs and the shell may be more brittle.
So when I start to blow, nothing happens (air dissipates from the cracks). I read you had to blow harder so I blow harder and the egg made a loud screeching sound that scared the living daylights out of my cat who was eating out of her bowl… I heard her claws try to catch on the floor as I saw her run like a “cat” out of hell. I guess she thought it was the horn sound from “War of the Worlds.”
The second and third eggs, worked great, but I could not help laughing at the sound (and the visual of my cat getting startled).
Thanks for the tip!
Alex
I’m glad it finally worked for you.
MRE
I really prefer mine half boiled. About 5-7min will put 2 chilled medium sized eggs to a nice runny texture. Add a dash of soya sauce and I’m good.
It didn’t work on softboiled eggs from hens fed flaxseed, but these tend to have very thin shells. I tried a fresh one and one that I’d had for over a week & no amount of blowing with gusto worked.
For those who want the perfect consistency, there is a cheap eggtimer that looks like a red half egg that you put in the pan with the eggs. It doesn’t ring or anything, but turns dark as it heats up and tells you when the eggs are soft-soft, soft, medium-soft, medium, medium-hard, or hard, so you can take them out whenever you like.
I do have egg cups, spoons & even a scissor-like egg-top-chopper-offer, but still get a bit of shell in my egg. I’d try poaching again if you have a fool-proof method for poaching without turning the whites into rubber (I’m looking for a soft-boiled eggwhite consistency).
Hi Deirdra–
Maybe try a store-bought egg that has been sitting around in the fridge for a week or so. According to the other commenters, that’s all it takes.
Let me know how it works.
Cheers–
MRE
At least a sack of hammers could be useful
How true.
Hmm, I’ll really have to give this a try. Just have to make sure that there aren’t any cats in the kitchen when I do.
I second Kathy’s method of bringing the eggs to a rolling boil and then pulling the pot off the heat. In my case, I have a vintage gas stove with pilot lights, so I pull the pan off the burner and set it over the hot spot on the stove top where there’s a pilot light underneath. Works great and no yucky green ring which I hate so much.
I learned a long time ago that the fresher the egg, the harder it is to shell, but if you add a goodly amount of salt to the water, it does help. I have no idea what an egg spoon is, but I know if I take a teaspoon, wet it, then when I crack the egg, I run the spoon around the edge, it comes out fairly easily. I haven’t had a nice soft boiled egg with salt, pepper, and the all important pat of butter in years. Thanks for the idea…..sounds great
Enjoy!
I was going to tell about the EggsTractor. In fact I lost the EggsTractor, or it got ruined, and my sister had one that she hated and gave me hers. That one worked pretty well too. I used to boil a dozen eggs and would shell them all at once and the blowing method made me feel like I was trying to blow my brains out of my ears. Now I take my eggs to work and peel them before I eat them. I’m going to have to remember the cooling them off idea. I do that sometimes but not regularly, and maybe that’s the difference in ease of peeling.
OK, reporting back on my first attempt at a BJ on a hardboiled egg – sad to report, the egg was NOT impressed! LOL!
I huffed and I puffed til I thought my eyeballs would fly out, but the egg steadfastly refused to budge. Sigh.
It was a valiant attempt, but I had to resort to my usual tactic, peeling the damn thing under cold running water!
>>So when I start to blow, nothing happens (air dissipates from the cracks). I read you had to blow harder so I blow harder and the egg made a loud screeching sound that scared the living daylights out of my cat who was eating out of her bowl… I heard her claws try to catch on the floor as I saw her run like a “cat” out of hell. I guess she thought it was the horn sound from “War of the Worlds.”
I’m not sure why the rest of my comment didn’t go through, but I added after that paragraph that the exact same thing happened to me! Right down to the reaction from my cat. Only not just with the first egg. With all of them. They were too fresh, I think. One of them sort of de-shelled, but more by explosion than anything else and was accompanied by a noise so loud and hilarious that we’re still laughing about it and my cat is still hiding under the bed.
Hi Annabelle–
I figured there had to be more.
Cheers–
MRE
Hi Mike:
Since you obviously like your hard cooked eggs chopped up, why not cook them in the microwave. break eggs into a glass measuring cup, beat them slightly to break up the yolks and entrain some air in the mix, cover with plastic wrap that you leave a small vent in, and micro cook until done. if you cook them thoroughly the egg whites acquire that same rubberiness as hard cooked eggs.
also, there are egg cookers out there that hardcook eggs with steam. I just purchased another great one made in the 1970′s from a thrift store from that cooks eight eggs at a time, and the shells never stick.
robyn cardy
Thanks for the recipe. I’ll give it a try. Or, more likely, I’ll have MD give it a try.
Cheers–
MRE
i tried the egg blowing thing and it failed. Or to put it more honestly, I failed. I couldn’t blow hard enough and my eyes were bugging out as it was. This guy must have been a tuba player since age 3 to have that kind of capacity.
My ole Arkansas mom taught me the rolling method except instead of rolling them on a surface, she did it between her hands. works pretty slick especially on relatively freshly boiled eggs. Shell and membrane comes off in one or two pieces and waalaa there is your egg.
Thanks for the entertainment tho anyway…
Evilarkie
To get egg shell out of your eggs, use a shard of egg shell. It cuts right through the white with ease and scoops up any bits of shell. Nature provides, no? Fresh eggs will not peel properly, older eggs are the best to boil. I like warm and cold eggs. I normally boil them up and plunge them in cold water which is refreshed a few times and shake them around vigorously in the emptied saucepan, cracking the entire surface of the egg before peeling. I stick them back into the fridge, whole and uncracked, and give them to my children as cooled, cooked snacks or eat them warm, sliced up with some lettuce.
Sounds good. I’m eager to try to shard of egg shell maneuver. Seems too easy.
The fresh eggs that we gather from our own free-ranging hens are much harder to peel–or even to crack, for that matter. I’ve often dropped a raw egg onto the floor and found it completely intact when I picked it up. We keep the eggs we plan to hard-boil separate and let them age a bit before boiling. That allows the air sac to get bigger and the membrane to loosen. Fresh eggs, we just keep in a basket on the kitchen counter, and go through them pretty quickly!