Just Hard Boiled Eggs

Have you ever heard anyone say to a person who is so new and inexperienced at cooking that they cannot boil water? Well at one time I was that person. I have ruined just about every type of food that begins with boiling water. My long list of failures has proven that while getting the water to boil is easy, sometimes you need a few more steps on what do with the food once it’s in the water.

My favorite example of this is from the Charlie Brown Easter special when two of the Peanuts are trying to prepare eggs to dye for Easter. They try toasting the eggs, frying the eggs, cracking the eggs into the boiling water, and just eating the eggs, shells and all! To save you from this confusion :) and let you get right to sharing and decorating eggs with your favorite people, I have decided to share my method to getting a (mostly) perfect hard boiled egg. This will also come in handy on those warm summer days, when farm fresh eggs are plentiful and you need a good and tasty egg-salad sandwich. Enjoy!

Just Hard Boiled Eggs

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes | Makes: 1 dozen hard boiled eggs

Ingredients

• one dozen (12) eggs in shell
• water
• 2-3 tablespoons of white vinegar
• ice
• medium sized (steel preferred) bowl

Directions

1. About an hour before you are planning on making the eggs, place a medium sized bowl (one that can fit 12 eggs) into the freezer to chill
2. Fill a large stock pot with water, then carefully add eggs and white vinegar
3. Bring to a rolling boil over high heat. Allow eggs to boil for 1-2 minutes then remove eggs from heat
4. Cover eggs and allow them to sit in the water for 15-17 minutes
5. About 3 minutes before the eggs are ready to be removed from the water, remove bowl from freezer and fill with ice. Just before the eggs are to be removed from the hot water, fill the bowl with cold water
6. Carefully remove eggs from hot water and immediately submerge in the ice water. Allow eggs to sit in the ice water for 15 minutes
7. Remove eggs from ice water and place eggs back in egg cartridge or in a dry bowl. Place in the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes
8. Use eggs after 10 minutes or up to 5 days after boiling.

Tips

• I use a steel mixing bowl in the freezer and highly recommend this if you have it. If you do not have steel, a plastic bowl will work, but will not get quite as cold. But please do not use glass! While it is a very small possibility, glass put in freezers can crack and break and I would not want anyone to ruin good kitchen ware for some eggs.
• When boiling the eggs, make sure you are getting the big boil bubbles and not the small ones. You really want a good, solid boil on this before you cover and allow the steam and heat to finish up these eggs.