If there’s one thing that being on this SNAP challenge has taught me, it’s how to boil an egg. Perfectly. Look out deviled eggs, I will own you from this day forward.
You know how sometimes when you boil eggs, they turn green on the inside? That’s because they’ve been overcooked. Or perhaps you have a problem with eggshells cracking. That’s usually because the eggs have been heated up too fast.
So here’s how you prepare the perfect hard-boiled egg:
1) Select a pot that’s big enough to keep your eggs in one layer. If you are making the mother-of-all-batches of hardboiled eggs, opt for more than one pot. If you double up your eggs, you’ll have uneven cooking spots.
2) Put the eggs into the pot and then fill it with cold water. Ideally, you want just enough water to cover the surface of the egg. You don’t have to worry about the water boiling away. If your eggs are stale and they float, you may need to ensure they rotate.
3) Bring the pot to a boil on high. The cold water coming to temperature should keep the eggs from heating up too fast and cracking.
4) The moment the pot comes to a boil, turn the stove off. Not a couple little bubbles, not talking a roiling boil; we’re aiming for that stage just before, where you have lots of bubbles and water movement, but just before it gets roiling.
5) If your stove is electric, remove the pot from the heat. If it’s gas, you can leave it on the burner.
6) Leave the eggs in the pot of hot water, uncovered*. You want to control the temperature of the cooling, and if you’ve got a fair number of eggs in your pot, they’ll still hold the heat well enough to cook through in time. If you’ve only got a couple eggs and a lot of water, you may need to cover to hold the heat in better.
7) Wait. The ideal temperature for yolk center is about 10 minutes once you’ve removed it from the heat. If you jumped the gun on the boil, you may need to wait 11-12 minutes or let the pot get a little hotter next time.
8) Remove the eggs from the water, and leave them to finish cooling. By the time they’re cool, they will be perfect.
