Do you use any personal tricks to peel a hard boiled egg easily?

- boil water
– gently (with large spoon) put eggs in pan
– boil for 13 minutes
– immediately put eggs in bowl of ice water to cool

Eggs peel easily. You don’t need to peel them immediately. Just store in refrigerator until you’re ready.

I prefer my boiled eggs HOT!!! So, my method might not work as well for you. As far as boiling them goes, I found that the bring them to a boil & let sit for 10 minutes to work well for me. That is until I bough an electric pressure cooker. Now I bring them up to pressure & let it do a natural release for 10 minutes. With both those ways I run under cold water & drain, peel immediately & eat!!! Peeling boiled eggs one-handed is a challenge in itself. Although the bring to a boil & let sit for desired length of time worked fairly well, the pressure cooker worked twice as well!!! Then again I’ve NEVER had an egg sit in my fridge for a week before eating it so I don’t know how well that would work for you. Have you considered making fewer eggs at a time & then peeling them right away & store. A friend works at an all day breakfast place. They boil, shock & peel them immediately & then wrap in Saran Wrap to keep them fresh for the day. You could boil the night before, peel, & wrap to put in the fridge for the next day, I would think that you could get the same results IF you stored the peeled eggs in a zip-lock storage bag. Just be sure to press out any excess air. I never know when I’m going to want a boiled egg so I don’t make it a habit to precook & store them, so take this with the spirit with which it was offered!!!

Put water on fire.
Make pinhole in egg(s).
When water boils, slowly submerge egg (use special Tupperware™-egg-submerge-spoon for this).
Let boil for 5:35.
Take pot of medium fire.
Put cold water tap on, put pot under running cold water (the boiling water get mixed with cold water; temp goes down steadily).
Take out one egg.
Bring to girlfriend and ask to peal it for you (girlfriends have heat proof hands).
Eat egg.
Run to kitchen, take extinguisher off wall and put out fire.

Ice Bath after cooking.

I just peeled one that was in the fridge and cooked on Monday. Shell came off in three large pieces.

Poke hole in egg at its butt end before cooking. (prevents the egg from cracking). Might also allow water ingress between the shell and the membrane.
Put in boiling water for 6 minutes(soft boiled) or 8+ (hard, with the yolk still being moist).
When done, put in cold water.

Also, older eggs peel easier. The fresher the egg, the harder it is to peel.

I use an Instant Pot and use the 6–6-6 method.
6 minutes pressure cooking.
6 minutes air pressure natural release.
6 minutes ice and cold water bath.

The shells slip right off.

Older eggs peel easier after boiling. The bubble on the butt end grows with time, which makes a gap which eases peeling. AND it makes it easy to test for age – fresh eggs sink in water, older ones stand on tiptoe, and too old ones float.

After boiling put pot under the cold tap; add a few ice cubes if summer in Florida. When eggs feel cooled take one and roll it along the inside side of the sink shattering the shell. The peel will slip right off. It’s very important to quick cool the eggs. Works 100% of the time for me.

Some eggs peel easily some don’t. Even eggs from the same carton, cooked at the same time, some do some don’t .

Man, so I have to check the weather in Florida to decide if I need to put ice cubes in the water @SnipSnip? :D

@LuckyGuy Are there really any? Egg peel tricks, that is?

I sure to like these ideas.
I’ve tried the ice bath after cooking but the shell seems to come off easily if I do it right away. It sticks a bit if the egg sits.

Tomorrow, I’m going to try making a hole in the egg shell like @ragingloli suggested. I can imagine how the cooking water can get between the shell and the membrane. I’ll use a 0.5mm drill (0.020”) so I am consistent.

@si3tech We’ll see if there are any tricks that work.well.

@LuckyGuy: If you put the eggs in ice water, change the water so it’s continually really cold, and swirl the eggs around so they’re really swimming in the cold water.

I tap the side of the egg to crack the shell then use a the back of a spoond to slide under the peel.

@ragingloli was correct. If the egg is too fresh, it won’t peel easily after it’s been boiled.

I boil my eggs. When I’m ready to eat them (hot or cold), I smack the egg gently with the back of a spoon, cracking the shell all over. Then I run a stream of water over the egg and insert the spoon under the shell. The curve of the spoon and the running water makes it slide right around under the shell, and the shell comes off in large pieces.

If the egg was not too fresh when it was boiled, the shell comes off cleanly.

If kept in the fridge and hard to peel, run them under hot water quickly. The difference in temperature seems to release the shell.

Instead of hassling with ice cubes, why don’t we just stick them in the freezer for a bit?

Freezer does not bring down the temperature as fast as submerging in ice water.

Why?

Put your hand in the freezer and put your hand in ice water. It’s how the water conducts the temperature better than air. Just like you can reach in the oven and the hot air doesn’t immediately burn you, but if you touch the pan you will have a burn within seconds.

You knew I couldn’t resist experimenting…

I decided to evaluate the small hole in the bottom idea. I located the air pocket by using a high power, 300 lumen, light with a rubber “O” on the light face to reduce stray light loss. I used a small drill, 0.6mm, #74 , 0.022”, to pierce the shell approximately 1 mm deep.
I started a pot of boiling water and gently dropped the egg in. When the pan began boiling again I took it off the heat and let it stand covered for 10 minutes.
During this part of the process, bubbles were being ejected from the hole.
I prepared a cold water bath but decided to weigh the egg before putting it so I could measure how much water was sucked into the egg as it cooled.
I used a calibrated Mettler lab scale with a resolution of 0.01 grams to determine all masses.
Upon taking the egg out of the water and carefully drying it the initial mass was 56.76 gram.
I then placed it in cold water. After 1 minute the mass had increased by 1.45 grams. After 2 minutes it was 1.62 grams above the initial mass or 58.38 grams. That means the egg drew in 1.62 ml of water during the ice bath.
I then left the egg on the kitchen counter and weighed it periodically.
Time Mass
7:00 AM 58.38 g
8:00 AM 58.38 g
11:00AM 58.23 g
2:30 PM 58.17 g
4:30 PM 58.15 g

The water loss seemed to be stabilizing so I decided to eat the egg.
It peeled beautifully!

Next steps: The test needs to be repeated with a larger sample. N=6 or greater.
I will weigh all the eggs before cooking and weigh them after to see if there is any water absorption during the cooking phase.
I will cook 3 eggs with hole and 3 without and see if there is a difference.

I’m going to be out of town shortly so I will do this upon my return.
Feel free to experiment on your own and let us know how it turn out.

By the way the hot water idea is for right when you are ready to peel and eat and you find the shell is stuck on the egg. It’s kind of a last minute solve when you run into the problem.

@LuckyGuy I bet your wife loves your experiments!

Yes. I have them poached.

@chyna The Mettler is in the kitchen. There is never a question about which piece of pie is bigger.
We both use it many times per day for all sort of things.

@Kropotkin I favor Eggs Benedict.

@LuckyGuy – Like science much? ;D

Disclaimer: I have my own hens. My eggs are all from the backyard.

@LuckyGuy get some really fresh eggs and some eggs that have sat in the fridge for a week, and check the difference when you peel them.

@smudges. You have no idea! :-) Life IS science!

@LuckyGuy – your boiling method is:
1) boil water
2) add eggs
3) keep heating until boiling again
4) heat off for 10 min

And that gets you hard boiled eggs without the gray film on the yolk?

@RocketGuy There is no gray film. The yolks were beautiful. The eggs are about 56–59 grams. Grade AA Large.

That is basically the procedure.
I put in just enough water to cover the eggs and heated the pot to boiling.
After adding eggs I waited about 15 seconds on the heat. Then moved the pot off the heat. I covered it and set a timer for 9 minutes. So in total it is about 10 minutes.

I find that mine do better when I start out with cold water & bring to boil with eggs already in the water. 10 minutes work best for me; however, IF you do get the gray film, that means that you’re cooking them too long, so decrease by 1 minute until you lose the gray film & still have the egg done to your liking. There is a happy medium.

When cracking, I’ve found that for me peeling one-handed that I get better results IF I crack both ends & then hold the freshly boiled egg in the palm of my hand & squeeze the whole egg & let the egg decide where to crack. Sometimes I get large sections of broken shell….other times it’s smaller pieces. Either way, when I peel the egg, the pieces are intertwined by the thin membrane that covers the egg & pretty much comes off in one peeling. You can mess it up by squeezing too hard, but you should be able to feel when you’re squeezing properly. I learned this out of necessity; however, there should be some science behind it!!!

I start with eggs in cold water too but don’t have the time correct. I get that gray film.

To peel, I pour out the boiled water, pour in cold water to cool the eggs, and do a second cold water soak to get the eggs to about 100F. Then, without pouring out the water, I crack the shells all around and drop the eggs back in water (hoping some water gets between the membrane and the egg white). As I pick off the shell I dip the egg in the water. The water makes the shell easy to pick from the egg and prevents shell bits from sticking back onto the egg. It’s not the easiest method but the eggs come out clean and smooth.

Keep in mind that if you are at a high elevation your water will boil at a lower temperature, which will affect the length of time that you need to boil your eggs.

@snowberry Altitude! Good point! I am at 255 ft above sea level. (I should check ambient pressure next time.)

Only @LuckyGuy would have the altitude of his property in his brain!

@Dutchess_III I have taken many averaged readings with my GPS. I know the altitude of my floor and even the stove top to well within a few inches. Really!

My altitude app says I’m currently at 99 feet.

That’s great @LuckyGuy!

Any updates on your eggsperiments?

Yep! Here is my update. Thank you for the reminder!
I ended up using a vegetable steaming rack in a 2 quart Revere pot. I do 6 eggs at a time.
I put water in the pot so it is just below the level of the eggs 18–20mm. I let the water come to a boil on high heat. I put the eggs and rack in the pot and lower the temperature so it is simmering for 10 minutes. (I’m at 80 meters above sea level so your mileage may vary.)
After 10 minutes I immediately immerse the cooked eggs in cold water.
I also run water over the egg when I peel it.

I recently did a batch of 10 eggs with my “poke a whole in their butt” method. I had a 100% success rate. They were older eggs, though, so I will have to try it with fresh ones in the future.

I tried the eggs in white vinegar for 24 hours trick and it was amazing! The acetic acid dissolves the egg shell calcium carbonate releasing CO2, leaving a totally nude egg in the bowl!
I just did it with raw eggs. It will be worth trying with hard boild eggs to see if the vinegar flavors the eggs.

You like tangy eggs?

@RocketGuy It’s worth a try. I’m always open to new tastes and flavors.