I'm going to attempt to show you my grandmother's hard boiled eggs, and when I say attempt it
starts with hard cooking eggs.
This can be tricky and there's a couple of reasons why.
And I started to show y'all how to do this a few days ago and I started out with incredibly
fresh eggs and when you go to peel them they just fall apart.
So fresh eggs are not the best things to work with.
I did some looking around and the USDA actually says that eggs are good for three to five
weeks and that makes sense because the easiest eggs to hard boil and to peel are the ones
that are about two weeks old.
Now - these are only a few days old so I'm going to show you a couple of other tricks
and hopefully we can get those shells off and have nice pretty eggs.
But this part is to show you how to hard cook your eggs.
That's kind of a misnomer.
People talk about hard boiled eggs all the time.
But if you want to have the best hard cooked eggs you never let it boil.
Ok?
That's the number one trick.
If you've ever opened a hard cooked egg and you get that green ring that goes around the
yolk right inside the white?
It was cooked at too high a temperature or for too long.
That's number one and number two for what you want to look out for.
It's really simple.
So what you want to do first is ...five, six, seven, eight, now my grandmother's recipe
calls for eight eggs and I've got some serious egg lovers in my house, plus I always break
one or two and one or two get stolen, so I make a few extra.
What I did the other day was the same batch of eggs that was too fresh, I simply took
it out of the packaging and let it sit in the cooler without a top on it.
I knew I didn't have anything in there that would cause the eggs to pick up off flavors,
but also I wanted the air to circulate around them to help draw out a little bit of the
moisture through the shell.
Hopefully it'll give us that little bit of room that will make them easier to peel.
All right - so they go in there in just a single layer - don't ever double them up.
You don't want to do that.
And I'm going to put them - don't look at my dish soap thingy - I'm going to put them
in cold water.
All right?
Don't put hot water on them at this point.
And one of the tricks is just to cover them by about an inch of water.
This is what we've got.
I guess that's an inch - I don't know.
It comes to there on my finger.
About an inch - don't worry about getting that too fussy.
So trick number to hard cooking eggs correctly - don't crank the heat sky high.
We started out with cold eggs, we started out with cold water, so we want to bring all
of that up to temperature, kind of at the same rate.
We want to bring it up nice and easy.
If you crank that heat way up, and you get it going real fast then you're going to develop
those compounds in the yolk that give that sulphurous kind of flavor and smell.
The other thing I'm going to do - and it's about to be very hot water so I'm going to
quit sticking my fingers in there - is to move the eggs around a little bit and move
them gently.
This doesn't always work perfectly but it does help to keep the yolk centered inside
the egg as it cooks and it begins to set that's where the yolk is going to stay.
That way when you cut it you won't the half of the egg where the yolk was all the way
over at one wall and you've got a hole right there.
So just keep them moving gently and I only have to do this for a minute or two.
See it's not a big thing.
Final trick - Ricky, you stay on that.
And I honestly don't know if this is anything but an old wives tale.
But my grandmother did it and if Granny did it that's reason enough for me to do it even
if I don't know why.
All right?
Just plain old white vinegar.
I'm going to give it a splash.
The theory is - or if I remember - she told me that helps make them easier to peel.
I don't know if it actually does a thing.
But Granny said to do it so that means I'm going to do it.
All right?
So this is going to come up to temperature.
You don't want to let it boil - that's important.
So what we're looking for is a bare simmer to make these hard cooked eggs.
Hard boiled eggs.
You know what I mean.
So as it comes up to temperature I'll show you what the water looks like when it's at
the right point and that's when we're actually going to cut it off.
Ok.
So I forgot to check the time - I have no idea how long that was.
It was not very long.
And if you take a look here you can see what I'm talking about.
See all the air that is actually clinging to the outside of the shells?
That came from inside the eggs, so hopefully what's going to happen - and you notice I
said hopefully - what's going to happen is that that's going to let the space develop
between the egg and the white that will let us slip the shells off more easily.
And you also see that we're just now coming up to a simmer.
I'd say in the next 60 seconds it's going to be when we're going to turn the heat off.
Now here's the real difficult, technical step about making really good hard cooked eggs.
And I have a lid for this pot but I have no idea where I put it.
All right - but anyway - here it is.
Just to a bare simmer.
Turn the heat off.
Cover it up.
Ten minutes.
There it is.
See?
That's all you do!
Which is basically - don't do much of anything!
In a few minutes when that timer goes off, I'll show you how to get started making deviled
eggs.
I don't get a 3-2-1 signal, do you want a 3-2-1 signal?
No I like your jazz hands that you do - jazz hands.
Let's just do some hand signal.
So eggs - there's not a whole lot to see there.
They sat there in the hot water for ten minutes.
So what we're going to do - what are we going to do - I'm doing like six things at once.
All right we're going to come over here.
I'm draining the hot water off.
Most of it.
Come on.
And then I'm going to give it a little shake.
They're not cracking at all.
They don't have enough room to move, that's why.
Wow - those are really hot.
I wish I hadn't done that.
All right - we're going to give it a small shake.
We're going to get it going to crack them.
Are you kidding me?
Oh yeah they cracked a little bit.
Ok - and we're doing this to give the steam from inside the eggs a chance to escape hopefully
creating a little room - there we go.
Between the egg white and the egg shell.
Then we're going to fill it full of water - we had a single layer, I wonder what happened.
And we're going to let it sit for just a few minutes to get it to the point where I don't
burn my fingers like that every time I try to handle it.
And we're going to start peeling.
I don't know - five minutes.
We'll be right back.
I'm going to show you one more trick when it comes to peeling the eggs.
You have the pointy end, and the round end, right?
Pointy and round.
Tap that round end to get your egg started, and I went ahead and loosened these shells
a few minutes ago when i showed you how to put them in and let the water soak.
If you start peeling, these are so fresh they're a little bit hard to peel still.
But if you start peeling from that round end chances are you're going to catch any air
pocket that has developed under the shell and it gives you a better chance of then - do
you see the membrane?
See that?
If you can just get under that membrane if it has been separated from the white of the
egg chances are you'll be able to get that shell off of there.
Now if you don't get under that membrane, you'll pull big hunks of white off when you
pull the shell off.
I'm trying to remember the name of that, I want to say it starts with a CH.
Of course as soon as I start trying to sound scientific I'll get it wrong.
Anyway that's the way to peel your perfectly cooked hard boiled eggs, hard cooked eggs.
So let me put this one down because I want to show y'all the inside.
Let me grab much too large a knife for the job.
So what I was talking about, was you want your white tender, see that - and you want
your yolk to be bright yellow - you don't want the green ring of death in there.
That's when it's going to start tasting like sulfer.
And you want your white to be tender and your yolks to be be - hey!
Remember me saying I always made extra eggs?
Well you just saw a reason why.
Anyway, so when you're cooking hard cooked, hard boiled eggs - it's a hard boiled egg,
but you don't boil it and that drives me nuts.
When you're doing it that's the method you want to follow.
So start with older eggs - try to go for a week or two.
Cold water, bring it up to a good simmer and do it slowly.
Put a top on it, ten minutes, crack your shells, let it sit in cold water, come back and peel
it.
Works every time!
That I promise.
So if the information I've given you if helpful, do me a favor and give me a thumbs up and
if you have a question ask it in the comments below.
I'll do my best to answer as fast as I can.
If you want to go ahead and check me out on Facebook and I'm on Twitter and on Pinterest.
And if you have a minute and you really think I've done a good job do me a big favor and
check out the Patreon page I've just set up over at Patreon.
So there you go - I'm going to be making hard boiled eggs - NO I'm not.
I'm going to be making deviled eggs next and yeah, we're not scripted here!
I'm going to be making deviled eggs next - it's my grandmother's recipe and it's the best
you've ever tasted - that I promise.
So check out the next video.