Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs with pics and humor!

Hard boiled eggs. Yes, I wrote "hard boiled" instead of "hard cooked". Why? Cuz I can, that's why. And I'd never heard the term "hard cooked" until just recently.

Apparently there's a recent(?) move afoot to call them hard cooked instead of hard boiled. The method involves putting the eggs into cold water, bring the temp up to just boiling, cover, then turn heat off and let sit for a certain length of time.

Harumph, says I!

As long as the yolks are solid and there's no green tinge around the outside of the yolk then they're fine without doing some new-fangled cooking technique. So there.

BTW, that thar greenish tinge is not harmful and doesn't stink and doesn't taste like crud... it just looks like it!

But what is it? It's just iron sulfide formed when the iron in the yolk reacts with the hydrogen sulfide in the white. Oh, the hydrogen sulfide is what makes rotten eggs stink. It does the same thing to crude oil too!

Anyways, it's quite easy to make perfect hard boiled eggs that peel easily, never crack whilst cooking and have no iron sulfide formed around the yolk.

How is this done? Quite easily as it turns out. And since eggs are the original Meal Ready to Eat, you want to know how to cook them in their shells properly.

Here's how:

Dave's Perfectly Cooked Hard Boiled Eggs

What you need:
3 medium eggs
some water
salt
vinegar
some sort of slotted spoon/ladle type thingy
ice cubes

What you do:

Take the eggs out of the fridge for an hour before you'll be BOILING them. The shells are much less likely to crack if they aren't cold to start out.


Above is the eggs coming up to room temp. Eggsciting, eh?



Once the eggs have warmed up, get the water boiling (I'd suggest using a saucepan to contain the water), give it a sprinkle of sea salt and a splash of vinegar.

Why salt? It makes the eggs much easier to peel, that's why.
Why vinegar? If the eggs do crack, the vinegar will seal them up so none of your egg whites leak out.

Once the salted, vinegary water is boiling (here's a handy reference pic in case you don't know what boiling water looks like)

you want to very carefully load your room temp eggs into your slotted/holey spoon/ladle

and slowly walk across the kitchen to your boiling water without dropping any eggs!




Lower the eggs over the boiling water, but DO NOT IMMERSE!



Hold the eggs over the boiling water till condensation forms (20 to 30 seconds)



and then carefully lower the eggs into the boiling water


then cover the saucepan and set your oven timer for TWELVE (12, XII) minutes.







Whilst you are waiting for your eggs to finish cooking, you can prepare the ice water that you'll plunge them into to stop the cooking process.





Once your 12 minute oven timer beeps, turn off the heat and rinse the eggs under cold tap water for a moment, then plunge them into the ice water! Ker-sploosh!

If you omit this step, you will not halt the cooking process and the outer surface of your yolks Will. Be. Green.

After they've been in the ice water for 30 minutes then go ahead and chuck em in the fridge, use whenever you want them!

And you'll find that the shells practically fall off!




And of course the yolks will be perfect when you slice them: