I haven’t posted in forever, but I was inspired this evening to just document what I have found to be the best approach for perfect hard-boiled eggs. What do I mean by perfect hardboiled eggs? Two things: (1) the yolk is cooked to the hardness I like, and (2) the shell peels off easily without that annoying sticking of egg white to the shell. (For the food nerds out there, my understanding, via an explanation I read in Cooks Illustrated, is that by dropping the eggs into boiling water you cause the membrane surrounding the egg white to bond to the shell allowing for easy peeling. Whereas if you bring cold eggs and water to a boil together, the membrane bonds to the egg white and the shell causing that annoying pocking of the egg white– or something like that.)

Total time from start to finish is about 20 minutes — with only about 2 minutes of actual work time, the rest waiting for water to boil and eggs to cook. We all should have a carton of HBs in the fridge all the time. No excuses not to.

Here’s what you do. Follow exactly. The only deviation that I have found to be discretionary is cooking time. If you prefer softer eggs, use less than 14 minutes. If you are cooking at high altitude, you’ll need longer.

1. Prick the top of each egg with a fat tack while the eggs are in the carton. Make sure the tack goes all the way through the shell.

2. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. The water is about 2 inches (50mm) deep here. Must be at a boil.

3. Using a pair of tongs, hold the egg vertically and slowly lower it into the water (maybe 3 seconds duration of immersion process). You’ll see in the second image that one egg has that annoying white eruption of egg white. I did that on purpose to demonstrate the importance of vertical immersion. If you drop the egg in with the hole down or to the side, the small air gap inside the egg shell will expand and extrude that egg white out the hole. That’s why you grab the egg with the tongs and lower it into the water over a period of about 3 seconds with the hole at the top. The air expansion happens nicely in this case, and you’ll see bubbles coming out of the hole and no egg white spilling out. It seems that as long as the air bubbles get started out the top it doesn’t matter if the egg then rolls over to the side.

4. After all eggs are immersed, start 14:00 minute timer. (This will end up averaging about 14:30 cook time, given the time required to lower the eggs into the water before you start the timer.) Note that this time will be invariant of the number of eggs so long as you have plenty of water and keep the heat high initially. The point is to keep the water at 212F/100C, in which case the cook time should not depend on the number of eggs you cook.

5. At 14 minutes, pour off most of the water and dump a big pile of ice into the pan.

6. Let the eggs cool for a few minutes. This allegedly further causes the membrane to do the right thing, but I think the more important effect is to stop the cooking process at a precise time. If you’re going to eat some eggs immediately and like them warm, I pull them after a couple of minutes so they are at perfect eating temperature. If I’ll be storing the eggs in the fridge, I let them chill.

7. Store or eat. (Cut the top off the egg carton and store the eggs that way — you won’t forget they are hard boiled eggs and you’ll be reminded you’ve got a nice inventory of nature’s perfect food ready to eat.)

You’ll get perfect eggs every time.