My “egg”speriment to find the easiest to peel eggs!

 

As part of my “get more organized in 2018” kick, I have been trying to do more food prep. We end up wasting quite a bit of food because it gets lost in the far reaches of the fridge where no one dares to venture. We also end up grabbing foods that are bad for us when we’re starving because healthy food is less convenient.

So I am trying really hard to have easily accessible, delicious, healthy foods available for any member of our family to just reach into the fridge and grab. And nothing is easier to grab than boiled eggs. All three of us love them, they are great for breakfast, lunch, or snacks, so it makes sense that we always have some in the fridge ready to be eaten. But eggs, despite being one of our favorite foods, have this seriously inconvenient little package they come in.

There is nothing more frustrating that trying to peel a boiled egg when the shell simply doesn’t want to come off. I have tried several “no fail tricks” over the years and often thought about conducting an “egg”speriment (sorry, I REALLY couldn’t help myself!) to see which is the most effective. Then this morning at breakfast my mother in law asked me if I had any tricks to making eggs easier to peel and I thought to myself “Self! (Cause that’s what I call myself!) You should spend some time today trying all of the popular tips and tricks!”

And I just happened to have a dozen eggs in the fridge waiting to be boiled! How convenient!

I will elaborate on all 4 of the methods I tried today, but to make things easy I have called them “Vinegar”, “Baking Soda”, “Cold Start”, and “Pioneer Woman”.

Vinegar method

This is one that my mother in law and few of my friends use on a consistent basis. Simply add white vinegar to the water. Sounds simple enough, and who doesn’t have vinegar at home?

To help make this slightly more scientific I measured out 2 tsp of vinegar into my pot of water (see if I was a real scientist, I would have measured how much water I used as well!) and set the water to boil.

After the water was boiling I gently added my 3 eggs and let simmer for 15 minutes.

Once the time was up I ran them under cold water for 5 minutes before peeling.

How did they peel? Pretty well actually! There weren’t any spots where the shell stuck to the whites, I couldn’t get really big pieces of shell off but they did peel pretty nicely.

Baking Soda

This is the method I have been using for the last few years. I would like to say it never fails me, but if it never failed me, I wouldn’t have had to conduct this experiment (see, I didn’t subject you to my bad joke this time!).

I added 1 tsp of baking soda to my pot of water before I added the eggs. If you wait to add the baking soda until the water is already boiled it bubbles and fizzes and looks like a cauldron….but maybe it’s just me that enjoys that. I then gently added the 3 eggs into the boiling water and, again, let them simmer away for 15 minutes.

Once again, when the 15 minutes was up I ran them under cold water for 5 minutes before peeling.

How did they peel? They also peeled really well. The baking soda seems to help firm the whites up a bit (if you add too much baking soda though sometimes you end up with more rubbery whites…..voice of experience!). But as with the vinegar ones, the shells came off in smaller pieces than I would have liked.

Yep I’m getting picky now.

Cold Start

This was my first time making boiled eggs this way although I have read about this method several times. You start out by covering your eggs with cold water then placing them on the stove and gently bring the water to a boil.

Once the water is boiling, you let it bubble away for 1 minute, then put the lid on, remove from heat, and set the timer for 12 minutes.

After the 12 minutes are up, rinse them in cold water for 5 minutes, then peel.

How did they peel? This was the last batch I peeled and I was beginning to think maybe I just had perfect eggs to start with. Luckily the cold start method set me straight. This was my first and my last time cooking eggs by this method. The shells stuck to the whites and I lost huge chunks of delicious eggs. One egg I even lost the entire bottom of! They were a mess!

Pioneer Woman

Now this method is called Pioneer Woman because it’s on her website as “Easy-to-Peel Eggs” so I thought “Dang, I should just do it this way from now on. This is the way Ree does it, it must be the right way!” (After all, that woman is a goddess in the kitchen!)

Her method is to bring the water to a boil before gently lowering the eggs in, then lower the heat to a gentle simmer for 13 minutes.

After the 13 minutes are up you quickly remove the eggs from the boiling water and drop them into an ice bath for 5 minutes before peeling.

How did they peel? I’m really torn about how to answer this question. Honestly, these were the easiest eggs to peel, the peels pretty much just slipped off and it came off in big chunks. That being said, there were a few small spots on each egg where the peel stuck and took a very small amount of the white off.

I think the reason they peeled so easily, honestly, is the ice bath. I ran out of eggs so I was done for the day but there are thoughts in the back of my head that I haven’t yet stumbled upon the perfect cooking method. I think the winner is going to be either the baking soda or vinegar with an ice bath after they are done cooking.

I will have to come back and update this post once I finish tallying my findings. Thankfully I have a cousin who is a chicken farmer so I’m going to try with farm fresh eggs, because we all know those are the worst!!!!! I’m hoping to have my own egg layers when we move to the farm so I have to have this nailed down before that!

But one thing I did learn during this whole endeavour? Boiled eggs are delicious no matter how you cook them, or how difficult they are to peel! Mmm Mmm Good!

Do any of you have a tried and true method? I’d love to hear about it!

Xoxox