You Must Make a Hole in the Eggs Before Boiling Them.
Most hard-boiled egg recipes will ask you to pour cold water over the eggs, bring them to a boil, then cover and remove from heat for 12 minutes or so. In my experience, this has always resulted in eggs that cannot be peeled.
Launching eggs in cold water and bringing them to a boil binds the protein to the membrane, making it very difficult to separate the shells. Because of this, I always use a hot start (be it boiling, steaming, or pressure cooking). This causes the eggs to be lifted each time, but sometimes it can also cause the egg to crack. My rating for cracked eggs was roughly one in six, which isn’t too bad considering I prefer using more yolks than whites for my spiced eggs, but even I have to admit that no cracked eggs are going to be an improvement.
In addition to the accidental egg sacrifice, another aspect of my method needed a little help: aesthetics. After I posted this blog about Shocking Hard Boiled Eggs, a very good professional chef sent me a very nice email. He didn’t have any shocking records, but he noticed that my balls vat needed a little help:
When making eggs, you must follow Jacques Pepen’s method. This is a method that I learned even before I knew who Jacques Pepin was. He starts by punching a very small hole on the large side of the eggshell. This will help release the gas that is inside the egg as you cook it. This will create a rounded space where you have very flat spots on the eggs right now. Gas is released and whites can move into this space.
I have heard about this Pepin recipe but have never tried it (due to sheer laziness), so it felt like a good time to finally try it. I poked the bottom of my eggs with a pushpin to make tiny holes, then dipped them directly into boiling water for nine minutes before rinsing them in cold water and peeling them. It worked and it solved my hack problem. Not only did my balls become more rounded at the bottom, but none of them cracked . And they all peeled off as in a dream.
All six eggs are much rounder than anything I have ever boiled before. (At first I said ok, but then I looked at my previous balls, and wow – sorry.)
Note, however, that when Jacques Pepin says to poke the egg with the big end, he really means just that. I tried to boil a few eggs that were poked at the small end (just to see what happens) and things got pretty ugly:
The eggs not only formed unsightly dimples, but one of them cracked and spilled into the pot, which, again, I would like to avoid.
I also read (on Reddit, I think) that dipping eggs in hot (not boiling) water and then covering and removing them from the heat after cooking can help with the cracking problem, but even with a poke, this method melted the shells to my proteins making them nearly impossible to clean.
The hole in the bottom of the egg is all you need, that’s what I’m talking about. Not only does this result in eggs with a smoother and rounder bottom, but it also allows refrigerated eggs to be immersed in boiling hot water without any cracks, which means you don’t have to sacrifice even one egg to remove the skin.