Salt – Salting the water makes for
Add salt to the water? Egg white solidifies more quickly in hot, salty water than it does in fresh. So a little salt in your water can minimize the mess if your egg springs a leak while cooking.
A boiling start for 30 seconds to a very gentle simmer for 13 minutes, then an ice bath at the end makes perfect, easy-to-peel hard-boiled eggs.
It's not necessary to add anything to the water. Some people also swear that adding a bit of salt, vinegar or even baking soda to the boiling water makes eggs easier to peel and/or makes them taste better. We, however, prefer the simplicity of plain ol' water.
You might have heard that you should drop your eggs into room temperature or cold water and then bring the water to a boil. This is a myth. In our tests, bringing the water to a boil first and then lowering the eggs into the bath made for easy peeling and more accurate timing.
Here's her hack for how to peel hard-boiled eggs in large batches: Put five thoroughly cooled hard-boiled eggs into a small plastic container with some cold water, top with the lid and then gently rock and shake until the shells break and fall away. You'll almost always end up with perfectly peeled eggs.
Shocking your recently boiled eggs by submerging them into a bowl of ice water is key. The quick cooling of the hard-boiled eggs causes the egg whites to contract, freeing them from the membrane. If you let them cool for about 15 minutes, the peeling is much easier.
Ideally, peel the eggs as soon as they're cool. Start at the broad end, and hold the egg under running water to loosen any bits of stubborn shell clinging to the sides. Another thing to keep in mind is the freshness of your eggs.
According to Bon Appétit, the perfect time to salt your scrambled eggs is right after you've finished whisking them in the bowl ... ideally 15 minutes before cooking.
Adding salt to water does two things, it increases the boiling point and decreases the specific heat capacity. Specific heat capacity refers to the amount of heat that is required to raise the temperature of a substance by one degree Celsius.
As J. Kenji López-Alt explains in his book The Food Lab, salt inhibits the proteins in the egg yolks from binding too tightly as they heat up, which results in a moister, more tender curd: “When eggs cook and coagulate,” he writes, "the proteins in the yolks pull tighter and tighter together as they get hotter.
4 minutes for slightly set yolk and set white. 5 minutes for a medium cooked firmer yolk and white. 6 minutes for hard boiled with lightly soft yolk. 8 minutes for firmly hard boiled.
Give the eggs at least five minutes in the ice bath before you try to peel them—letting them cool may help make it easier to peel them, but it's also so you don't burn your hands.
Chef Ramsay opts to boil his eggs for four and a half minutes to keep the egg's center slightly soft. When your eggs are finished boiling, drain the water and run the eggs under cold tap water in the pot. According to Chef Ramsay, cooling the eggs as quickly as possible prevents their yolks from turning gray.
Leave eggs in the ice bath for 10+ minutes to allow for thorough cooling/easy peeling (you can place them under running cold water instead, but without the cold shock from the ice bath, you may have a harder time peeling, especially if your eggs are farm fresh like ours).
Add salt and vinegar to the water.
The salt permeates the shell a little bit, and the vinegar helps to break down the shells, making them easier to peel.
The best reason to add salt to water is to improve the flavor of food cooked in it. Salting water also helps it boil (slightly) faster. While salting water does increase the temperature at which it boils, the effect is so small that it really has no impact on cooking time.
Salt water can help replenish minerals. Besides, the alkalic effect of sole helps to reduce bloodstream acidity and thereby improve bone health.
Boiling seawater does not make it safe to drink because it doesn't remove the salt. Freshwater on the other hand - say from a river - can be boiled to make it safe enough to drink.
Salt and Pepper
Specifically, salt suppresses bitter tastes to help bring out the eggs' natural taste, while pepper adds a pop of outside spice. You can switch up your eggs' flavor by using different types of pepper. While black and white pepper come from the same plant, they have slightly different tastes.