According to The Kitchn, the first sign that your boiled eggs were left on the stove too long is if their yolks are a strange gray or white color, or seem to be falling apart. The other indicator that your eggs were over-boiled is if they smell like sulfur after you freshly peeled them.
Is It Okay to Eat Overcooked Hard-Boiled Eggs? While eating an overcooked hard-boiled egg every now and again won't cause you any harm, the taste and texture aren't satisfying or appealing.
When you boil eggs, hydrogen sulphide - a toxic gas is released in the whites of the egg. This happens especially when you overboil the eggs. If you have noticed, overcooked eggs have a green coating on their yolk, which is a signal that you should not eat them.
The yolks of medium-eggs should be just about solid, but moist, more like a custard than a hard-cooked egg. For hard-boiled eggs, remove after 8 minutes. The yolks of hard-boiled eggs are crumbly and bright yellow, completely solid, but with none of the grayish-green around the yolk that over-cooking yields.
A green ring on a hard-cooked yolk is the result of overcooking. The green color is caused by sulfur and iron compound reactions on the yolk surface. Hard-cooked eggs can also have black or brown spots on the albumen (egg white) from overcooking or burning.
If you're wondering how to tell an egg is hard boiled, set it on the counter and give a quick spin. Once it's moving, tap your finger on it to stop the spinning. Eggs that are cooked will spin easily and rapidly and stop quickly.
The fact is, there's no difference between brown or white eggs when it comes to making a hard-boiled egg. As a matter of fact, the simple difference between brown eggs and white eggs is the hen. That's it.
Hard-boiled eggs are safe to eat as long as they have been handled and stored properly. The process of boiling eggs for 30 minutes or longer will effectively kill any bacteria present, such as salmonella, that could cause food poisoning if the egg was consumed raw or undercooked.
While overcooking hard-boiled eggs does have its obvious drawbacks — rubbery dry whites and pale crumbly yolks — it actually does make them easier to peel. That's because one of the determining factors in peel-ability is the pH of the egg — the higher (less acid), the easier.
Those funky, discolored rings in your hard-boiled eggs may make you wonder if they are harmful to eat. Fortunately, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) website clearly states the green or gray color in the eggs is “safe to consume.” So, if you happen to see a little ring around your egg, don't worry!
If you keep the heat turned up too high or too long when you cook an egg, the proteins in the egg white form more and more bonds, squeezing some of the water out of the protein network and making the egg white rubbery.
For one to four eggs, bring the water to a rolling boil, cover the pot, and turn the heat down to its lowest setting for 12-14 minutes. For five to eight eggs, cook for 15 to 18 minutes. For nine to one dozen eggs, cook for 20 minutes. After cooking, transfer the eggs to a bowl of ice water.
Bring the water to a boil over medium heat. Then, set the timer and boil the eggs for 10 minutes. Depending on how soft you like your yolks how long to boil eggs can vary from 5 minutes to 12 minutes. The less time in the hot water, the less cooked the eggs will be.
If you boil an egg for five or 10 minutes, it becomes firm and cooked. If you boil it for hours, it becomes rubbery and overcooked.
As soon as the water begins to boil, turn off the heat and cover the pot. Leave the eggs in the hot water for anywhere from 10-12 minutes, depending on how you like your eggs. The 10-minute eggs will have vibrant, creamy yolks, while the 12-minute yolks will be paler and opaque, with a chalkier texture.
Bring water to a boil over high heat. Let the water rapidly boil for 30 seconds, cover and remove from heat. Let sit 4-12 minutes. 4 minutes for jammy eggs or 12 minutes for fully hard boiled eggs and 8 or 10 minutes for somewhere in between.
Many people assume brown eggs are healthier than white eggs. But this is not true. Their rich, brown color does not mean brown eggs are better in quality or nutrients than white eggs. There is no nutritional difference between white eggs and brown eggs.
If the egg stands on its pointed end at the bottom – it is still safe to eat but best used for baking and making hard-cooked eggs. If the egg float – they're stale and best discarded.
This is because the egg white or “albumen” in a fresh egg has a relatively low pH level, making it acidic. When cooked, these fresh egg whites bond strongly to the inner shell's membrane. As an egg ages, the pH level rises and the inner membrane is less likely to bond to the albumen, so the shell peels off much easier.
NaCl or salt is added to the water when boiling eggs as the addition of salt or other non-volatile solid help in reducing the vapour pressure of the liquid. Which in turn increases, the boiling point i.e the temperature at which the vapour pressure equals the atmospheric pressure.
How Can You Tell If Hard-Boiled Eggs Are Bad? The best way to test if your eggs are still good after you've boiled them is, again, the smell test. Basically, you'll notice the smell is off if an egg is starting to go bad. This is true for raw eggs and it's true for boiled eggs—the funk doesn't lie.