Once the eggs have cooked to your preferred time, use the skimmer to remove the eggs and immediately submerge them in the ice water bath to stop them from cooking. You'll let the eggs sit here for about 5 to 10 minutes before peeling.
Give Eggs Time To Cool
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.
After boiling, let the eggs sit in the ice bath for at least 15 minutes, then peel them or refrigerate them (unpeeled) for up to seven days. The ice bath quickly cools the eggs, which prevents them from overcooking and prevents the dark ring from appearing on the outside of the yellow yolk.
We also found that the longer you leave eggs in cold water, the harder it is to remove their shells. Ideally, peel the eggs as soon as they're cool.
Start with old eggs. Farm-fresh eggs will be harder to peel—it's a matter of their particular chemistry. To minimize frustration, save those straight-from-the-hen eggs for poaching or frying and use a carton of slightly older eggs, like the ones from the grocery store, when boiling.
"Get them onto a spoon and drop them into the water", Gordon said, timing six minutes to boil the eggs. "Bring that [the water] to the boil, but don't water them ferociously, or you'll get a black line around the outside, boil them gently."
The vinegar in the water makes the eggs easier to peel. Here's why: The vinegar's acid not only dissolves some of the calcium carbonate in the shell, it also helps the whites set faster. Running the hard-boiled eggs under cold running water as you're peeling, meanwhile, helps the shell separate from the membrane.
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.
To avoid getting a green yolk, cook your eggs just long enough to reach the desired doneness—no more. And quickly plunge the cooked eggs into cold water to stop the cooking process and minimize the iron-sulfur reaction. Some people also say that the cold-water plunge makes eggs easier to peel.
Here's a hard-boiled egg tip that we know to be true: Starting your eggs in hot, already-boiling water makes them easier to peel. In a column for Serious Eats, cookbook author and food columnist J. Kenji López-Alt found that "starting cold resulted in eggs that had just over a 50% success rate for clean peeling.
Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat to low (so that there's no bubbles) and use skimmer to gently and slowly add the eggs to the water. Then, turn the heat back up to a boil. Set a timer and cook the eggs for 6 to 7 minutes for soft-boiled eggs and 12 to 14 minutes for hard-boiled eggs.
Remember to use one teaspoon of vinegar for one egg. Fill a pot with water and add vinegar according to the number of eggs you are boiling. Now put the pot on heat and boil the eggs. Adding vinegar to the water helps the proteins in the egg white coagulate faster which further plugs any cracks in the egg.
Because older eggs have more alkaline, you shouldn't add vinegar to the cooking water, though some recipes recommend it. Adding about a teaspoon of baking soda to the cooking water increases the alkalinity, which will make the eggs easier to peel later on.
How long do hard boiled eggs last? If you want to make the hard boiled eggs ahead of time, cook and peel as directed, then store them in a tightly sealed container and place in the refrigerator up to 5 days.
"Hard-boiled eggs should be refrigerated within two hours of cooking and discarded if left out for more than two hours at room temperature," says Rubin. She recommends leaving them in the fridge in their shells for optimal taste and quality and only peeling them right before you're ready to eat them.
Salt – Salting the water makes for perfect hard boiled eggs because it: Increases the temperature of boiling water. This causes the egg white to cook a little faster, which makes it easier to prevent overcooking the yolk. Helps seal and cracks or leaks.
Baking Soda
According to our friends at Delish, adding a teaspoon of baking soda to your boiling pot of water will help the shell peel off seamlessly. Why? The alkaline in the baking soda will help your egg whites loosen up from the shell, making it easier to peel.
It's best to store hard-boiled eggs with the shells on, as the outer layer serves as a protective barrier. Plus, they're easier to peel once they've chilled in the fridge for a while.
To avoid getting a green yolk, cook your eggs just long enough to reach the desired doneness—no more. And quickly plunge the cooked eggs into cold water to stop the cooking process and minimize the iron-sulfur reaction. Some people also say that the cold-water plunge makes eggs easier to peel.