When you hard cook an egg, this air heats up, expands, and escapes through pores in the shell—but not before the egg white sets. This leaves the egg with a flattened end. Pricking the egg provides a quick escape route for the air, which gives you an egg with a smoothly rounded end.
Pricking the bottom of the larger side of your eggs not only keeps them from cracking but also makes them easier to peel. This is because there's air in the fatter, flatter part of your egg. When water heats the egg, that air pocket expands and creates pressure inside the shell, which can crack it.
No. You do not have to puncture eggs in the egg cooker. Some cookers have a built-in piercer, and others do not.
A cracked egg will explode while cooking and make a serious mess! If you don't pierce the shell, you're taking a chance that it will explode. The pin on the water cup makes it very easy to do. I've always pierced egg shells when cooking them in pots of water too.
Adding white vinegar or apple cider vinegar to your pot of water allegedly results in softer, easier-to-peel eggshells. That's because the acid in vinegar dissolves some of the calcium carbonate that makes up the egg's hard exterior.
Cook your eggs however you like—in a pot of boiling water with a splash of vinegar, a squeeze of lemon juice, a teaspoon of baking soda, or a pinch of salt. All of these additions help make it easier to peel boiled eggs. Slightly older eggs will make it easier to peel, but using them is not necessary.
Apparently super fresh eggs are difficult to peel because the pH of the white is more acidic which causes it to adhere to the shell membrane more tightly. Two solutions here – use older eggs or add a little bicarb soda to the cooking water to increase the pH.
An egg piercer pierces the air pocket of an eggshell with a small needle to keep the shell from cracking during hard-boiling. If both ends of the shell are pierced, the egg can be blown out while preserving the shell (for crafts).
This is because the gases heat and expand within the shell and expand pressure, thus causing them to crack.
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.
There is absolutely zero correlation between cooking eggs in a pressure cooker and ease of peeling.
STEP 1: Carefully place uncooked eggs in a single layer in a stockpot. Add cold water until the eggs are submerged under about one inch of water. STEP 2: Bring to a full boil, uncovered. STEP 3: Immediately turn off heat, remove from the burner and cover.
Tips for Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs:
Don't cover with the lid or you won't be able to see when the water starts boiling. Set a timer as soon as the water is at a boil (keep watch for the start of the boil so you aren't guessing at your timings).
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.
Poke a tiny hole into the bottom of the egg before boiling it. You'll want to use something sharp and thin to poke your egg, like a thumbtack, needle, or a cake tester. This will ensure that you don't poke a hole that's too big and crack the shell, or end up with the whites spewing out once you start boiling the egg.
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.
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.
Keeping Hard-Boiled Eggs Fresh
For maximum freshness, leave them in their shells until you are ready to eat or prepare. The shell will help to protect the egg from bacteria, and can help prevent them from absorbing odors from other foods in your refrigerator.
But once the water is turned to steam, it condenses on the shells and drips back down into the boiler tray, to be recycled. So with more eggs you have more surface area, therefore more condensation dripping back down and a longer cooking time for less water.
If you're still struggling, peel the eggs under cold running water, which will help separate the shell from the egg. For a more eco-friendly solution than keeping your tap running, you can just peel the eggs in a water bath. The water will have the same effect of slipping under the shell and helping dislodge the egg.