I have to first apologize that I haven’t been blogging regularly. Right after I launched this blog, I was approached by a publisher to write a cookbook which is terrific but has been taking up all of my spare time. I am either cooking, cleaning up the kitchen, or studying for egg-zams (ha ha, actually no, memorizing biochemistry and microbiology terms is not fun or funny at all). What little time I have left, I’m trying not to be an absentee mother to my two kids who are at the cutest ages ever (6 and 8). After the holidays, I will be finishing up my book and on a short break from classes so I should have more time to devote to making more regular posts.
Now, I’m pretty egg-cited about this new discovery!
I’m very lucky to have an endless stream of nutrient dense, fresh pastured eggs at my disposal from my farm. Fresh eggs don’t have a large air sac between the egg white and shell, making them very hard to peel when hard boiled. The older the egg (like the ones you buy at the grocery store) the easier it is to peel once hard boiled because the air sac is larger as the white shrinks away from the shell. Even though I love to eat hard boiled and deviled eggs, I had pretty much written off trying to prepare them because I would always end up spending way too long trying to remove the shell and the deviled eggs would be so ugly nobody would want to eat them. That is, until Liz Wolfe send me a twitter message from someone asking how to make them and another person replied that adding baking soda would help the process. I decided to do a little research and try it for myself. It worked beautifully! My daughter loves hard boiled eggs, especially sliced with an egg slicer – magically transforming hard boiled eggs into perfectly round coins that she dips in sea salt. Hard boiled eggs from pastured hens are a perfect food to take to the office or toss in a lunch box for the kids.
Here’s what you do:
- 6 eggs
- 1 TBS salt
- 2 tsp baking soda
- In a medium sized saucepan, place 6 eggs, salt and baking soda.
- Bring to just to a boil then reduce the heat and allow to lightly simmer for 12 minutes.
- Place the pot in the sink and drain the water.
- Shake the pot so the egg shells crack and add cold water.
- Allow to sit for at least five minutes or until the eggs are cool.
- Peel the eggs.
- Compost the shells. Egg-cellent looking hard boiled eggs. They have no taste of baking soda at all.
3 thoughts on “Easy Peel Hard Boiled One Day Old Pastured Eggs”
This very dilemma has baffled me for quite some time. Thanks for the enlightenment Diana! Maybe I’ll see you at AHS ’13!
Diana,
I used to place my eggs in the pan, cover with cold water, then slowly bring up to a gentle boil. That worked fine with grocery store eggs most of the time. But when we got pastured local eggs the shell problems occurred. Then I read that you boil the water first and gently lower the egg. Problem solved. I also recall the standard egg cooking practice in Paris hotels was the same method. There is always an electric cooker and a bowl of fresh eggs. One lowers one’s egg into the water and cooks it until desired hardness is reached.
Just last week I needed to get some Costco eggs, and tried my old method. Epic fail shellwise. Just be gentle lowering them, use a slotted stainless steel spoon. I tried a wooden one and an egg rolled off and cracked.
What a great idea, thanks for posting. I had given up on deviled eggs. I too have chickens. I’ll give it a try.
I keep my egg shells, toast them, crunch them up and feed them back to my chickens.