I imagine many of you are getting ready to boil eggs this week, either to decorate for Easter or to include at a Passover seder.  I loved the annual event of dyeing Easter eggs when I was a child.  (It also meant a basket full of candy was only a few short days away. ) My mom would buy a dozen eggs and my 2 sisters and I each took 4 eggs to dye.  It never seemed like enough eggs to us.  But whatever we decorated would also have to be eaten, because perfectly good food was not thrown away in our house.  So 12 seemed to be a good compromise.

I actually liked hard-boiled eggs and I still do.  A quick breakfast for me is a boiled egg or two with a sprinkle of sea salt and a piece of toasted millet bread.  Eggs are a great source of inexpensive, usable protein.  I’m so glad research is showing that the dietary cholesterol in eggs is nothing to get worked up about.  People used to think that foods high in dietary cholesterol increased one’s blood cholesterol, but it’s really saturated fat that seems to be the culprit and most of the fat in eggs is unsaturated.  In addition, the phospholipids in the yolk interfere with our absorption of the yolk’s cholesterol.  Now you’re not going to imagine I said something which I didn’t and go hog wild eating eggs like crazy every day, are you?  Good.  We still need to emphasize plant foods, people.

Sadly, my mom’s hard boiled eggs always came out slightly overcooked and with that unattractive green ring around the yolk, so I was never super enthusiastic about eating more than I needed to.   So on the eve of the great hard boiled egg cook-off, let’s figure out once and for all how to prepare a perfectly cooked hard boiled egg.  I’ve done a few videos for the amazing website, The Chalkboard, including one on boiling eggs which I’ve inserted below.  Click here to see the original post.  Once we’ve got this down pat, on Friday I’ll give you my favorite way to make egg salad, as well as few other creative ideas for eating hard boiled eggs, that way you don’t have to worry about what in the world you’re going to do with them all the day after.

Here are a couple of tips to follow:

• Fresh eggs are harder to peel, so if you are getting them right from the nest or from the farmer’s market, it’s best to wait a few days before boiling them.  If this isn’t possible, add a half teaspoon of baking soda to a quart of water to make the cooking water more alkaline.  Also, allow the eggs to firm up in the refrigerator before peeling.
• Cover eggs in a pot with cold water and plenty of room to move around.  No one likes cracked shells.
• Bring the water to a boil and then turn off the heat, cover your pot and set your timer for 10 minutes.  Why not boil the eggs for 10 minutes?  Cooking the eggs in boiling water will overcook them, resulting in a rubbery white and a dry yolk with that unattractive ring around the yolk.   You want a solid, but tender white and a moist yolk.  Trust me, you do.
• After 10 minutes in the pot, submerge the eggs in ice water to stop the cooking process, just like blanching vegetables.  Either remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and transfer them to a bowl of ice water or drain the eggs in a colander and run them under very cold water.  I usually run them under cold water if I want to eat the eggs right away and I want them to be slightly warm.  But for decorating, ice water is the way to go.

Video Here