Anne Miller - best boiled egg tip of the year or maybe decades or maybe the century!!!

I searched through my posts for a while and I cannot find the thread where Anne Miller says something about her husband peeling the boiled eggs while they are warm/hot.

Because all of the boiled egg advice says use an ice bath (we don't have an icemaker), I have been putting them in the fridge for a day or two to cool and then peel. An ice bath adds a step and putting in the fridge adds a step. I never considered trying to peel after boiling, before cooling. I had never considered trying it and have never seen that in a recipe.

After reading Anne's post, I tried peeling them when they were just cool enough to handle. I have done 10-12 dozen eggs this way and it works! This is a gamechanger because I can get the eggs to their "ready to eat" stage all in one continuous process.

Sorry for being so excited about boiled eggs!!!

I am glad you liked my tip.

possibly:

Anne Miller wrote:We peel the eggs when they are still warm as we believe the eggs are easier to peel when warm.  And that is not my job.

source

I would do the same: just cool them enough to handle. I've heard that older eggs are easier to peel too.

Nancy Reading wrote:possibly:

Anne Miller wrote:We peel the eggs when they are still warm as we believe the eggs are easier to peel when warm.  And that is not my job.

source

I would do the same: just cool them enough to handle. I've heard that older eggs are easier to peel too.

Yes that is it!

I find that the older chicken eggs works best for peeling, if they are fresh from the chicken. A week or two works well for us.

When the timer expires for my boiled eggs, I dump the water, add cold tap water, dump that, repeat once more, then usually after a minute the eggs are just cool enough to handle. That's when I peel them--not because I'm trying to eliminate steps but because I'm impatient and I don't have the foresight to prepare boiled eggs further in advance than about 15 minutes.

However, I have not found that this makes them any easier (or harder) to peel than if I am peeling one from out of the fridge that was boiled a day ago, or one that was boiled an hour ago and left on the counter, or whatever.

In fact my luck with peeling eggs seems completely random. I have no idea what conditions produce an easy-to-peel egg.

I do believe I have noticed that eggs have gotten harder to peel. Even when they peel easily it's not like it used to be years ago when I could sometimes get half the shell off in one piece, and the rest off in just a few more pieces, without tearing out any white with it.

Maybe it's because of the eggs I buy? I buy the cheap grocery store eggs, usually. Occasionally I buy the one-step-up nicer brown ones when the price difference is less than about 75 cents. But I don't think I notice a difference in ease of peeling then, either.

My two cents worth - when just cool, roll on a hard surface to crackle the shell, then start peeling from the pointy end. . . this seems to work best for me, though not 100% of the time.