These are our eggs. Aren’t they beautiful? Our eggs are almost as fresh as you can get them. Often they come straight out of the hen-house and are off to their new homes. But customers are complaining! Yet look at these? Can you see any problems? Me neither.
But we always listen to our customers, so listen we did.
The problem is that our eggs are too fresh. You can not, no matter which little trick you use, peel hard boiled fresh eggs. You end up with a mangled mess of yolk and white and broken bits of shell.
I don’t have this problem because I’d already solved it! Obviously, it’s time to share. You don’t boil your eggs to get hard boiled eggs. You steam them! Yes, just like you steam your broccoli. Place the fresh eggs in the steamer and place that over warm water. Place on the lid and bring it to the boil. I start timing from when I turn on the element because I like mine every so slightly soft in the middle, so I set the timer for 6 minutes. You may need to experiment a few times to find your exact requirements.
A slight confession to make now – the eggs in the photo were cooked in our pressure cooker. Yes, a pressure cooker! We have four of them, three huge ones that we use for preserving and one small electric one that we use, often twice a day for general cooking. We used our first electric one so much that we’ve just had to replace it. The new one doesn’t quite cook the eggs as I like because the lowest setting is still too high, so I may have to go back to steaming them again, but it’s really no problem. Neither the pot nor the steamer gets dirty because the eggs don’t break in the water.
So if your fresh hard boiled eggs are a mess after you’ve tried to peel them, then steam them. Problem solved!