Eggshellent!

[livingdeb]

Sometimes when I'm taking the shell off a hard-boiled egg, it practically slides off the egg in just a few pieces. Other times, I can barely get a piece of shell of any size off the egg without also taking off a piece of the white.

In my last batch of five eggs, the shells came off every one of them without a hitch. So I'm going to fantasize for a while that I have learned the secret of easy egg shucking: refrigerate the boiled eggs overnight and don't peel them until the next day.

I've also decided it takes 1.5 eggs to make a good egg salad sandwich, not just 1 egg as I had previously thought. Is bread bigger than in my childhood? Eggs smaller? Probably I'm using less mayonnaise. And probably I'm spoiled by the quantity of egg salad per sandwich that I've bought at places.

Eateries tend to put too much filling in their egg salad sandwiches and so part of it squishes out when you're trying to eat it. That's good because plain egg salad is better than egg salad on bread. But deviled eggs are so decadent and nonfilling that I could easily slurp down a half a dozen in one sitting. So I compromise and make sandwiches, but I'll be making them with 1.5 eggs each in the future.

Comments

Eggshells

[fraeuleinchen.livejournal.com]

I'm tickled that you're talking about this... I have had the same experience (sometimes shells come off easily, and sometimes I have to sacrifice precious egg-white to remove the shell). I have thought that this might have to do with various things, some of which I have little way of truly monitoring: age of the egg, health of the chicken that laid it (do different nutrient sources result in healthier eggs, and better separation of white and shell?), whether or not the water in the pan was really boiling or rather just on a low simmer.

Like raaga123, I find that a cold water back immediately after removing the eggs works quite well, but in my case there's a compromise: I like soft-boiled (probably more like medium-boiled, actually) eggs, and I spread the yolk on toast like butter. So when I cool the egg down too much, the yolk is cold, and that's just not quite as yummy. For truly hard-boiled eggs, which I take to work as a snack, I too have found that refrigeration does the trick.