Discover how to make the perfect hard-boiled egg: a simple guide with exact cooking times, tricks to avoid the green ring and tips to peel them easily! How do you make a hard-boiled egg or, rather, what is the recipe for a hard-boiled egg? Hard-boiled eggs are tasty, fun and great in a thousand recipes: everyone thinks they know how to make hard-boiled eggs! Or not…!? Surely the recipe for the hard-boiled egg is one of the first we all learned, like the soft-boiled egg or medium-boiled eggs. I eat them simply with oil and salt, but I also use them in countless preparations such as potato salad with tuna and hard-boiled eggs, hard-boiled eggs in puff pastry, meatloaf in pastry with hard-boiled eggs, speck and provola and many other recipes from lighter to more indulgent, and I even learned how to color hard-boiled eggs with vegetables. Let’s get to the point now: how do you make the perfect hard-boiled egg? Hard-boiled eggs may seem easy to make, but their preparation raises several questions, starting with when to put the eggs in the water: before or after it boils? For how many minutes should you cook an egg to avoid it changing color? What are the perfect cooking times for a hard-boiled egg so that you don’t get that unpleasant green or gray color which is nothing more than a chemical reaction between sulfur and iron? Not to mention a hard-boiled egg with a still-soft yolk — small precautions that, if neglected, won’t let you prepare perfect hard-boiled eggs to enjoy on their own or with mayonnaise, or maybe in a flavorful potato salad. And did you know that with the yolks of perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs you can create the shortcrust pastry for canestrelli? But don’t worry if you are among those who don’t like an overly cooked yolk: there are always medium-boiled eggs (between soft-boiled and hard-boiled)! Just cook the egg a few minutes less and you’ll get a firm white but a still-soft yolk. Let’s go to the kitchen now — it will only take a few minutes and your hard-boiled eggs will be ready to enjoy. If you want to stay updated on my recipes, you can also follow my Facebook page (here) and my Instagram profile (here).
Do you love hard-boiled eggs? Take a look:
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very inexpensive
- Preparation time: 1 Minute
- Portions: 2
- Cooking methods: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons
- Energy 1.49 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 0.01 (g) of which sugars 0.00 (g)
- Proteins 0.12 (g)
- Fat 0.09 (g) of which saturated 0.04 (g)of which unsaturated 0.05 (g)
- Fibers 0.00 (g)
- Sodium 389.00 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 120 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients to make perfect hard-boiled eggs
- 4 eggs (or more)
- 1 pinch salt
- as needed vinegar
Tools to make a great hard-boiled egg
- Pot
Steps to make perfect hard-boiled eggs, cooking times and tips to peel them without effort!
Let’s discover how to make the ideal hard-boiled egg, with a nice pale color and easy to peel.
We all know hard-boiled eggs: they are well cooked, with firm orange yolks and white albumen, and they’re perfect in salads, in meatloaf and even on their own.
To make hard-boiled eggs, place them in a roomy saucepan and cover with room-temperature water. Add a couple of tablespoons of vinegar for about 4 cups (1 L) of water and a pinch of salt — these ingredients will help the whites set faster, limit cracking and make peeling easier. Put the pot on the heat and turn off the heat after 9 to at most 10 minutes from the boil. Drain the eggs and cool them under running water, then gently tap them on a flat surface to break the shell into several pieces. Immerse them again in cold water for a few minutes, then peel them. Very fresh eggs are hard to peel, but that’s the price to pay to enjoy eggs just collected; older eggs, since they are drier, will peel much more easily. If your eggs show a gray or green ring between white and shell, don’t worry — extended cooking causes a chemical reaction between iron and sulfur responsible for this effect.
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Variations and tips
Don’t like a too-cooked yolk? Try medium-boiled eggs, halfway between soft-boiled and hard-boiled. You can make them in two ways:
– Place room-temperature eggs in a pot with cold water, put on the heat and bring to a boil. Cook for 4 minutes, drain immediately and stop the cooking by running under cold water. If you use eggs straight from the refrigerator, increase the cooking time by 30 seconds.
– Place the eggs in boiling water and cook for six minutes. After six minutes, drain them, run them under cold water, roll them gently to crack the shell and peel them, then enjoy.
Our eggs are ready. Hard-boiled eggs can be stored in the fridge with or without the shell, well sealed in an airtight container for up to three days, while medium-boiled eggs should be consumed immediately or within the same day.
