Hard-boiled eggs are food close to perfection. They can be chopped and added to salads, eaten alone as a snack and used as the delicious base for classic deviled eggs. But this nearly pure-protein snack can be tricky to master. The biggest problem is that when you cut into the egg, you're often left looking at a yolk with an olive green tinge around it. When this happens, the yolk is usually hard and rubbery, too.
There are ways around this -- several of them, actually. And the perfect hard-boiled egg doesn't take very long to achieve. In fact, when cooked properly, flawless hard-boiled eggs can take less time to cook than those cooked imroperly. Read on to find the mistakes you might be making, so that the next time you cut open a hard-boiled egg, you'll have a yolk as golden as the sun and beautiful egg whites, too.
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1. You start with boiling water
Too many people boil their water, then drop the eggs in and let them cook. But there's a big problem with doing this. Because the water is already so hot, the white of the egg cooks before the yolk even has a chance to. By the time the yolk is cooked fully, the white has gotten that rubbery texture. Once you bite through that, it almost doesn't matter if the yolk is cooked properly or not.
To prevent this from happening, place the eggs into a pot of cold water and heat all of it together on the stove. As the water comes to temperature, the eggs will slowly cook evenly throughout. When the whites are done cooking, the yolks will be, too, and it'll all be cooked perfectly.
2. You don't add vinegar to the water
Overcooking your eggs isn't the only mistake you can make when hard-boiling them. A few things can go wrong, like the shell cracking and letting the white escape. This makes the eggs more difficult to peel. Also, the eggs still end up being overcooked egg because the hot water gets inside the shell and cooks some parts of the egg faster than others.
Luckily, there's something you can do to keep your eggshells from cracking while they're in the water. Just add a splash of vinegar. If you're just cooking one or two eggs, a teaspoon is all you need, but that needs to be increased if you add more eggs to the pot. Vinegar changes the pH balance of the water so it doesn't crack the shell as easily. As an added bonus, it also helps to thicken the egg white quicker, so even if the shell happens to crack, the white will be too thick to slip through.
3. You boil the water
While we're on the subject of boiling water, note that the water shouldn't be boiled at all; or at least, not for too long. When the water is at a rolling boil for the entire cooking time, it's too hot, and you'll once again run the risk of over-cooking your yolks and being left with a green hue.
Instead, the water will need to be brought to boiling in order to get it to simmer, but as soon as it's boiling, the temperature should be turned down to a simmer. But you don't even want to simmer the eggs for too long (check out the next tip for more on that!) -- just make sure the water's hot enough to cook the egg through fully.
4. You leave them on the heat
Many people leave their pot of hard-boiled eggs on the stove for far too long. And whether that pot is boiling or simmering, this will still overcook them because eggs are delicate and just can't take that kind of prolonged heat. Doing this will also result in green yolks and yes, that hard, chewy egg white.
Getting the best egg means bringing the water up to boiling, turning it down to a simmer, and then removing the pot from the heat altogether. Place a lid over it and set the pot on a cold burner. This will let the egg steam through and ensure that it's cooked -- but not overcooked.
5. You don't cool them fast enough
Many people like to eat hard-boiled eggs while they're still hot, so they peel them right after taking them out of the hot water. When doing this, chances are the egg will be fine because the shell won't trap the heat inside, and when the egg is cut, it will release steam.
But those that don't want to eat their eggs right away will have to cool them quickly or risk facing that green yolk again. This is because, like any other food, hard-boiled eggs will continue to cook after they've been removed from the heat (in this case, the hot water). Unlike other foods, however, eggs don't need a rest period and should be cooled as soon as possible.
There are a couple of ways that eggs can be cooled quickly. The first is to have a bowl of ice water sitting nearby. When the eggs are done cooking, place them directly into the ice water to cool them as fast as possible. Alternately, you can simply place the eggs into a colander and run cold water continuously over them. This won't cool them down as quickly as an ice bath, but it's better than just leaving them sitting out.
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