This part will be repeating much of what you've read by now:
Fresh eggs peel harder. Older eggs peel easier. Reason: dehydration with age causes the membrane to be pulled away from the shell.
But this part is something I don't often see:
The solution we have found is not to boil, but rather steam the eggs. By steaming, I can cook eggs on the day they're laid, and get almost perfect peeling on every one. Once in a while one will give me trouble.
The reason is that steaming not only cooks, it dehydrates the egg. Boiling moisturizes the egg. Steaming won't dehydrate a vegetable, because the steam itself hydrates. But as the egg cooks, moisture seems to be driven out of the shell faster than the steam can push it back in. At least that's my take on it...no scientific evidence, just opinion.
It also helps if you put a very small pinhole in the top of the egg before steaming. This allows more moisture to be driven out of the shell, better separating the membrane from the shell.
You can go down to your kitchen store and buy an egg steamer. On brand is shaped like an egg, and holds up to six or seven eggs. They work pretty well. But we have owned a couple different ones, and neither works as well as what we do now. We took the egg stander insert from one of the commercial steamers, and cut the edges down with a Dremel tool until it fit within our regular stove-top vegetable steamer pot. It hold seven eggs very nicely in an upright position, not touching each other, good air space between them. Then we bring it up to steaming temp, put the lid on, turn the temp down to just high enough to maintain the steam level (lid barely floating), and time it for exactly 14 minutes.
Perfect, peelable eggs every time, even from same-day-laids.
