Does anybody else have eggs that are hard to peel? Every time I boil my eggs they never peel right. I always end up peeling chunks of egg off with the shell and its very frustrating! When I buy store bought I never have this problem. Does anybody have any ideas on how to peel them better? I've tried peeling them while their wet too and that doesn't seem to help.
Let them age for 10-14 days or longer in the refrigerator before you boil them and they will peel a whole lot easier...
They peel better after this aging, due to them losing some water content and also losing CO2 as they 'breath' while aging in the refrigerator, the combined effect of loss of water (slight shrinking of internal volume) and loss of CO2 (raises PH of the egg) causes the inner membrane to separate from the shell and thus makes them easier to peel after boiling...
Leaving them out on the counter a day or two will speed the "aging" process and hence the air intake and membrane shrinkage for easier peeling. Salt in boiling water and immediate ice bath helps too.
Home grown - from eggs to them greens! Nothing finer
I take our farm fresh eggs (don't matter if stored in fridge or fresh collected from that day, eh), fill up a cooking pot with cold water and add yer cackle berries...bring water & eggs to boil, shut off burner and remove pot off that burner & put lid on, wait seven minutes for hard boiled yolks. Scoop out eggs with slotted spoon, leaving HOT egg water reserved in pot. Dunk eggs in cold running water to chill them completely. Putting them in a sieve works nicely.
Turn on burner, placing pot of egg water on burner to bring water back to boil...add ice cold eggs if yer sieve fits inside pot, all the better to do this. Remove eggs after like ten seconds when water boils again. Crack by tapping the shell all over (some use a metal spoon to rap shell, I use side of stainless steel sink) and begin peeling...I usually have a running tap to help me swish off shells...I peel the eggs and get no stuck shells. Having a sieved drain cover over the sink drain keeps the plumber from having to make a house call.
Logically, what happens is the eggs don't over cook after seven minutes (hard boiled, nice YELLER yolks) and dunked in cold water to stop them cooking any further (risk that nasty not yellow edging on the yolk...no joke!)...but reheating for ten seconds heats the shell (heat expands the shell) and you can remove shell because warming it back up makes it larger and it slips off the egg white.
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
