Most hard-boiled egg recipes tell you to cover your eggs with cold water, bring them to a boil, then cover and remove from heat for about 12 minutes. In my experience, this has always resulted in eggs that are impossible to peel.
Poke a Hole in Eggs Before You Boil Them, and This Is What Happens Next
Starting eggs in cold water and bringing them to a boil binds the egg white to the membrane, making it extremely difficult to peel the shell off. This is why I always use a hot start (whether I’m boiling, steaming, or pressure cooking). This results in peelable eggs every time, but it can also result in the occasional cracked egg. My cracked egg rate was about one in six, which isn’t too bad considering I like to use more yolks than whites in my deviled eggs, but even I have to admit that no cracked eggs would be an improvement.
Besides the occasional sacrificed egg, another aspect of my method needed some help: the aesthetics. After I published this blog post about shocking hard-boiled eggs, a very nice professional chef sent me a very nice email. He didn’t have any notes on shocking, but he did notice that my egg bases needed some help:
When you boil eggs, you need to follow the Jacques Pepin method. It’s the method I learned before I even knew who Jacques Pepin was. He starts by poking a very small hole on the large side of the eggshell. This will help release the gas that’s in the egg as you boil it. It will create a round space where you now have very flat spaces on your eggs. The gas is released and the egg white can go into that space.
