"Egg"cellent Egg Trick (Steph)

Have you ever made a hard-cooked egg and when you go to peel it half of the egg falls apart?  Have you ever wondered, "why can't the shell just come off clean?  Why do my hard-cooked eggs always turn out so ugly?"  Well, I have wondered those "egg"xact same words (I'll throw as many egg puns as I can in this post, I promise) and while I have wondered it, I haven't actively searched to find an answer, mostly because things "egg"xit  (see) my brain as quickly as I can think them. So my answer came a little un"egg"spectedly. (didn't see that one coming did you?)

One day while watching (but not understanding) the Japanese channel, there was a "how-do-they-make-it?" type show on and it was about a place where they made lots of hard-boiled eggs that they packaged and sold to stores or something like that.  Kevin's mom was translating while we watched and they had a couple of tips on how to have a perfect hard-cooked egg. But first, lets take a look at the basic structure of a chicken egg.

Fairly simple and probably not anything you didn't know before.  Apparently the key to hard-cooked eggs that peel easily is to separate the membrane from the white while cooking. Makes sense.  One way this show suggested was to use older eggs when boiling.  Over time, the membrane inside the egg breaks down naturally and therefore will peel easier when cooked.  But how do you tell when your eggs are old enough without being too old? Yeah, my thoughts "egg"xactly.  It's hard to know.  A second way to separate the membrane from the white is to crack the "bottom" (or as the illustration shows, the "top") of the egg where the air sack is located before boiling the eggs.  The air sack allows the shell to be broken without egg oozing out, but the membrane allows the water to travel through it. The membrane then separates from the cooked white, making for slick egg peeling.

Naturally, I had to try this method out for myself.  I have used the "shell cracking" method on a couple of different occasions and it has worked beautifully for me.  So, the next time you've got a hankerin' for a smoothly peeled, hard-cooked egg give it a try.