A hard cooked egg has both a firm white and yolk. If boiled or cooked too long, the protein toughens or becomes rubbery and a greenish or purplish ring forms around the yolk. Refrigeration is necessary for hard cooked eggs if they are not going to be consumed within a few hours.
Ingredients
Large eggs, room temperature (as many as you like)
(An egg that is not room temperature at the start of cooking time will require about one minute more cooking time.)
Procedure
For perfect cooking, start with eggs that don’t have any visible cracks.
1. Place eggs in a saucepan large enough to hold them in a single layer with out crowding. (Crowding the eggs risks cracking them.)
2. Cover eggs with cool water, they should have one and a half inches of water above them. Add small handful of kosher salt.
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3. Over medium heat bring water to a rapid boil. As soon as a rapid boil is reached, remove from heat, cover with a tight fitting lid and let sit 17 minutes. (For medium eggs let sit 12 minutes, for extra large eggs let sit 19 minutes.)
4. Pour off hot water and shake pan gently so eggs bump one another and /or sides of pan (to crack shells).
5. Run cold water over eggs to stop cooking. Let eggs stand in cold water 15 minutes, adding more water to keep cold.
6. Shells should easily peel right off.
Note: Hard cooked eggs in their shell can be refrigerated for up to one week. To peel your cold hard cooked egg run hot tap water to expand the shell. The shell will often crack itself from heat expansion. Whether it cracks or not, briefly chill the shell under running cold water to permit handling and easy peeling.
Try some of our great recipes from our classes.
Easy Egg Salad
Israeli Salad
Caper Dijon Deviled Eggs
Paprika Deviled Eggs
Tuna Bagel Nicoise
Culinary Arts classes at the JCC in Manhattan take place in the Patti Gelman Culinary Arts Center. For more information or to sign up for classes go to http://jccmanhattan.org.
Photo Credit: images courtesy of ©doodlehedzphotography (randi l klein)
This is a perfect tutorial. Amy, who notes that she only “hard boil(s)” large eggs for 11 minutes, not 17, needs to read the paragraph under the photo of the two perfect egg halves at the top. Eggs should NEVER be hard boiled; the high heat alters the protein, thus the reasons for rubbery whites, and green or purple yolks. Sadly a lot of people never read a recipe fully and then blame the recipe instead of the cook.
Seventeen minutes? When I hard boil large eggs, I only do eleven, and it’s plenty. But thanks for the tips regarding peeling them, hopefully they will help.