Re: Fresh eggs questions

In article
<43a0a8b5$0$1347$5a62ac22@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Farm1" <please@askifyouwannaknow> wrote:

> "Jan Flora" <snowshoe@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:snowshoe-
>
> > Okay, how long do I need to leave fresh eggs from my hens
> > in the fridge before I can hard-boil them and be able to
> > easily peel the shells?
>
> I try to use ones that are a minimum of 10 days old but even then I've
> sometimes still found them to be problematic.
>
> I boil them then drain the water and whilst running cold water onto them in
> the pot, I crack the shells all over and leave them to sit in the pot in
> cold water (and change the water 2 or 3 times) till the eggs are cold. Then
> I peel them
>
>

Yep... The key has always seemed to be the "crack the shells while in
the colad water" step. Typically, I pull the pan off the fire, use a lid
to dump the hot water down the sink, give a little flick of the wrist to
jounce the eggs hard enough to crack 'em, then flip the already running
cold spigot over the pan and let it fill it up, then turn the water down
to a gentle trickle and leave it sit there in the sink overflowing for
half an hour or so or until I find that one of the eggs is at least
cool, if not cold, to the touch, and stays that way if held out of the
cold water for a short time.

As long as I get 'em cracked at the start of the cooling, they
practically peel themselves. No crack, and they're invariably a fight to
peel.

Oh, and somebody else mentioned vinegar to dissolve the shells - Yeah,
that'd work, I guess, but I'm not much on pickled eggs! :)

But what I do like to do (tip from grandma come down through the years)
is splash a helathy shot or two worth of lemon, lime, or grapefruit
juice (Lemon works best of the three, I've found) or plain old vinegar
into the water I'm going to boil the eggs in. If they've got
"micro-cracks" from rough handling, they sometimes "blow out the side"
when they start heating up, making a mess of partway poached, partway
hard-boiled egg in the pan. The vinegar makes any white that leaks
through the shell coagulate quickly due to chemical action that happens
a lot faster than heating, forming a "band-aid" to seal the leaking
point, and preventing the mess that letting it "bleed out" into the
cooking water would cause.

--
Don Bruder - dakidd@xxxxxxxxx - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist,
or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text "PopperAndShadow"
somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without my
ever knowing it arrived. Sorry... <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd> for more info
.

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