Why Fresh Eggs Are Harder to Peel
As fresh-from-the-hen eggs become more available at farmers' markets and as more people jump on the backyard chicken coop bandwagon, peeling hard-boiled egg shells may become trickier. According to Wired Science, fresher eggs are scientifically harder to peel. You may think you're a pro-peeler, only to end up with a crater-filled blob. As Harold McGee points out in On Food and Cooking:
The best guarantee of easy peeling is to use old eggs! Difficult peeling is characteristic of fresh eggs with a relatively low albumen pH, which somehow causes the albumen to adhere to the inner shell membrane more strongly than it coheres to itself.
But don't worry—this doesn't mean you have to cook questionably spoiled eggs. Just put the hot eggs into a bowl of ice water for a few minutes first before peeling to help loosen up the shell a bit.
Related
The Food Lab: Perfect Boiled Eggs
Egg in Toast: What Do You Call It?
Video: Cracking Open a Big Egg
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4 Comments:
"Old" is an entirely relative matter. Seven days are usually sufficient for the problem to fade away. Most supermarket eggs have been warehoused for two or three weeks by the time they hit the shelf. If you want to make hardboiled eggs from farm-fresh eggs, let them sit in your refrigerator for a week first. (On the other hand, fresh-from-the-chicken eggs make the best sunnyside-up eggs; the white is tight and stays close to the yolk, which will stand up nice and tall. In older eggs, the white gets runny and the yolk spreads out more, which will cause it to cook more.)
DrGaellon at 8:27AM on 10/19/09
I know the shell also changes over time. I make Ukrainian eggs and get my eggs fresh from the farmer before they've been washed mechanically, which sometimes leaves a band around the center which won't dye as well. So I have very fresh eggs to work with, and I find I have to let them age a couple of weeks so the shells won't scratch as easily.
Does the bowl of cold water work if you've pierced the shell with a pinprick? Lately I'm finding eggs hard to peel even when I've aged them and left them in cold water.
lemonfair at 9:29AM on 10/19/09
tell me about it..... it's tough when you've decided to make deviled eggs for company and you're frantically trying to peel the eggs.... i've sacrificed many millimeters of good white in the process.....
@lemonfair - ukrainian "psyanki" are beautiful .... i love the traditional designs they have, symbolic of many things. do you have a website? or photo's on-line?
pooch at 9:51AM on 10/19/09
My method of getting perfect eggs that you can peel easily w/o problems
Put the eggs in cold water - boil for 8 - 10 minutes.
Shake the pot really hard so the eggs bounce around..
Put under cold water. Walla - perfect eggs ready to be peeled. Did 100 of these and no problem
Annette Aaron Eventfiulls at 7:11AM on 10/20/09