Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Holy Grail of Egg-Peeling Techniques?

It often bothers me how everyone thinks they know the secret for cleanly peeling hard-boiled eggs, because I've tried every trick in the book, and can still never get the shell off without taking chunks out of the eggs and making them look less than appetizing.

A deviled egg disaster before the Memorial Day picnic Dan and I had at our house this year actually drove me to tweet about it:


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Well, a recent link over at Mark's Daily Apple sent me to this egg-peeling instructional video, which made me gasp audibly and may have changed my life forever:




Amazing! I swear I watched this about five times just to hear the noise the egg makes when it gets blown out of its shell.


****************UPDATE****************


I have now tried this technique, and while I didn't get the super-easy-looking, mind-blowing results seen in the video, I did have MUCH more egg-peeling success than usual. Out of six eggs attempted, only two sort of fully blew out of their shells, one of which came out with a couple of small chunks of egg still attached to the inside of the shell. As for the rest of them, the blowing created excellent long, vertical cracks all over the eggs that made them infinitely easier to peel than the cracks you usually get by cracking them on the table or in the pan.

And even though the pressure this created in my head felt reminiscent of learning to play the oboe, and even though the sound it made completely freaked out my cats, I'm not ready to give up on this weirdo technique just yet.

Anyone else have any luck? Tips on getting this to work right? Leave 'em in the comments!

Comments (7)

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Oh my God, I cannot wait to try this TONIGHT! I love hard-boiled eggs and eat them all the time. Truthfully, I never have much trouble peeling mine unless they're super fresh, like from the farmer's market or something (I've always heard that older eggs peel easier), but the idea of blowing an egg out of its shell is too much to resist.
1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago
I know!

I don't know how I'm going to resist aiming them at people.
BG's totally right. Older eggs peel more easily. You're probably eating too-fresh eggs, Tracey.
1 reply · active 764 weeks ago
Believe me, I've tried older ones. Until this egg-blowing technique, I seriously thought I had heard them all.
This technique didn't work for me, so I thought I wasn't blowing hard enough. But then my husband tried it too, and no dice. What gives?
2 replies · active 764 weeks ago
So disappointing! That will teach me to post a technique without trying it first.

I'm assuming he created a seal around the hole he made in the shell by putting his lips all the way around it so no air could get in, but if that's how you did it and it still didn't work, it may not be a consistent method after all.

I'll report back as soon as I give this a go.
Okay, I tried it, and I had sort of mixed results. The post is now updated with my experience.

I'm sort of disappointed it's not as easy as the guy makes it look, but I'm still optimistic that he's onto something.

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