How long to hard boil eggs

The factor in my testing that made the most difference in how cleanly eggs released from their shells was the temperature at which they started: A hot start produces easier-to-peel eggs. And it doesn't matter whether that hot start is in boiling water or in a steam-filled pot or pressure cooker.

All those eggs will be noticeably easier to shell than those started in a cold pot. I don't have a fully satisfactory answer for this phenomenon, but my thoughts are that it's somewhat like cooking a steak in a skillet. Add the steak to a cold pan and heat it up slowly, and as proteins coagulate, they bond with the metal, becoming nearly inseparable.

Heat that steak fast , however, and the proteins bundle into themselves instead of sticking to the metal. Slow-cooked egg whites bond more strongly with the membrane on the inside of an eggshell.

This is almost diametrically opposed to the advice I gave four years ago, in my very first Food Lab column. Back then, I did not know what I do now. Back then, I recommended starting eggs in cold water and bringing them up to a simmer with the water, the idea being that they would cook more evenly with a slow start.

This is true: Eggs started slow will have more tender, evenly cooked whites. Why is that? It's because in rapidly boiling water, the exterior of an egg will cook much faster than the center. Take a look at these eggs, which were cooked in fully boiling water for times ranging from one minute to 15 minutes:.

As you can see, not one of them is a perfect hard-cooked egg: The eggs go directly from having slightly translucent centers to having rubbery whites. Here's what happens when an egg white cooks at a raging, full-on boil:. Egg yolks, on the other hand, follow a different set of stages:. So how does one cook easy-peeling eggs that also have relatively tender whites? There are a couple of options. You'll end up with eggs that are easy to peel, with tender whites throughout.

With steam, there's no need to lower the heat—steam's lower density means that steamed eggs actually cook a little more gently than boiled eggs. Your whites will be ever-so-slightly tougher than with simmered eggs, but not enough to be off-putting.

The gentleness of steam—and the relative ease of loading up a steamer insert and lowering it into a pot, versus trying to carefully drop eggs one by one into boiling water—also has the advantage of reducing your chances of shells cracking and whites leaking out. Finally, steaming your eggs has the advantage of being the fastest method around: Instead of waiting for a pot of water to come to a boil, all you need to do is boil a half inch of water.

Throw your steamer insert in, cover the pot, set your timer, and you've got perfectly cooked eggs. For a while now, I've been reading about cooking eggs in a pressure cooker. Those articles promise you a magic bullet: Cook your eggs at low pressure in a standard pressure cooker , and they'll practically jump out of their shells. But here's the thing: I couldn't find a single source that actually tested that hypothesis in a controlled, scientific environment, and all the anecdotal evidence in the world is not worth the pixels it's written with when confronted with strong scientific evidence.

So I tested the pressure cooker method, multiple times, with multiple eggs in each batch, using different pressure cookers, different timings, and different cooling methods. Dozens and dozens of eggs in total. Not only that, but I tested it side by side with boiled and steamed eggs, and, to get really scientific about it, I went double-blind, with one test administrator who did not know which eggs had been cooked by which method handing cooked eggs in random order to a third party, who peeled them all also with no knowledge of the cooking method for the eggs he was peeling.

Guess what? There is absolutely zero correlation between cooking eggs in a pressure cooker and ease of peeling. In fact, depending on how long it took to bring the pressure cooker to pressure, some eggs cooked this way actually showed a slight negative correlation!

There's an even more nefarious problem. Even when you time it perfectly, the pressure cooker produces slightly more rubbery whites than other methods. And the hotter something cooks, the greater the temperature differential between the center and the edges. Pressure-cook your eggs for six minutes to get perfectly hard-cooked yolks, and the outer layers of your whites will end up tough. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Featured Video.

Save It Print. Cook Time 12 mins. Total Time 12 mins. Servings 6 to Yield 6 to 12 eggs. Cover the eggs in a saucepan with water. Heat the pot on high heat and bring the water to a full rolling boil. Turn off the heat, keep the pan on the hot burner, cover, and let sit for minutes.

Strain the water from the pan and run cold water over the eggs to cool them quickly and stop them from cooking further. Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate. In cases where multiple ingredient alternatives are given, the first listed is calculated for nutrition.

Garnishes and optional ingredients are not included. Rate This Recipe. I don't like this at all. It's not the worst. Sure, this will do. I'm a fan—would recommend. Remove pan from heat and cover. How long does it take to boil an egg? Well, actually, you want the water to come just to a boil but not stay there. Eggs exposed to high heat for a long time go through a chemical reaction that turns the yolks green. So the answer to "How long do you boil hard boiled eggs?

Because the eggs cook in water that's not actually boiling, some people use the term "hard-cooked" instead of "hard-boiled" eggs. Drain eggs immediately and put in a bowl filled with water and ice cubes.

Why ice water? It cools the eggs down and prevents the green yolk problem. Chilled water isn't cold enough - you want cold water with lots of ice cubes floating in it.

If you're planning to peel the eggs, crack them slightly before putting them in the ice water and let them sit for an hour for maximum ease of peeling. Let the eggs stand in the hot water for 4 to 12 minutes, depending on how firm or set you want the yolks to be. Why the time range? The longer the eggs sit in hot water the more cooked the yolk will be: figure less time for soft boiled eggs and longer time for hard boiled eggs. Use these time guidelines for large eggs:.

This method is just a bit unorthodox. It requires zero water - which, technically makes this method more hard- baking than hard- boiling. Back to Recipes Chicken curry Pasta See more. Back to Recipes Smoothies Autumn drinks See more. Back to Recipes Whole foods recipes Healthy dinners See more. Back to Recipes Vegetarian dinners Quick vegetarian See more. Back to Recipes Vegan storecupboard Vegan baking See more.