Trying to peel a hard-boiled egg is no walk in the park.
The shell sticks to the egg and cracks off into small pieces, making it more of a precise and infuriating operation than quick meal prep.
However, this might be a thing of the past with this ‘perfect egg hack’ from American chef Kathleen Ashmore.
If you fancy tucking into the leftover eggs that you didn’t dye and roll this Easter Monday, she has one simple tip to save yourself the faff of a fiddly shell.
Known on TikTok as katcancook, Kathleen describes herself as ‘that mom friend you ask for healthy recipes’. She usually shares recipes for yummy looking salads, and hacks for saving time in the kitchen.
For this peeling egg hack, the trick is to use steam, rather than water.
Kathleen placed her eggs in a steamer basket above water, inside a covered cooking pot on the hob.
‘The hot steam makes the egg white proteins contract, pulling away from the shell membrane,’ she wrote.
Chef tip! I haven’t hard boiled an egg in 10 years.
The foodie blogger leaves them in there for 12-14 minutes, after which, she said, the shell slides right off. She swears by the steaming, as she hasn’t boiled an egg in 10 years.
You’ll need to experiment with timings if you prefer runny eggs over hard-boiled ones.
The video has over 100K views, with some commenters confirming that it works.
‘Agree! Plus it saves energy and is much more precise because there’s no temperature drop when eggs are put in,’ one wrote.
‘Yes! 12 min on high and the easiest peel ever,’ said another.
Fellow foodies in the comments also suggested trying this in an Instapot or Air Fryer if you have one.
There are so many tips and tricks out there that claim to make peeling eggs super easy, but this method also has the approval of Elise Bauer, the founder of Simply Recipes.
She gave a more detailed run-through of how to steam your eggs to perfection, which included running your eggs under cold water at the end.
There’s a scientific reason for the cold water, according to WikiHow, as ‘eggs peel easily when they are cold because the whites of the eggs constrict away from the shell.’
This technique recommends plunging your room-temperature boiled eggs into cold water before refrigerating them for one hour and up to three to four days before peeling them, but popping them in the fridge isn’t really necessary.
Another tried and tested method is the ‘crack and roll’, where (the clue is in the name), you tap it on the kitchen counter and apply pressure as you roll. This causes tinny cracks all over the shell, making it easier to pull off.
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