Recipe no. 1: How to boil farm fresh eggs
Go ahead and do a Google search for ‘how to boil an egg’ and you’d be amazed at the volume and variety of answers you get. Then again, do a search on ‘how to boil water’ and you’ll get just as many results, complete with videos and diagrams, no kidding.
Truth is, boiling farm fresh eggs requires slightly different handling than boiling regular store bought eggs. You see the fresher the egg, the more the membranes clings to the shell itself. With eggs that are just a day or two old, the outer membrane beneath the shell sticks tightly to the shell making peeling the egg almost impossible.
Original diagram found at www.exploratorium.edu
Directions on how to boil a farm fresh egg
- Start with eggs that don’t have any visible cracks
- Try to use eggs that are a couple of days old, say 2 to 4 days old.
To test the freshness of an egg, place the egg in a bowl of water; an egg that lays on the bottom is fresh, an egg that stands on end is still usable, and an egg that floats should be discarded
- Over a high heat, bring water to a rapid boil, use a spoon to place eggs gently in boiling water one at a time – the shock of the hot water on the egg shell helps to jar the membrane from the shell – turn down heat to keep water at gentle boil.
Please note some people suggest adding salt or vinegar to the water, I do neither as I believe it will affect the flavor of the eggs. - The average size egg requires this much time for doneness:
- Soft-boiled yolk / 4 to 5 minutes
- Medium-boiled yolk / 6 to 7 minutes
- Hard-boiled yolk / 12 to 15 minutes - Remove pot with eggs from stove, pour out hot water and fill with cold water, let eggs cool for at least 10 minutes then drain and peel the eggs for use.
- To peel the egg, I prefer the rolling technique between hand and table (counter top) to crack the shell on all sides and gently loosen the layers … now remove the shell and enjoy. Refrigeration is necessary for hard boiled eggs if the eggs are not to be consumed within a few hours. Hard-cooked eggs in the shell can be refrigerated up to one week.
Food safety resources:
- http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/charts/eggstorage.html
- http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/types/eggs/
- http://www.eggsafety.org/
To save your Eggzy QR Code to your computer, just right-click (PC) or click and hold (Mac) on the QR Code image to save it to your computer. You can then re-size it and print it on pretty much anything you like. At our house, we’ve been using them on our date labels for our egg cartons. We pre-print a stack of date labels and then stamp the current date when we start a new carton.
