I was taught they *had* to boiled in an enamel pot. That wisdom comes from mother, grands who kept to the traditional ways. Dunno what diff that makes.
Some are still hard to peel, which correlated to their freshness, I have read.
I read about a woman who had a family recipe, handed down for three generations. The recipe was for for cooking a ham. Part of the procedure was to carefully trim the ends of the ham. This was considered a vital step, not to be omitted. One day somebody asked Great Grandma what exactly did that part of the recipe add to the outcome. She informed them that when she was a young wife, her largest roasting pan was rather small, so she had to trim the ends to make the ham fit.
Apparantly not, so here it is. Works every time and has worked for, doubtless, centuries.
Dissolve 1 TBSP salt per quart of water prior to heating the water. Boil as usual. When boiled for your preferred length of time (I like 17 minutes on high heat, adding eggs gently ONLY after water begins boiling; YMMV, esp. at different altitudes), drain the pot halfway and, using tongs or a large slotted spoon, remove the eggs gently into a cold-water bath. Using ice-water is fine, but it is overkill. Let stand for 15-20 minutes once removed to the cold-water bath.
If these eggs do not peel perfectly every time, I will apologise very humbly, right here (well, bar the case where someone smashes the eggs instead of tapping them two or three times and peeling using both thumbs). You should never see a 'chipped' hard-boiled egg again.
Best regards...
Actually, just holding them under cold tap water is sufficient to cause the steam produced, to force the shell and membrane to dislodge from around the egg thereby enabling an easy shell removal. I do this at least once a week so I know it works, every time.
It does. As the eggs age, moisture evaporates from their interiors. The resulting slight shrinkage of the white pulls it away from the membrane. When you boil the eggs, water then enters the narrow gap between the white and membrane and acts as lubrication to make the membrane separate easily from the white.
When I was a kid growing up on a chicken ranch, my stepfather would bring home a couple of flats of eggs a couple of weeks before Easter so they would have time to age properly and thus become easy to peel after cooking.