When it comes to everyday chores in the kitchen, there are few tasks as needlessly frustrating as peeling hard-boiled eggs. You know the routine, right? You make a whole batch of hard-boiled eggs with good intentions—egg salad, breakfast prep, it doesn’t matter—and then you go to peel one, only to discover you are in an epic battle of man vs. egg. You can’t hardly get the shell off without removing half of the egg white! Half the time, the egg looks like it went through a paper shredder. I know I’m not alone in this madness.
So imagine my surprise when I came across this little old-school tip from Jacques Pépin—the world-renowned French chef who has been cooking longer than most of us have been alive. Pépin has a really easy solution for peeling hard-boiled eggs—no gimmicky tools, no crazy TikTok “hacks” involving Mason jars and shaking eggs, just one little change that makes all the difference.
The Tip? Poke a Hole in the Egg
That’s it. That’s the tip.
Before you put your eggs into the boiling water, take something sharp, such as a thumbtack, pin, or even a safety needle, and poke a small hole in the wide end of the shell, where there is a small air pocket inside the egg. You have to simply pierce that area to let the air escape while the egg cooks.
Now if you’re squinting and thinking this is going to crack the whole egg, don’t panic. You are not stabbing into it like you are checking the pressure in a tire. You want to simply break the shell so the trapped air can escape while cooking.
And naturally, here is how it works. While the air is trapped in the shell, it creates a unique “air pressure” situation while cooking, which is why the white is stuck to the shell as if it is super-glued. But, by allowing the air to escape, the egg white can “settle” like it normally would, and when it comes time to peel? It comes out of the shell as if it just dropped out. No swearing.
see next page
ADVERTISEMENT
