Hard-boiled eggs are highly beneficial to your body because they are loaded with essential nutrients and are low in calories. But they should to prepared carefully to retain all the important nutrients. So, the most common question that people ask is: How do you know when boiled eggs are done? This article will answer this and other related queries.
How to Make the Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs
Timing is very important when preparing boiled eggs because you have to know when the eggs are done. A badly boiled egg will ruin your breakfast, especially if it’s overcooked. Here are some important tips to follow when preparing your boiled eggs.
What’s a Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg?
A perfect hard-boiled egg doesn’t have a green ring around the yolk. Its yolk is usually creamy and mellow. Some people stop short of the hard-boil to make their eggs mushy soft-boiled instead, which is also fine. Also, there are many ways of preparing boiled eggs that aren’t necessarily wrong.
Some people recommend you to remove your saucepan with the eggs from the fire once the water boils and to allow the eggs to remain in the hot water for about 15 minutes. Some culinary experts have also suggested that baking your eggs in the oven for about 30 minutes will get you perfect hard-boiled eggs. But this may not be the ideal method for you if you are always in a hurry to get to the office.
Fast and Easy Way to Boil Your Eggs Perfectly
Hard-boiled eggs are the easiest and fastest meal to prepare if you know how it’s should be done. A perfect, delicious creamy egg with a yellow yolk should not take more than 7 minutes to boil. So, baking your egg in the oven for half an hour is a waste of time. Here are tips on how to boil your eggs fast.
Ingredients
The only ingredients needed for hard-boiled eggs are eggs, water, and ice.
Equipment:
• Saucepan
• Timer
• Slotted spoon
• Bowl for the ice bath
Process of Preparing Boiled Eggs
1. Place your eggs in the saucepan and cover them with cold water by 1 inch.
2. Cover your pan with a lid and let the water boil over high heat. When the water boils, reduce the heat to medium-high and let it continue to boil for about 6-7 minutes. This should give you perfect hard-boiled eggs.
3. After 7 minutes, remove your pan from the heat and use a slotted spoon to remove your eggs from the water. Put your boiled eggs in a large bowl of ice-cold water and let them cool for 4-5 minutes. If you don’t have ice, put your boiled eggs under cold running water for 5 minutes. This also makes it easy to peel the eggs.
4. Once the eggs have cooled off, remove them from the cold water and peel them immediately.
How to Tell When Boiled Eggs Are Done
First of all, don’t put your cold eggs into boiling water abruptly because the swift change of temperature will result in “shocked,” or unevenly cooked, eggs. Also, it will lead to cracked, smashed eggs. Instead, let your eggs absorb the heat gently from the water as it continues to heat up. That way, they will go through a gradual, even cook that’s suitable for perfect hard-boiled eggs.
The easiest and most effective way to know when your boiled eggs are done is to check them for an opaque, yellow yolk. As mentioned above, an overcooked boiled egg has a greenish-gray yolk. But this means that you have to break your boiled eggs to know if they are perfectly cooked. Therefore, you won’t have an opportunity to remedy the situation if the eggs aren’t properly cooked.
That’s why it’s important to follow carefully the process outlined above when preparing boiled eggs. Also, you have to track your time very carefully so that you don’t overcook your eggs. Here is a simple way of telling if your boiled eggs are done without cracking them.
Quick Spin
You can tell if your boiled eggs are ready by spinning them. If you spin a boiled egg on a flat surface like a tabletop, it will be steady, but a raw egg will be wobbly. If you don’t get any results from this test, you can try other egg-spinning tests.
For instance, you can spin the egg on its side on a flat surface and then stop its motion quickly by placing your index finger on the egg’s center quickly. Make sure you press your finger on the egg hard enough to stop it from spinning. Then, remove your finger from the egg almost immediately.
How the egg behaves after removing your finger should tell you if it’s hard-boiled or raw. For instance, if the egg is perfectly boiled, it will remain steady on the flat surface. But if it continues to rotate or wobble slowly after stopping it, it’s still raw.
If the egg continues to spin, it means that the liquid white and yellow yolk inside the shell hasn’t stopped rotating. Its center of gravity keeps shifting as the liquid inside moves around, causing it to continue spinning. It’s also possible to know if the egg is raw or hard-boiled without putting a finger on it by watching how it spins on the flat surface.
If the egg rotates quickly and steadily, it’s hard-boiled. This shows that its center of gravity is steady. But if it spins slowly and with a major wobble, or it doesn’t spin at all, it’s undercooked. The wobble is caused by the liquid content inside the egg, which throws it off balance.
How Long Does It Take to Boil an Egg?
Whether you want your boiled eggs to be completely cooked or slightly soft, there are important timelines you need to follow.
• Soft-boiled eggs (slightly runny center): they should be removed from the boiling water after 2 minutes and rinsed with cold water immediately to stop the cooking process. If you allow them to continue cooking, they will easily become overcooked. By letting your eggs boil for two minutes, you allow the whites to be cooked thoroughly while keeping the yolks somehow runny.
• Slightly firmer yolks (custard-like texture): for medium-boiled eggs, let them sit in the water for 3-4 minutes after it boils. This allows the yolks to turn slightly solid, like a custard. The yolks shouldn’t be hard-cooked.
• Completely hard-boiled eggs (for deviled eggs or egg salad): leave your eggs in the boiling water for 6-7 minutes. This leaves the yolks crumbly, bright yellow, and completely solid. However, the yolks don’t have the greenish-gray color of over-cooked eggs.
When you are preparing your boiled eggs, don’t put too many eggs in a single saucepan because they will cook unevenly or crack. Also, don’t place cold eggs in boiling water because they will cook unevenly and crack. Instead, you should raise the temperature of your eggs and the water together for even cooking.