Hard Boiled Egg

There isn’t a kid on this planet that doesn’t have a fond memory of a childhood trip with mom and dad and eating a hard boiled egg somewhere on the side of the road. Or perhaps, as many of the kids today, you’re fondest childhood memory are of McDonald’s on the side of the road. None the less for those of you who can’t have a hard boiled egg without remembering mom packing up the lunch and dad hurrying with the rest of the bags to the car, here is a quick recipe for having that delicious treat again.

1. Start by using the medium stove cooker, not the big one because that will ruin the timings.
2. Put the egg in a sauce pan and cover it with water, there should be an inch of water above the tallest egg.
3. Add in about a quarter teaspoon of salt.

4. Turn up the fire to maximum and as soon as it starts boiling turning down to a gentle simmer.
5. From this moment on you need to leave the eggs for exactly 4 minutes. Leaving them any longer will have hardened that egg white to the point where you’re eating rubber.
6. Here is a cute little tip! My mom would sometimes be in a hurry and the eggs would be hard boiled but there would still be the smallest remembrance of a runny yolk in the very center and those were my favorite. To achieve that you’ll need to turn to fire off after 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
7. Put the pot under a cold running stream of water for about 5 minutes.

There is one more little tip that I actually got from my grandfather for removing the shell from a hard boiled egg: he used to crack the entire egg with the back a teaspoon and then remove just a little bit of the shell at one end. Than he would blow in it like he was trying to inflate a balloon. This won’t work unless you are using new eggs but remember it’s actually dangerous to eat old eggs. Anyway if you do that the shell will come off your hard boiled eggs easier than the peal of an orange.

Now using these timings is cooking hard boiled eggs just like our parents used to do and I really love it except that some of the times I cheat. Actually I shouldn’t say that: I always cheat unless I’m cooking for myself on those exceptional weekend mornings when the wife has taken the kids somewhere. For the rest of the time I use this egg cooker that I have found on Amazon. I actually didn’t know they were making special machines that would cook hard boiled eggs and the first time I saw one I thought it was rubbish… an then I bought mine 3 days later.

In any case if you are not going to have a hard boiled egg for breakfast at least once a week there is no point in getting a machine and you can use the recipe I copied from my mom; it worked perfectly every time!