The Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 1, 1999 / 3:39 PM EST / CBS

Decorating Easter eggs is a traditional family activity, but for many people it's the only time of year they actually cook hard boiled eggs. Since there's no good way to tell if a boiled egg is ready, it can be a tricky business.

An article in the current issue of the magazine Cook's Illustrated tells you how to cook the perfect hard boiled egg. Christopher Kimball, the magazine's editor, offered the fine details to CBS This Morning.

What should the perfectly cooked egg look like on the inside?

Most hard boiled eggs are tough and it's hard to tell when they are properly cooked until you open them.

An under-cooked egg has a yolk that's too soft.
An overcooked egg develops green rings around the yolk. These eggs often crack and are hard to peel.
The perfect egg has firm yet tender whites and moist and creamy yolks.

How important is it to have fresh eggs and does it matter if they are brown or white eggs?

Egg color makes no difference to taste.
Freshness does help.
An easy way to see if your eggs are fresh is to put an egg in a glass of water. If it floats, it's fresh.

I've seen eggs boiled two ways, dropped in boiling water or put in cold water and brought to a boil. What's best?

The first way is to place cold eggs in boiling water and cook for 10-15 minutes. The problem is that eggs placed in boiling water often crack. Pricking the shell with a pin doesn't help prevent the cracks.
The second way is to put cold eggs in cold water, bring to a boil and simmer from 5 to 20 minutes. But that's a very imprecise method because "simmering" means anything from 175 to 212 degrees. That's a wide range of temperatures and a lot of guesswork.

So what's the best method?

The best way is to place the cold eggs in cold water, bring them to a boil and then leave them for 10 minutes covered off the heat. Then, to stop the cooking process, plunge the eggs into ice water.
Holding the egg under a faucet with running cold is wasteful. It uses a lot of water and often doesn't stop the cooking fast enough anyway.

Does the size of the pan matter?

No, what matters is that the eggs, be covered by at least an inch of water.

What about Easter eggs. Anything to watch for if you're going to eat them afterwards?

Use vegetable dyes when decorating Easter eggs, and they should be eaten within a week of boiling them.
They must be kept refrigerated or they'll go bad.
They should be stored in their cartons, because eggshells are porous and absorb odor. So if you do want to display them or hide them on Easter Sunday they should not be out of the refrigerator for more than two hours at a time.

What's the best way to peel an egg?

Roll an egg on a hard surface so it cracks all around. You should start peeling where you can feel an air pocket. Peel in a spiral. This leaves the surface of the egg nice and smooth.
Some people say fresher eggs are easier to peel, but really there's very little difference.

Can you tell without breaking an egg open if it's already been cooked or not?

Yes, take an egg and spin it - an egg that's been cooked will spin much more evenly.

Slicing hard boiled eggs for egg salad is often a messy job, no matter how sharp the knife. Any advice?

With any knife you have to put some pressure on the egg and that can cause crumbling. We found that wire cheese cutters seem to do the job best. In particular a mozzarella slicer, which has just the right space between the wires. In 10 seconds, I can cut the egg three times to make it the perfect size for egg salad.