The Legend of the Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg

Even with two-week-old eggs, starting cold resulted in eggs that had just over a 50% success rate for clean peeling. Eggs started in boiling water or steam came out well above 90%. I don’t have a fully satisfactory answer for this phenomenon, but my thoughts are that it’s somewhat like cooking a steak in a skillet. Add the steak to a cold pan and heat it up slowly, and as proteins coagulate, they bond with the metal, becoming nearly inseparable. Heat that steak fast, however, and the proteins bundle into themselves, instead of sticking to the metal. Slow-cooked egg whites bond more strongly with the membrane on the inside of an egg shell.

Legend has it that if you read these 3,300 words about making perfect hard-boiled eggs, you will unlock the secret to making perfect hard-boiled eggs; I would not know, I will never make a perfect hard-boiled egg and I am at peace with that reality. [Serious Eats, photo via]