Hands-on Time: 5 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
- 4 eggs
- cold water
- Place eggs in single layer in a medium saucepan. Add enough cold water to just cover eggs. Bring to a rapid boil over high heat (large breaking bubbles).
- Remove from heat, cover, let stand for 15 minutes.
- Drain carefully.
- Run cold water over eggs or place them in ice water until cool enough to handle. Drain.
- At this point eggs may be stored in the refrigerator. When ready to use, to peel eggs, gently tap each on on the top. Roll egg between palms of hands. Peel off eggshell starting at the large end.
Everyone needs a recipe for hard boiling eggs! It’s a must in any recipe box. You never know when you’ll be looking to whip up some deviled eggs or, my new favorite, egg salad!
I had a hard time coming with a ‘hands-on time’ for this recipe because it’s not time at all until you come to peeling the eggs. That gets time consuming and the egg shells don’t cooperate and they hurt your fingers. But it’s worth it and can be fun! For the record, the ‘hands-on time’ above does not include peeling, so it’s very accurate for anyone using this recipe to dye eggs (yet another great use for hard boiled eggs!)
Now this recipe may seem simple. Do not try to make it from memory unless your undoubtedly sure. Trust me. I did that once. I could not find the recipe card I had and figured, eh, I don’t need to consult it, the recipes something like so many minutes here so many there. I ruined my eggs and it was not pretty when I when to peel them. Turned me off to hard boiled eggs for a good while, too.
So just stick to the recipe and you’ll be fine. You can eat them plain with some salt, on a salad (ah, more evidence there are so many reasons to have a hard boiled egg recipe on hand!), or use them in my next post, coming soon, for super easy and delicious egg salad!
How Long Do Hard-Boiled Eggs Keep?While it’s fine to make egg salad from pre-cooked hard-boiled eggs that have been stored in the fridge (think Easter eggs), you’ll want to make sure they are relatively fresh. Make your egg salad using eggs (in the shell) that are less than a week old. If the eggs were already peeled, use them within the day of peeling so they don’t absorb odors from the refrigerator. In general, the rule for eggs is the fresher the egg, the better tasting the egg salad.
I always make the hard boiled eggs up right before I want to make the egg salad. Usually I’ll do ’em up the night before, stick ’em in the fridge and then peel and make the salad the next morning to take for lunch. I’ll make enough for 2-3 days. If, for some crazy reason, it doesn’t get eaten up in that time I toss it.