I have recently been visiting my mother-in-law. She loves having company and works so hard at making everyone feel comfortable and right at home. She always has some new cooking utensil or gadget she wants to share with me or a new cooking method she has discovered. On this visit she was busy steaming eggs. I am a firm believer in putting the eggs in a saucepan, covering them with cold water, bringing them to a boil, then removing them from the heat, covering the pan for the specified number of minutes for your size egg and putting them in an ice bath for 5 minutes before peeling. My mother-in-law felt this process left the eggs difficult to peel. So she is now steaming her hard cooked eggs. She was so excited about it I decided to do a little research on it.
When hard cooked eggs are difficult to peel it is because the membrane that lines the shell is sticking itself to the egg white. When that happens it can be hard to peel the shell away without taking pieces of the white with it. For many of us that creates an unacceptable appearance.
My research found putting raw eggs into hot steam rapidly changes the outermost structure of the egg’s protein reducing it’s ability to bond with the membrane. The hot steam also causes the proteins to shrink as they start to bond together and the white begins to pull away from the membrane. That is why steaming eggs makes them easier to peel – the membrane has not attached itself so tightly to the white.
My mother-in-law purchased an egg steamer but you can easily steam eggs without one. In a saucepan, bring one inch of water to a boil. Lower a steamer basket with your eggs in it into the pan and cover it. Allow eggs to steam around 13 minutes for hard cooked and 6 and 1/2 minutes for soft cooked before transferring them to an ice bath.
The American Egg Board has done an article on steaming eggs as well that you may find interesting.
This method of steaming eggs works well on fresh eggs too. Just be sure your eggs are in a single layer in your steamer basket when you are steaming them.
I am definitely going to try steaming eggs for the deviled eggs I will be making for Easter and reporting in to my mother-in-law!
I did the steps as above for boiling, with 15 min in the water for large eggs and they were a soft boil when I wanted hard. Did I need to let the water boil longer before removing from.heat? Or let the eggs come to room temp?
Yes, the recommended time is 20 minutes in the hot (previously boiling) water in a covered pan. Using only 15 minutes will result in an undercooked egg if your want hard cooked eggs.