The most important elements of deviled eggs. Must be none of the others our hard-boiled eggs!
Choosing between Fresh eggs or Old eggs?
Frankly, it does not matter. Fresh eggs are usually harder to peel compare to older eggs. However, if you are buying the eggs from grocery stores, they are most likely at least two weeks old so extra ageing is not needed.
Boiling the Perfect Eggs
You could start boiling your eggs with cold or hot water. However, I’ll prefer to start with hot water. It gives me a better control on the cooking time and I’ll know which egg(s) was/were cracked from the moment I put them in water. I can either replace the cracked eggs or add in a few more new eggs.
The process is quite straight forward, take the eggs out from the fridge directly and add them gently in boiling water. Cook the eggs with medium heat for about 15 minutes. I have been using this method and it always gives me the nice texture of hard-boiled eggs. There were times that I boiled the eggs for too long, it created some dark green ring around the yolks which did not look very appealing.
Ice Bath for Eggs?
Yes, this is a very important step which cannot be missed! After boiling the eggs for 15 minutes, put the eggs in running water for 5 minutes and in an ice bath for 10 minutes. It can stop the heating process to prevent overcooking the eggs. And most importantly, this process makes eggs so much easier to peel.
Little Tips:
You could consider boiling a few more eggs, like 2 extra eggs. Just in case some eggs crack during the boiling process which happens quite often.