For years and years it seems like everyone has had different pieces of advice for how to make perfect hard boiled eggs. I’ve heard “just add a little salt to the water”. Seems like my Mother always told me once they were done cooking on the stove, just plunge them in cold water in the sink. Martha Stewart says to cover them in cool water by 1 inch. But here again it’s one of those situations where there are more variables than one would even think.
Hard boiled eggs assumes boiling – which means are you cooking them on the stove, or in the microwave? Also, what about the water? Before you boil do you start with cold or hot water? And do you add the eggs and the water at once – boiling them together, or do you only add the eggs once the water is already boiling? And how long do you cook them? 10, 15, or even 30 minutes? I’ve even seen arguments about whether or not to place them in cool water after boiling, or just leave them on the stove for another 15 minutes to cool after cooking. I even read one article about how you should let them stand in the hot water 15 minutes, and then plunge them in an ice bath for 15 minutes after that. All of this just to get a hard boiled egg that you can peel without the whole egg falling apart in your hands? I won’t even go into all the different ways we tried to microwave the perfect hard boiled egg.
There seems to be as many arguments and ways to hard boil an egg as there are discussions about which way the toilet paper should come off the roll (over or under). I JUST WANT A GOOD HARD BOILED EGG!
One day I happened to see an article about a dozen things on Amazon you didn’t know you could live without. Sorry – I don’t remember the page or website (or I would provide it). About halfway down was thing thing called an egg cooker. I thought – what the heck is that, and why would you need it? Upon further inspection I found it had a couple thousand almost 5-star reviews. When I read them people gushed about this little device making the best hard boiled eggs they had ever had. Most said they didn’t know that hard boiled eggs could even taste that good. I showed my wife, and she didn’t seem that impressed – but said for $15 why not just get one and see.
This is what we ordered (click here for the Amazon link or the picture below:
When our new Dash egg cooker arrived I couldn’t believe how small it was. It’s maybe 5 inches across, and 5 inches high. But you can cook a half dozen hard boiled eggs at once. After reading the instructions, I couldn’t believe how dead simple this thing was. It comes with a little measuring cup for water. One line is for hard boiled eggs, another for poached or omelet. Pour the water in the bottom of the cooker. On the bottom of the measuring cup there is a pointy needle. Use this to gently (and barely) puncture the bottom of each raw egg. Then place the 6 eggs on the cooker insert. Put the top on and push the on button and that’s it!
I think that the Dash company was smart because when I bought this contraption, no where in the title or description did it say it was a steamer. And yet, once I turned it on and watched it go to work, that’s exactly what it was! I never thought to steam eggs before. The lid of the cooker has a tiny hole about 1/8″. The hot plate of the cooker heats the water up to boiling, and the eggs get steamed for 6 or 7 minutes (until the water boils off). Once the water boils off and the temperature begins to rise dramatically in the cooker, a high pitched alarm goes off. It continues to go off until you physically turn the on/off button off.
What we do at this point is take the eggs out of the cooker (carefully – they are literally steaming hot) and put them in a bowl of cold water. We usually leave the cold water run on that bowl in the sink, and take the eggs out one by one to gently crack and peel them. One thing we instantly realized was that the eggs peel near perfectly – each and every time! Amazing.
This, however, did not prepare us for what the eggs would taste like.
FLUFFY HARD BOILED EGGS?
Whenever we explain to anyone what the egg cooker is I usually say two things. The first is – let me make you some eggs. The second is, once I do and you eat one – you will experience the fluffiest hard boiled eggs you have ever eaten in your life. I guess it would be more proper to say I’m going to make you a steamed egg, but that sounds weird. The eggs are light, airy, and just have this quality I can only describe as “fluffy”. Which leads me to believe that I had been eating over cooked hard boiled eggs my ENTIRE life! The Dash Egg cooker is the weirdest little kitchen gadget I never knew I needed (until I had it). You’d better get one for yourself today! Seriously, it’s only $15 – and apparently they now come in all kinds of colors.
Also – apparently they are so popular that now you can get a double decker egg cooker
Now that we have this nifty device, I see that they even make a double decker egg cooker (if you need to cook nearly a dozen at once).
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