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The joy of a still-warm hard-cooked egg


Fat Guy

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Probably 95% of the hard-cooked eggs I eat are cold. I cook them one day, peel them, refrigerate them and eat them over time. Today I had one just after cooking and peeling, and I was reminded of how delicious a newly-minted hard-cooked egg can be. This happens to me once every few years and every time I wonder why I don't attempt to recapture that experience. Then I go back to eating cold eggs.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Same here, though I make sure I eat warm ones every sunday morning for breakfast.

It's really quite lazy, you can boil an egg in about 12 minutes, including time for bringing the water to boil, but convenience is like that, it never sounds hard, until you have to do it.

"My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them."

-Winston Churchill

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I agree that the egg newly out of its shell, still hot enough to make your fingertips hurt a bit when peeling, is much more flavorful than a later rerun. I never pre cook them unless it is for a cold salad.

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The best ones are the ones that I have screwed up...and I have to test...the bit of runny yolk that comes out...with salt and pepper. Heaven.

Nothing wrong with a softboiled egg, the way the yolk oozes out like a thick rich sauce, it's great, but sadly, tends to make a bit of a mess.

"My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them."

-Winston Churchill

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One of my favorite snacks is a still-warm hard-boiled egg sliced onto hot buttered toast, especially rye, minimally sprinkled with Worcestershire sauce and eaten open face.

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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One of my favorite snacks is a still-warm hard-boiled egg sliced onto hot buttered toast, especially rye, minimally sprinkled with Worcestershire sauce and eaten open face.

Hmmm, Worcestershire, never though of that, might be nice. My go to is mayonaisse, it's something I learned from my father, a hardboiled egg in a bun with mayonaisse, it's one of those guilty pleasures that I refuse to feel guilty for.

"My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them."

-Winston Churchill

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One of the nice thing of a portable sous vide set up is the ability to cook one or two eggs to any degree of runny-ness you desire that morning. You don't have to heat up a huge tub of water to do that. A small container, heater and a temperature controller does not take much longer time to cook the eggs.

I have a chart with photos showing eggs cooked at various temperature that I refer to.

dcarch

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Hmmm, Worcestershire, never though of that, might be nice. My go to is mayonaisse, it's something I learned from my father, a hardboiled egg in a bun with mayonaisse, it's one of those guilty pleasures that I refuse to feel guilty for.
I like that too. Do you chop the egg up or slices? I like an egg between soft and hard boiled. Yolk not runny but also not 'paste-y'.

Best Wishes,

Chee Fai.

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Hmmm, Worcestershire, never though of that, might be nice. My go to is mayonaisse, it's something I learned from my father, a hardboiled egg in a bun with mayonaisse, it's one of those guilty pleasures that I refuse to feel guilty for.
I like that too. Do you chop the egg up or slices? I like an egg between soft and hard boiled. Yolk not runny but also not 'paste-y'.

I use an egg slicer - a gadget that I also use for slicing many soft things. It's quicker and the egg doesn't cool too much and I don't have to hold the hot egg while slicing.

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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I have problems peeling the eggs. Is there a surefire way of getting those shells off without ruining the egg?

The only surefire way I know is to use older eggs, and when they're done, pour out the hot water, add some ice, and give the pot a vigorous shake to crack the shells all over. Then peel under running water. The eggs should stay fairly warm through all this, if you're quick.

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I have problems peeling the eggs. Is there a surefire way of getting those shells off without ruining the egg?

The only surefire way I know is to use older eggs, and when they're done, pour out the hot water, add some ice, and give the pot a vigorous shake to crack the shells all over. Then peel under running water. The eggs should stay fairly warm through all this, if you're quick.

That's for suckers! I just learned about this way two weeks ago and I have been peeling all my hardboiled eggs like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dut1b--AgLM

Really awesome.

Also I do use an egg slicer, I use it for a lot of things actually, anytime I want a lot discs out of anything really, love the things!

"My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them."

-Winston Churchill

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I think its important to use the video method when preparing eggs for others to consume atop a salad that was carefully washed in something other than the kitchen sink. ;)

Love the sleight of hand. Dont believe any of it. But of course, have to try it anyway.

"You dont know everything in the world! You just know how to read!" -an ah-hah! moment for 6-yr old Miss O.

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ahahhahahahaha! as long as you juice the lemon for your egg salad with you mouth like Michael Chiarello ;-)

I thought I'd seen that method before? But I seem to remember that you had to put a bit of baking soda in the water to soften the shell a bit. Never tried it though!

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Works perfectly for me, you have to blow a bit harder then the video makes it out, but I'm 10 year long smoker and I managed it, so it should be pretty doable for anyone.

"My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them."

-Winston Churchill

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That video is great! It's like giving birth to a hard-boiled egg.

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

"...in the mid-’90s when the internet was coming...there was a tendency to assume that when all the world’s knowledge comes online, everyone will flock to it. It turns out that if you give everyone access to the Library of Congress, what they do is watch videos on TikTok."  -Neil Stephenson, author, in The Atlantic

 

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer

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