Cooking For Engineers

alison - uk · Joined: 17 Jan 2008 Posts: 17 Location: UK

To GFairbairn, "Love, love, love Scotch eggs"

Sorry, can't work out how to do quotes!

We had a family 'do' on Easter Sunday & made mini
Scotch eggs using quails eggs as part of our buffet table.

Served just warm or room temperature is the way to go,
served with a lightly curried mayo dip. Delicious party food.

gfairbairn · Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 2:03 pm Post subject:

austex.techie · Guest

OK, I've got hard boiled eggs down; I do the bring-to-boil-for-12-minutes method. (I'll look up McGee's advice tonight)

My question is this: How to get the shells off clean? It is beyond frustrating to try to peel the eggs and lose half the white when the shell sticks to it!! Peel when still warm? When fully cooled? Somewhere in between?

pbone · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 3:36 pm Post subject:

As soon as the eggs are cooked to hard boiled, take the pot off the stove, pour the water out, put it under running cold water as you break the shells all over on each egg, breaking the membrane on each egg, just tap them on the bottom of the pan. When all the eggs' shells are cracked all over, let them sit in cold water til they are cooled - or not - you can shell them immediately under running cold water..or in the pan of cold water. The shells should just slip off. I've heard that if eggs are too fresh it's hard to peel them and the shells stick to the white, which comes off in chunks...I don't know if this is true, but I have occasionally encountered it.

Dilbert · Joined: 19 Oct 2007 Posts: 1303 Location: central PA

it is generally accepted that fresh eggs can be more difficult to peel.

that said, "fresh" is meant as 48 - 72 hours; so unless one is on a first name basis with the hens, one may not often encounter that degree of "fresh"

I'm with Susan on this one - my experience has been to put them in cold water immediately after cooking, allow to cool slightly for ease of handling, then crackle the shells and peel immediately.
I rap the shell gently on the counter top to start a crack, then roll them under my palm gently to crackle all the way around.

I can also say I've experienced eggs left for a couple hours can be very messy to peel - lots of sticking.....

Blue Pilgrim · Joined: 03 Sep 2007 Posts: 25 Location: Ilinois

Yeah -- cold water. like you said.

It's often helpful to roll the eggs between your hands (like when you are rolling a bit of dough or clay ito a ball shape) to further crack them, and it also seems to slide the shell against the egg some. With an easily peeled egg the shell may just slide off the egg while rolling it.

It's harder to peel them if they are overcooked. Also, if you don't peel them for a day or so they dry out in the fridge and they are more difficult to peel.

pbone · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 6:57 pm Post subject:

BTW, "hard cooked eggs" as the academic cooks like to call hard boiled eggs keep fresh for 5 days or so in the fridge in a bowl or jar or plastic quart container if they're covered in plain cold water. You might like to add salt...not sure about that. But they stay as fresh as can be submerged in cold water in the fridge.

danicamoore · Joined: 16 Sep 2009 Posts: 58 Location: Illinois

Good post phone I agree with you. I fact by the help of cold water. It was easy to peel some eggs. Than peeling it while its hot.

Hotpie · Joined: 13 Nov 2009 Posts: 1

What are, an, how do you make scotch eggs??

pbone · Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:44 pm Post subject:

Scotch eggs are essentially hard boiled eggs that have been battered and fried, I believe. You see them in big glass jars in pubs in Scotland. I've never seen them anywhere else, don't particularly like them, and cannot imagine how they get batter or cracker crumbs to adhere to the hard boiled eggs!

Dilbert · Joined: 19 Oct 2007 Posts: 1303 Location: central PA

see:

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1418&highlight=

Cornelius · Joined: 17 Nov 2009 Posts: 16 Location: Everett, WA

Cornelius · Joined: 17 Nov 2009 Posts: 16 Location: Everett, WA

Regarding hard-boiled, or hard-cooked eggs, I get the best results with the "bring them to a boil, remove them from the heat, cover them and let them sit for 12 minutes, then shock them in cold water" method.

However, regarding peeling, the one hard and fast rule I have learned about eggs is that there are no hard and fast rules. I really have no way of knowing how old the eggs are that I get from the supermarket. But, if I hard-cook a dozen, usually there are two or three that are hard to peel. I'm pretty sure that most of the time all the eggs in the same carton are the same age.

Also, putting salt, vinegar, baking soda, or whatever in the water makes no difference, as far as I can I can tell. If I were actually boiling my eggs, I can see where some of these might help to coagulate the protein once the shells broke, but since I am not, the shells almost never break.

The major advantage I see to the method I use, and that Michael advocates, is that it eliminates the variables. Many "recipes" say to bring them to a boil, then simmer them for X amount of minutes. So, how hot is your simmer? 175 degrees? 195 degrees? How quickly will your pan/burner allow the water to cool to a simmer? It makes a difference.

Samuel Cookie · Joined: 28 Apr 2010 Posts: 2

I've always had trouble boiling the perfect egg, in the end I purchased a color changing egg timer... it does its job perfectly. http://www.boilperfecteggs.com/

SpottieOttie · Joined: 28 Jul 2014 Posts: 1

In regard to knowing how old supermarket eggs are:

I read once that the number on the end of the carton is the package date and is equal to the Julian date.

Here's an article and image: http://food.unl.edu/safety/cracking-code-egg