The Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs

I can't remember anymore how I discovered this or who did it for the first time, but it was in China where I realized the secret to a perfect hard-boiled egg. Let's first define the perfect hard-boiled egg.

1. The shell has to peel easily. If the thin membrane underneath sticks even the slightest bit, you're going to lose part of your precious egg white. Or a lot of it.
2. There has to be no gray ring on the very edge of the egg yolk on the inside. If there is, you've overcooked it. Now, I know, for us Asians, there are many wonderful recipes out there for tea eggs and seasoned hard boiled eggs in stews, and you will see the gray ring in it. And that's just due to an extended amount of cooking time that the recipe calls for. And that's fine. But that's not what I'm talking about here.
3. The egg yolk is completely cooked through and opaque, not translucent. So we're not soft-boiling here. 

If you do a Google search or ask chefs or well-seasoned mothers, they'll tell you the tricks of timing it perfectly. They'll tell you to add vinegar to the water to make the shells peel easier. They'll tell you to dunk the eggs into ice as soon as you're done to stop the cooking immediately. They'll tell you to remove the pot off the stove and let it sit for x amount of time. But see, all these things require a very precise timing. Nobody tells you how to cook an egg in a kettle unless you ask them specifically about using a kettle.

When I was living in China, I discovered hard-boiling my eggs in my tea kettle. Here's the secret.
First, put however many eggs you want or can fit into a tea kettle with the automatic shut-off feature. This is key that it has the automatic shut-off feature.
Second, fill the kettle with enough water that all the eggs are submerged.
Third, flip the switch and boil the water.
Fourth, after the water boils (which is about 2-3 minutes), let the eggs sit in the water for at least 10 minutes. Anything longer than that is fine, AND, you will not develop the gray ring.

My five little eggs nesting after the boil.

You see, the reason why cooking hard-boiled eggs in the tea kettle is so much easier in my opinion than other techniques is that

a. you don't need to add vinegar to make it peel easily
b. you don't need to do any special timing methods. Once it's in, it's in.
c. If you have at least 13 minutes to wait, you're golden. If you have more than 13 minutes to wait, it won't ruin them either.

This came in handy last Sunday because Jonathan and I woke up earlier than normal for church. We had a good 30 - 40 minutes before we had to leave the house. So I suggested going out on a walk to enjoy the cooler weather. However, I also wanted to eat something decent for once in the morning instead of going to church on an empty stomach like we normally do. Conveniently enough, I popped three eggs into our kettle, filled it with water, and flipped the switch. We went out and took a stroll around our neighborhood for about 15-20 minutes. After coming back, I scooped the eggs out of the kettle, rinsed them under cold tap water to cool so I could eat it, and we had breakfast.

I will say, the one risk to doing this is that every now and then, I would say probably less than 10% of the time, you may end up having an egg explode in the kettle during the boiling process. This is more likely to happen if the egg already has signs of cracks along the shell (not actually cracked though). In my time in China, this happened once. The fortunate part is everything is cooked, so you just have to wash your kettle out.

Yolks cooked all the way through. No gray ring.

There really is no gray ring.

That's my secret to perfect hard-boiled eggs. :)