Baked Eggs

 

 

 

Ah, Easter.  Time to hard cook some eggs.  As we all know, and have probably done hundreds of times, you could just boil your eggs for dying or eating.  However, if you want to do more than one dozen at a time, baking is the way to go.  Yes, I said bake those eggs!

First, make sure the oven racks are positioned in the center of the oven,  Then, arrange the eggs on a metal cooling rack and place them in a cool oven.  Set the oven to 325 degrees F and bake for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, move the eggs directly from the oven into a bowl of ice water.

If you are peeling the eggs and not dying then, make sure to peel them as soon as they are cool enough to handle.  You can then return them to the ice bath to chill thoroughly.

A fun little tidbit I recently learned regarding the peeling of eggs is that the age of an egg does make a difference. Freshly laid eggs are more likely to stick to the shell, while older eggs release from the shell more freely.  Here in the U.S., eggs can sit for up to 30 days before being packaged, and the sell-by date can be another 30 days after that.  Say what?  This means that the eggs you're getting at the supermarket are old enough that no further aging at home should be necessary to get a nice clean shell release. If you are buying farm fresh eggs or you keep a few hens around, then you may want to let your eggs sit for a couple of weeks before hard cooking them. 

I learned this the hard way as deviled eggs had become bane of my existence.  I always ended up abandoning that idea and just making egg salad after I mangled the eggs.  On the bright side, I know that my eggs were really freash.  But now I know age is important, and my eggs will be mangled no more!