Have you ever had this happen? You buy a dozen beautiful, rainbow-colored, farm fresh eggs and can’t wait to eat them! You have visions of scrambled eggs, quiches, cakes, and a lovely tray of deviled eggs at the family picnic with those brilliant yellow yolks…NOPE. By the time you peel them, all you have left is the yolk!

NOPE. By the time you peel them, all you have left is the yolk!

Peeling fresh eggs is always a struggle, but peeling farm fresh, pasture-raised eggs can be a nightmare! Both the albumen (the white part!) of the egg and the inner membrane of the shell are thicker in pasture-raised eggs than traditional grocery store eggs. As eggs age, an air pocket forms between the layers which make it easier to peel without damage. But the fresher the eggs, the less air circulation, and the more the shell sticks to your beautiful egg whites. Homesteading and chicken forums are full of folks trying to figure out a way to get a decent hard-boiled egg from their chickens.

Here’s a tip–skip all the salt, vinegar, baking soda, and ice bath plunging and just steam them. Yep. That’s it. Here’s the easiest way to get easy-to-peel, farm fresh, hard-boiled eggs…(we’ve been doing it this way for years now!)…

Get a stock pot and a strainer

I use a standard 8-quart stock pot and a 5-quart stainless steel deep colander that fits in it just right. This size allows me to do 10-12 eggs at a time. When I’m only doing a couple eggs, I’ll switch to a 4 or 5-quart saucepan with a smaller, long-handled colander. While we have the collapsible steamer baskets for veggies and seafood, I don’t like to use them for eggs because they just feel too wobbly–especially with a dozen eggs in there! They also sit much further down in the hot pot, so you can’t use as much water and have to keep adding more to keep your steam up. (You’ll see what I mean in a minute.)

I did see this 8-quart stockpot and steamer set that would work perfectly if you don’t already have something in your cabinet. And here’s a smaller, 3-quart steaming set that would work if you don’t do a dozen hard boiled eggs at a time like I do! {smile}

Fill stock pot half-full of water

I try to fill it right up to the bottom of my colander, which is about half way. More than that and you’ll have it boiling up out of colander. Too much less than that and you’ll have to refill to keep your steam flowing.

Add fresh eggs to colander

As you can see in the picture, I can do up to 12 at a time. It’s ok if they stack up the sides a little bit, but you really only want one layer in the colander. If you stack them deeper than one layer, you should probably rotate them, and that takes the “easy” part out of this method. {smile} You also don’t want them stacked up higher than the edge of your stock pot.

Set colander on top of/into stock pot

Yep, just set it right in there.

Cover the top of the colander, bring water to a boil

My pot lid fits my colander perfectly. A perfect fit is not necessary. Actually, a lid is not necessary. It just speeds up your boiling and steaming. You’ll know you’re boiling because steam will start rolling out.

Uncover once boiling

I’ve had it boil over on me when I overfilled the water. I’ve also had it start spitting condensation out of the stop colander holes onto my stovetop. If you just uncover once you have a rolling boil, you should be fine. You can see that once you reach a rolling boil, you’ve also reached a rolling steam bath.

Steam eggs for 20-30 minutes

This will depend on your stove, and how hard you prefer your hard-boiled eggs to be. I usually start a 20-minute count when I uncover the pot and I’ve got a rolling boil and steam going. After 20 minutes, I turn the burner off but leave the eggs sitting over the steam.

Pull colander and run under cold water

When the pot stops steaming, I pull the colander out and run the eggs under cold tap water. This is not an ice bath! This is just to cool the eggs enough to handle them. An ice bath has never been necessary for me to get this method to work.

Peel your beautiful, hard-boiled eggs!

All done! You can run them under cold water and peel immediately. OR you can just leave them to sit in the sink to cool naturally and peel them later. You can even cool them on the counter and then put them in the fridge and peel them next week. Regardless, they’ll peel beautifully.

I believe this works because the steaming forces air into the layers between the shell and the white and releases the shell membrane more smoothly than other methods. That particular science is beyond my expertise–my goal was just to get hard-boiled egg whites in one piece!

And when you get that far, I just ordered this 3-way egg slicer a few weeks ago when our spring egg production picked up and it’s awesome! It does slices or wedges (for “fancy” salads) and it’s heavy enough you could clobber someone with it if necessary. Seriously, if you drop it on your toe, it’s going to do some damage! Turns out it also works great on kiwi, but that’s another post some day. {smile}

Do you have any great kitchen tips to share? I’m not much of a homemaker, so everything you’ll find here is about making real life a little easier!