Baked (Not Hard-Boiled) Eggs

I find myself a bit behind on my blogging this month, what with all the holiday craziness and the requisite post-Christmas cold. But I wanted to pop in and wish you a very Happy New Year and thank you all for being such awesome readers and supporters of this humble blog. You guys are just the best!

So until I can get my next post up, which I promise I’m working on, and it will be soon, I’ll share with you my new favorite way to “hard boil eggs”. Which, as you can see, requires no boiling.

I believe we have Alton Brown to thank for this incredibly genius idea, and genius it is, folks. So easy and a very big improvement over the traditional boiling method.

So, if you’re planning on making deviled eggs for your New Year’s party (which is required around here), or, like me, you just love hard-boiled eggs, you really must try this…

Just preheat your oven to 325 degrees and then place as many eggs as you would like directly on your oven racks (per above photo). Or you can place them in muffin tins, if you’d like. Then just bake them for 25 to 30 minutes. Every oven is different and mine seem to be done perfectly in 25 minutes. But I think most people have been letting them go the full 30 minutes.

Then just plunge them in ice water for 10 minutes. The peels just slip right off. No kidding, they really do. And then you can put them back in the ice water to continue chilling or use however you’d like. I found that if you put them in the refrigerator and peel them later, they don’t peel quite as easily.

And here’s an added bonus. They really do taste better. I did a side by side taste test with boiled vs baked eggs and could tell that baking the eggs really did make them taste better. Sort of more egg-y. Or something.

So that’s my little New Year’s tip for you guys. I wish you all a very Happy New Year’s Day and hope that the coming year brings you health, happiness and lots of great food. Here’s the recipe…

Click here for a printable recipe

I've seen this recipe on several websites on the internet, but I think that Alton Brown was the first to publish this recipe. It's genius! Not only is it easy, but the eggs peel effortlessly and baking really does enhance the flavor of the eggs. I'll never boil an egg again. The toaster oven works great if you only want to cook 2 or 3 eggs.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Place eggs directly on the wire racks in your oven (or you can place them in a muffin pan). Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Every oven bakes a little differently... my eggs are done at 25 minutes.

Immediately plunge the eggs in ice water for 10 minutes and peel. The shells will come right off if you peel the eggs right away. If you refrigerate the eggs and peel them later, they're not quite as easy to peel.

Click here to ask a question or leave a comment

Update

on 2013-01-07 18:40 by Patrice Berry

Just thought I would add a little note to this post... while this method of cooking eggs has worked really well for me (and several others of you out there), the fact is that oven temperatures vary (sometimes dramatically) and every egg seems to be different. I've come to believe that some eggs were born refusing to peel. Having said that, I think that if you have had trouble baking your eggs, but you still would like to make this method work, you might try reducing your oven temperature to 300. The original recipe from Alton Brown says to bake the eggs for 30 to 32 minutes, but I've found mine are cooked perfectly at 25. So I encourage you to just experiment with baking times and temperatures, and if you get stuck with eggs that are still hard to peel, I think they're just the ones that were going to be hard to peel no matter what. Personally, I won't be going back to boiling eggs again.