Hard Boiled Eggs in a Pressure Cooker – WIN!
Using my new pressure cooker method, hard-boiled eggs reliably come out of their shells without damage! Before I discovered this method, about 1 in 5 eggs had unsightly tears and 1 in 20 eggs got so chipped and torn, they were essentially unusable. Unacceptable!
Directions:
– Add about 1 cup of water and up to a dozen large to extra large eggs to the pressure cooker.
– Cook eggs for 1 minute at high pressure (it takes a few minutes to get up to pressure), then let them cool in the pressure cooker naturally at least 7 minutes and up to… I dunno, I’ve left it for 15 minutes and the yolks were only slightly green.
– Put straight into an egg carton and into the fridge to cool for use later.
This method reliably avoids:
– undercooking (the yolk being soft or gooey)
– overcooking (the white being hard, the outside of the yolk turning green)
and most importantly…
– sticky shell (the shell sticking to the white so hard that the white tears when shell is peeled off)
It is a joy to peel them every time! It is still helpful to peel under running water to wash off tiny shell fragments, but not required.
My pressure cooker is a Fagor Lux Multicooker. The manual says it runs at 9psi. Your pressure cooker may be different. For example, the Instant Pot reportedly runs at 15psi, but then I’ve also heard Instant Pots cook slightly slower than the Fagor Lux. Whatever! Experiment a little!
I’ve tried a lot of saucepan timing and temperature methods that kinda-sorta-sometimes work. I tried ice baths before and after cooking. I tried using vinegar in the pot which sometimes helped but wasn’t reliable and boiling vinegar makes the house smell funny. Different pressure cooker timings work but my 1 minute pressure / 7 minute cooldown version is the easiest, most reliable so far!
Thank you Gail for giving us the Fagor Lux pressure cooker!
It’s weird, I don’t remember having this problem when I was younger. Maybe it’s a localized Bay Area chicken problem? I wouldn’t think so because in recent years I’ve had the problem with several different brands of eggs, fresh eggs, older eggs, even fancy organic pasture raised not-debeaked hormone-free etc… etc… eggs. But when we hard boil them in a saucepan, we reliably have 2 out of 12 eggs be a horrible, messy failure! But no more! I am in pressure cooked hard boiled egg heaven!
(This is something of a repost, but my updated method is so much better that I had to share!)
Nice solution. I’ve tried multiple method without consistent results. I don’t have a pressure cooker. My prefered method is to shock the eggs in ice water immediately after cooking and peeling as soon as possible. But there a few disadvantages to this. If you work in a professional kitchen and have to peel 5 to 10 dozen eggs, than it is enough to make one avoid the use of HB eggs altogether.
Adam, it’s nice to hear from you! It’s something to hear about how making hard boiled eggs are a pain in the neck in a big professional kitchen!
Finally you have an excuse for getting that 37 quart Buffalo pressure cooker! :-)
Someone on Imgur suggested 4 minutes pressure, then an ice bath. They said it made the yolks creamier. I tried 4 min but that only firmed up 5 millimeters of yolk. 5 min had a very soft interior. 6 minutes a mushy interior. 7 minutes a slightly slimy interior. OMG, I’m tired of sampling crappy hard boiled eggs!
8 minutes pressure then ice isn’t long enough. Nor is 9.
fuckin hell.
10 minutes of pressure and then an ice bath makes a good hard boiled egg. (effing finally). I’m still experimenting at which tastes better…