As long as, forever, I’ve had issues with hard boiled eggs that do not wish to let go of their shell.  There’s nothing more frustrating than being in a rush to get your deviled eggs ready for company only to find that half the eggs are unusable because the shells refused to release, and the eggs came out with their flesh torn and ragged, and in no way presentable for company.

So, I’ve been hunting and hunting for a way to insure that my hard-boiled eggs come out clean.  It has not been an easy task.

Someone told me that the eggs had to be “old”.  So I tried getting my eggs a couple of weeks ahead of time.  It didn’t help.

Someone told me that you have to keep the water temperature just below boiling all the time.  It didn’t help.

But this story has a happy ending.  A friend, a true friend indeed, told me that she had a sure fire cure for the mangled egg.  And she did!  Here’s what you do-  just before putting the egg into the water, tap it gently on the counter top.  Tap very gently, as you don’t want to bust open the shell, naturally, but if you keep tapping, and give it just a little more strength each time, at a certain point, you will create a teeny tiny crack in the surface of the egg.  It will not go all the way through, and the egg will still have all its integrity.  But somehow, that tiny little crack must let in enough water, between the shell and the egg proper, that when you cool the hard-boiled eggs, their shells will slip right off.

If you listen carefully when you are tapping, you will hear the crack happen.  After a bit of practice, you will never have another mangled egg again!