Do You Need to Give Hard Boiled Eggs an Ice Bath?

One of the bits of egg-boiling wisdom is that, when the boil time is completed, put the eggs in an ice bath to make the easier to peel.

I suspect there is some magical thinking going on here.

I’ve cooked a lot of eggs recently. I boil a dozen or more at a time (my family eats some of them, so they aren’t all for me).

And I’ve observed in the peeling of a lot of eggs that it may not really matter. When peeling multiple eggs that were boiled together in the same batch (out of the same carton of eggs – and one must presume that every egg in a carton of a dozen and a half were not all laid by the same hen), I have found some eggs peeled easily and others not so much.

And I have found this to be true with no ice bath, with cold water, and with an ice bath.

While an ice bath may in general make a small difference, much more significant is the actual construction of the eggs, which is (presumably) determined by the genetics of the hen.

Some eggs have a thicker inner membrane, and some thinner. On some, the inner membrane clings more to the albumen, and some are less clingy. It’s these things that are more determinative of how difficult it is to peel the egg than if you ice bath or not.

So ice bath if you wish, but don’t think that you must be doing it wrong if you get a difficult to peel egg.

Tags: eggs