How to Make Hard Boiled Eggs - Love and Lemons (2024)

FAQs

Why put lemon on eggs before boiling? ›

For all the nutrition and convenience afforded by hard-boiled eggs, peeling them can often be quite challenging. Fortunately, adding lemon juice or another type of acid to the cooking process prevents shells from cracking and ensures easier peeling once everything is said and done.

As soon as the water begins to boil, turn off the heat and cover the pot. Leave the eggs in the hot water for anywhere from 10-12 minutes, depending on how you like your eggs. The 10-minute eggs will have vibrant, creamy yolks, while the 12-minute yolks will be paler and opaque, with a chalkier texture.

For all the nutrition and convenience afforded by hard-boiled eggs, peeling them can often be quite challenging. Fortunately, adding lemon juice or another type of acid to the cooking process prevents shells from cracking and ensures easier peeling once everything is said and done.

Add a little lemon juice before—or after—cooking.

A wee bit of acid encourages the egg's proteins to hook up and be creamy and tender. You don't need much juice—just about ½ teaspoon per 2 to 3 eggs. You can also add a touch of lemon juice just before serving.

You might have heard that you should drop your eggs into room temperature or cold water and then bring the water to a boil. This is a myth. In our tests, bringing the water to a boil first and then lowering the eggs into the bath made for easy peeling and more accurate timing.

It's not necessary to add anything to the water. Some people also swear that adding a bit of salt, vinegar or even baking soda to the boiling water makes eggs easier to peel and/or makes them taste better. We, however, prefer the simplicity of plain ol' water.

According to our friends at Delish, adding a teaspoon of baking soda to your boiling pot of water will help the shell peel off seamlessly. Why? The alkaline in the baking soda will help your egg whites loosen up from the shell, making it easier to peel.

Hard-cooked eggs may be difficult to peel if they are very fresh. This is because an egg shrinks inside during storage, which pulls the inner membrane away from the inside of the shell. For this reason, a hard-cooked egg will peel more easily if it has been stored for 1 or 2 weeks before it is cooked.

Shelly McKee, a food scientist at Deb-El Foods and an expert on egg chemistry, said that boiling an egg for a long time would cause it to expel moisture. As the proteins in the egg white clump together ever more tightly, they would squeeze out the water contained within the egg.

Can you hard boil eggs too long? ›

If you keep the heat turned up too high or too long when you cook an egg, the proteins in the egg white form more and more bonds, squeezing some of the water out of the protein network and making the egg white rubbery.

If the egg sinks to the bottom and lays on its side, it should be fresh and ready to eat. If it floats all the way to the top, the egg may be spoiled.

You see, adding a few tablespoons of lemon juice (AKA acid) to your eggs before you whisk them gives the eggs more structure and helps to create air pockets when you begin scrambling them in the pan. This translates to super light and fluffy eggs once they're done cooking.

Adding boiled lemon water to your diet is a great way to stay hydrated and ensure you're drinking enough water throughout the day. Lemon water can be especially beneficial for those who don't like drinking regular water and prefer flavored beverages instead. Staying hydrated is important for many aspects of health.

The albumin, or protein structure inside an egg, reacts with acid from the lemon juice to create a sturdier inner structure that holds air bubbles. As the eggs cook, the air bubbles cause them to become lighter and fluffier.

Lemon and lime juice solubilize maximum calcium from egg shells because they contain the most citric acid per unit volume, thereby providing a final product more dense in calcium citrate.