Few kitchen tasks are more frustrating than trying to peel a resistant hard boiled egg. You know the shell should slide off smoothly in a few unbroken pieces, the way the armor comes off a perfectly cooked shrimp. And yet there you are, flicking off dry bits of shell, chunks of white breaking away, creating a surface as pockmarked as the moon. But don't worry. The BBC has a complete tutorial on the cooking of eggs, including a comment on the "Big Endian versus Little Endian" episode from Swift's Gulliver's Travels (the question of whether to break the boiled egg at the flatter end or the pointy end led the Lilliputians to war, a satire of 18th century Britain's petty and pointless feuds).
As the BBC sees it, there are two valid methods of getting into your boiled egg: the smash and the slice. The smash involves tapping the cooled egg lightly with your teaspoon until the shell is shattered all over, then peeling it off in one go. The slice involves cutting the egg horizontally and eating it with a spoon. This is, apparently, the preferred method for polite company.
I've always let the eggs sit in cold water until cool, then rolled them on the counter to smash the shell into bits before peeling. Leaving them in the fridge for a few days seems to work too. Any favorite tips of your own?
10 More Dirty Restaurant Tricks
5 Things You Didn't Know About Turducken
10 Catchiest Food Jingles We Love to Hate
