Exceptional Eggs:

I read something amazing in my book the other day (Carleen Madigan's "Backyard Homestead: Produce all the Food You Need on Just a Quarter Acre").  I've asked friends this question, I've googled it, and I never got a good answer...  until now!

Q:  How come, when you peel a hard-boiled egg, sometimes it's difficult to peel and the shell sticks to the white which you end up peeling away, and other times it's so easy to peel that the shell just sloughs off?

I could never get a good answer to this question.....  Some people told me to boil it longer, boil it shorter.  Some people said to immediately dunk the boiled eggs into ice water, others said to let them sit in their hot water until they cool down.  Yet nothing I did consistently gave me good eggs!

However in Ms. Madigan's book she states that the fresher the egg, the harder it is to peel. This is because a fresh egg has very little air in it, and therefore the liquid stays closer to the shell.  After a week or two (store bought eggs can be very old), since the shells are porous, there is more air in them and therefore some separation between the yolk and white and the shell wall.

We got 6 fresh eggs in our CSA box the other day, now I need to go hard-boil them, and I expect that they will be difficult to peel!!!