Here is some Egg-cellent news!

Summer and hard-cooked eggs go together in so many ways...deviled eggs, potato salad, bean salad and so on. They are so easy to make that I often forget to pay attention to what I am doing and overcook them. Yuck...that "five o'clock shadow" around the yolk ruins how beautiful a hard-cooked egg should look.

And so, every once in awhile, actually more often than that, I have to go back to the basics.

Here is the sure-fire way I have learned (and re-learned!) to hard cook eggs and avoid that very unappetizing gray ring around the yolk. It also makes for a nicely cooked white, never rubber-y. I follow this method and set a timer...key strategy...and they turn out pretty as can be every time!!

Always Pretty Hard-Cooked Eggs

Place eggs in a pan of cold water. Bring to a soft, rolling boil (blurry pix) and turn off heat. Cover and let sit 15 minutes. Plunge eggs into a bowl of ice water and let cool down for several minutes. Use immediately or put in 'fridge.

Note #1: I use the leftover boiling water to blanch some veggies. It's already hot, so why not!

Note #2: In case I forget which eggs are hard-cooked and which aren't, I give them the "spin test." Spin an egg. The hard-cooked one will spin like a top. The raw one will wobble around.

Note #3: My experience is that week-old eggs peel better and so I save out a couple of eggs from each trip to the farmers' market and let them sit few days before cooking them. The ice bath helps, too.

Under Featured Recipes. "eggs", there is a great deviled egg recipe from a post last year. Happy Weekend!