"Perfect","Peel-able" Hard Boiled Eggs

I was a skeptic. I am the worst egg hard boiler on the planet. THE worst. When I hard boil eggs, they always look like this...

Pic from http://sweetfatlies.com

Hard boiled eggs hate me. And at this point I kind of hate them. Except that I don't. I really love them. I still try to make them all the time because deviled eggs are one of my favorite things ever. And I can still eat them on this Paleo diet (no mayo - sub guac... tune in for that post). Because of my profound love for hard boiled and deviled eggs, I went out in search of the "perfect" hard boiled egg recipe. After some searching, I found this one. With my eye on the prize (the deviled egg end product) I thought I'd give it a whirl. What did I have to lose, besides about a half an hour of my time and 12 eggs?

Pic from http://michellebouse.wordpress.com

WHAT YOU'LL NEED: 
A dozen eggs
Large boiling pot
Water
Salt (if you want)
Vinegar (I added that in; it wasn't in the orinigal recipe but I've heard 1 tablespoon does the trick for non stickey-to-the-shell eggs).

We have eggs ALL the time. We go through like five-dozen in about two weeks... we heart eggs a lot. Check on the eggs. That's pretty much the only thing we'd have had to buy. Vinegar. I always have that too. Double check.

So when I made these, I was in a time crunch. And the first direction said, "bring the eggs up to room temperature". WHAT?!? I only have 40 minutes for my lunch! So I kind of skipped that step, and it might have been my undoing, but... what can a working mama do? So I put them in a bowl of hot tap water before I dunked them in the boiler. Same dif, right?

As per the recipe I let the water come to a full boil, like a good little cook. Then I dropped them in REALLY carefully because I wanted them to be the oh-so-perfect, just like the picture! I added the vinegar at this point... 1 or 2 tbsp (eyeballed it!). Boil for eight minutes. I even set the timer. (They ARE going to be perfect). Lid it and let those bad boys sit in the hot water for 20-25. (Time crunch again.. 20 minutes it is.) I set the timer again. Let them sit in a bowl of ice water for half an hour. Crap... time to go back to work. Enter: Amazing hubby. After the ice water part you're supposed to drain the water and store in the fridge. He came home on HIS lunch hour and did this. One brownie point earned for the hubster!

And how did they turn out?

Drumroll...

Perfect AND Peel-able! Holy cow!

They were... well, perfect... and peel-able. I was actually kind of floored. It was like the eggs were peeling themselves. Really. I was dumbfounded because I have tried other "perfect egg" recipes before and they never worked. I have done the vinegar, placing eggs in before water boils, poking holes in the shell routine and none of them ever gave me eggs like this. IT seems like I have tried every HB egg recipe under the sun. You can see my skepticism, but it worked! Holy cow, my eggs were, for once, pretty close to perfect. I never thought I'd brag about hard boiled eggs, but I kind of want to brag about these.

My other problem with hard boiled eggs was that they are sometimes not right on the inside. They're at that too-done point where they're all grey and crumbly or the not-done-enough point where the yolks are a little soft and then they're super gross. I was hoping for yellow, creamy perfection. So I did a little happy dance about the outsides looking perfect, but I was nervous for what the insides would look like. But I cut them open...

Insides... success!!

I actually did it! I am a hard-boiled egg destroyer... converted. This recipe works!

COST: $ This one only gets one dollar sign because while eggs have gotten so darn expensive (I think we pay about $2.50 for a dozen.. Ridic!) it's really not too much out of the ole pocketbook. I'd pay more than that for two dozen deviled bad boys! Otherwise, you really just need vinegar which is also conveniently cheap.

DO-ABILITY: + The actual process is as easy as... well... boiling water. The other part of this would be the peeling. I thought that would be the hard part but as I said before, it's like the eggs WANTED to come out of the shells. They almost slid off!

THE LOW DOWN: This is the best HB egg recipe I've found. I don't know if the vinegar did anything but it certainly didn't hurt anything.

GOOD THINGS: Easy, cheap. Best hard boiled eggs ever!

BAD THINGS: Took a bit of time. Just make sure you're around for an hour or so.

PIN OR BUST?: This one's a no-brainer. This one is definitely worth pinning! Go... Pin, share, like. Especially for my gluten-free, Paleo, egg-lovin' peeps.

SOMETHING ELSE...: I kind of want to try it without the vinegar to see if the vinegar was, in fact, a factor in the perfect, peel-able-ness of my eggs. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunity to do so. It's the whole egg love-affair thing. We're addicts. I will let you know how that goes.

Avocado deviled egg recipe to come soon. Stay tuned fellow Pinners!

Happy Pinning all!

UPDATE: Since I am always eating HB  eggs (the Paleo thing again) I busted out some more of these sans vinegar and they turned out just as awesome if not awesome-er (that's not a word...). So if you don't have any vinegar on hand, don't panic. These are just as good without!

UPDATE 4/9/2014: A friend of mine gave me some more tips through Facebook. Here is what she said:
I am about to boil up some eggs for a kids camp that I am running and they need to be easy to peel so the kids can do it themselves. Super helpful. I just want to add a few things to this... the fresher the eggs the harder they are to peel. Something about the pH and sticking to the membrane. Also here in England, NO ONE puts their eggs in the fridge. It has taken me ages to get used to this but I haven't done it in two years and have never gotten sick. So, if you wanted to leave some eggs out on the counter just for that purpose, you totally could. Also at the farm that I work at, our eggs (non-refrigerated) have a use by date that is 3 weeks from the date of collection. Totally standard UK practice and we don't have loads of salmonella deaths either.
Thanks Hope!