Eggs have dropped in price from their astronomical recent highs. They are a great source of inexpensive protein, and have returned to the healthy foods list. During these times of high prices due to inflation, tariffs, and war, it is time to consider or reconsider them.

Eggs can be used and made in a multitude of ways, and in a multitude of dishes. However, the hard boiled egg remains one of the most versatile versions. Hard boiled eggs can be eaten as is, in egg salad, topping a green salad, and in deviled eggs. I Googled ways to use hard boiled eggs and found literally dozens of other options.

Two of my siblings regularly use hard boiled eggs, but they buy them boiled and shelled. This is convenient, but it is convenience at a cost in both price as well as texture. I find precooked eggs to be rather rubbery. Yet, I can understand why they buy them. There are many tricks to boiling eggs, and none of them seem to work very well. The cook is often left with eggs that have green rings around the yolk. More significantly, it can be impossible to cleanly remove the shell. How many times have I lost 50% of an egg because it stuck to the shell? Many.

What if I told you that there was a simple and almost foolproof way to hard boil eggs that was practically set and forget? Such an option is available thanks to electric pressure cookers (AKA Instant Pot). Let’s first look at some economics, and then I’ll give you the very easy way to hard boil egg perfection.

Here we have 6 medium sized hard boiled eggs for $5.49, or 92 cents each.

How is this for crazy. You can buy 2 cut eggs for $3.99. That’s around $2 per egg! You are paying an additional dollar to have someone cut an egg in half! And what the heck does Fresh Cut mean? Are they saying someone cutting an egg in half is akin to some sort of egg cutting craftsman?

You can buy a dozen large eggs for $1.99, or around 17 cents each. That is five and a half times less than the Eggland hard boiled eggs, and a whooping 11.6 times less than the fresh cut eggs! For the price of 2 fresh cut eggs you could have two dozen larger and better tasting hard boiled eggs with very little work.

The secret to perfectly made hard boiled eggs is to steam them, and one of the easiest ways to steam eggs is in a pressure cooker. Let’s take a look at this simple process.

I like to puncture the shell with a push pin. This can reduce the chance of your egg shells cracking during cooking. All it takes is one little hole in the end.

Add around 1 cup of water to the bottom of the pot. You need to elevate your eggs above the water. You can use any sort of steaming rack; many pressure cookers already come with one. I’m using this fancy one, but it is overkill. It is OK to stack eggs on top of each other as they won’t bounce around as they do when you boil them. Note the tiny holes that I made on the top of each egg to release any potential steam from the egg.

Close your lid and make sure the vent is on seal. Now use the cooker’s egg setting, or as in my case manually dial in 5 or 6 minutes. Either time is fine, with 6 minutes giving you a slightly harder egg. I got this 3 quart mini for $20 bucks at a thrift store, and it works great. Pressure cookers are good at so many things, and you can often pick up a used one for pennies on the dollar. My machine will automatically start, others require that you press start.

After the cooking cycle has completed wait an additional 5 minutes before releasing the pressure in the cooker. Do so carefully, and open the lid after the pressure has dropped.

Carefully remove the eggs, they will be hot.

Place the eggs in a bowl of cold water. I’m using ice water, but you can also use cold water from the tap. Let them sit for 5 minutes.

I like to label my hard boiled eggs with an H so I don’t confuse them with raw eggs. By the way, lead pencils don’t contain any lead. The lead is actually just some clay and carbon in the form of graphite.

I’ll keep them in their own separate container in the fridge.

They peel easily. No egg stuck to the shell!

They also look great on the inside.

I used 2 of them to make a simple egg salad for lunch. I chopped the eggs and added a little mayo, celery salt, and pepper. I served it on a toasted slice of some herb bread that I made for a dinner stew earlier in the week. Delicious!

With inflation, and those every changing crazy tariffs hitting everyone hard, why spend 5-11 times more for a product that is actually worse than what you can simply make at home. If you don’t have an electric pressure cooker you can steam them on the stove for around 12 minutes, and then drop them into the cold water, as above.

Peace

Mike