NEVER BOIL Your Eggs in Water Again | Try This Mexican Trick

#cookingtips #eggs #mexicanfood Mija, peel this egg with me. The shell flakes off in little chips and takes the white with it, the one next to it split open in the pot, and there's a dull green ring around the yolk. Your hands are fine. It's the water. My mother never let an egg sit in a pot of water. She steamed them over one inch, on a tin pie plate she punched full of holes herself, and the shells came off in two pieces. At the end I'll tell you why, and that fight at your table about cold water or boiling water is over for good. ⭐ MY MOTHER'S SUNDAY EGGS (nobody ever wrote this down, so here it is) - 12 eggs, about a week old is better than brand new, straight from the refrigerator - Your biggest pot with a lid that fits, and a steamer basket. No basket? A tin pie plate punched with holes, set on 3 canning jar rings, or a metal colander that sits up off the bottom - About 1 inch of water, below the rack, never touching an egg - A big bowl of your coldest tap water with ice, filled BEFORE you turn on the stove ⭐ THE 7 THINGS MY MOTHER NEVER LET ME SKIP 1. THE OLDER CARTON: in a brand new egg, the white sticks to the shell like wet paper on a window. Give the carton a week. New eggs are for frying and migas, older eggs are for cooking in the shell. Backyard hen eggs need seven days. No need to warm them up. 2. AN INCH OF WATER: not a pot full. Rack above the water, water never touches the eggs. 3. ONE LAYER, LID ON: eggs not touching, no stacking. High heat, and don't peek. 4. THIRTEEN MINUTES from the first steam around the lid = hard, firm to the middle and still yellow. 7 minutes = soft yolk, thick like honey. A soft yolk isn't fully cooked, so for little ones, anybody expecting, and the oldest people at your table, cook the full 13. Steam burns faster than boiling water: tip the lid away from your face and keep the kids back. 5. THE COLD BOWL: every egg straight into the ice, 11 minutes, till cold to the center. It stops the cooking (no green ring), and the white tightens up and leaves a tiny gap under the shell. 6. THE PEEL: tap the big end first (there's a little air bubble there), tap around the middle, roll gently under your palm, then slide your thumb under the thin skin and lift. A thin stream of cold water does half the work. Still fighting you? It's warm inside. Back in the ice. 7. WHY MY MOTHER KEPT WATER AWAY: cold water heats slowly, and the white glues itself to the skin. Boiling water heats fast, but the eggs bang around and crack. Water makes you choose. Steam doesn't: it's just as hot, and the egg never moves. WHY SHE STEAMED THEM: we were on a well out here in the Brush Country. In a dry summer it ran low, and she wasn't pouring a gallon into a pot for twelve eggs. She was saving water. AND THE SHELLS: every spring this family makes cascarones, eggshells filled with confetti that the kids crack over each other's heads at Easter. Tap a nickel-sized hole in the small end of a raw egg, pour it out for breakfast, rinse the shell inside and out, wash your hands, and dry it upside down in an empty carton. Over the head, never the face. THE BAG IN THE COLD CASE: six peeled eggs sitting in their own water, for about what a whole carton costs. Nobody makes money telling you all it takes is an inch of water, a lid, and a bowl of ice. THE SUNDAY HABIT: while you're already cooking, 12 eggs on the rack. 13 minutes, into the ice, back in the carton with the day written on each shell in pencil. Shells on, in the refrigerator, about a week. Never more than 2 hours on the counter, and Easter eggs that sat in the yard all afternoon go in the trash. If your eggs always came out chipped, cracked, or ringed in green, it was never because you were careless. Nobody ever showed you. Tell me in the comments where you're cooking from, and which one gave you the most grief: the shell that tore the white off in chunks, the egg that split wide open, or that green ring hugging the yolk. I read every single one. Cook it slow. Cook it for somebody. Buen provecho. CHAPTERS 0:00 It's not you, it's the water 2:08 The older carton 4:01 Steam it: one inch of water, a lid, 13 minutes 5:27 The cold bowl 6:19 How to peel it 7:00 Why my mother never used water 8:41 Cascarones: the shells we save 9:14 Honest words and the Sunday habit #cookingtips #kitchenhacks #mexicancooking #elenacooking