Undercooked Hardboiled Eggs: Sticky Mess

I'm a big fan of eggs because they are so easy to cook for someone who is really bad at cooking like me. More specifically, I'm a big fan of hardboiled eggs and scrambled eggs -- over-easy and sunny-side up are a lot more work and easier to mess up? If they were easier to make, over-easy and sunny-side up would be my only food because of my adoration for liquid yet kind of cooked eggs. So, it's down to hardboiled and scrambled then.

Scrambled Eggs
Non-stick pan, no oil, silicone spatula, stove, two eggs, and mixing. These are the only things I need to make my favorite scrambled eggs. I have tried using a steel pot and a lot of oil just to mix things up -- it didn't go too well. How do I put this? My score is about 1 for 20 right now. Eggs really seem to like to stick to the pan unless I time everything perfectly.

There was that one time I dropped the eggs into the pot at the right moment and they turned out a bit oily, but good with very little sticking. It was like they magically floated on the oil. All those other times, I dropped the eggs in too soon or too late. Something to do with the temperature? They stuck, I scraped, and I left disappointed. Non-stick seems a lot harder to fail at.

Undercooked Hardboiled Eggs After Peeling

Hardboiled Eggs
Steel pot, tap water, stove, two eggs, and patience. That was the key to success for the longest time. I don't recall ever dealing with overcooked eggs when I had that patience part. Somewhere along the line, I got the idea that I should turn the stove off before just when it started to boil. On top of that, there was this idea where they would be done if I took them out of the pot and started peeling the shell well short of my regular cooking time. These great ideas introduced me to the undercooked hardboiled egg.

Close-up After Peeling

The Undercooked Hardboiled Egg
Now that I think about it, there was one time that I undercooked hardboiled eggs years ago. That was when I found out why I shouldn't microwave eggs. It exploded in the living room and I was only lightly singed. More recently, the thought of putting them back in a pot or microwaving just seemed off-putting. I just hoped for the best and spent about ten minutes peeling the shells off instead of the usual minute.

With a properly cooked egg, the shell just comes right off for me with a clear separation between the egg white and the shell. An undercooked egg seems to love sticking to the shell so that it and the white become one. And severely undercooked eggs seem to like falling apart in my hands. The pictures above show a pair of very undercooked eggs. Lost a good chunk of the eggs in the peeling process.

With the extra time spent peeling, I probably could have saved the trouble by just letting it sit in the pot longer. Let's see if I've learned anything yet next time.