I'm having a love affair with my Instant Pot. This morning, things got deeper when my countertop appliance delivered perfect hard-boiled eggs.
I'm not the world's best cook. But even I know how to make a hard-boiled egg on a stovetop. Sometimes the results are perfect. But more often than not, the shell sticks to the egg. By the time I'm done peeling off all the little chunks of shell, I'm left with a pockmarked moon surface instead of a smooth, shiny egg. Sometimes the yolk isn't fully cooked, which repulses me.
Today, I decided to heed the advice of one of my coworkers who is an Instant Pot fanatic and uses her pressure cooker for all manners of dishes with abandon. Despite her assurances that Instant Pot hard-boiled eggs would come out perfectly, I hesitated. Knowing the power of the Instant Pot, the idea of putting fragile eggs into it and hitting "High Pressure" conjured up visions of a yolky crime scene, shells violently emptied of their contents. But today, I threw caution to the wind.
"Instant" Eggs
It really is simple. Put the rack your device came with in the bottom of the pot. Add one cup of water. Put the eggs you want to cook on the rack. Close the lid. Set the machine for five minutes of high pressure steam cooking. Let it cool down naturally for five minutes. Then turn the lever for the quick-release method of releasing steam. When it's safe to open the lid, remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and put them into a bowl of cool water to stop the cooking process.
Because the Instant Pot takes about five minutes to warm up, this method of cooking eggs won't save you any time. It still takes about 15 minutes. But the awesome news is, with this method, you'll get hard-boiled eggs that are easily shelled . . . every time. And you don't need to stay in the kitchen hovering over a boiling pot. My shells came off easily in elegant, large pieces. The yolk was a fluffy light yellow. Perfect.
