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Give your boiled eggs a shake for easier peeling

Peeling hard boiled eggs can be an infuriating process. With this quick tip, you will be peeling eggs like a pro.

Taylor Martin CNET Contributor
Taylor Martin has covered technology online for over six years. He has reviewed smartphones for Pocketnow and Android Authority and loves building stuff on his YouTube channel, MOD. He has a dangerous obsession with coffee and is afraid of free time.
Taylor Martin
2 min read
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Taylor Martin/CNET

Making hard boiled eggs is a fairly straightforward process. Usually, the worst part is peeling them after they're done cooling off, especially when the shell breaks away in a million tiny pieces. This can turn what would be a quick snack into a painstakingly frustrating and tedious chore, just to get to your snack.

However, the YouTube channel "Food In 5 Minutes" has a quick tip that can make peeling an egg a breeze. Here's how it works.

An easier way to peel boiled eggs

For starters, you need some boiled eggs and a mason jar. From there, it's pretty simple. After the boiled eggs have fully cooled off, place one inside the mason jar, screw on the lid and give it a good shake for 3 to 5 seconds.

This will thoroughly crack the shell into small pieces. And if the egg was cooked properly, the shell will slip off with relative ease.

Some things to consider

It will take some trial and error for the shells to slip off as easily as in the video. What the video fails to mention are some preliminary steps that can make the entire process even easier.

  • Making a very small, round crack in the bottom of each egg without rupturing the inner membrane before boiling will make peeling significantly easier. Use a small, rounded object, like the handle of a knife to gently crack the bottom of the shell. If the membrane is torn, the white of the egg will escape the shell during the boiling process.
  • Letting the eggs soak in cold water with a small crack after boiling will saturate membrane with water, helping it separate from the whites without tearing.

I tried this two separate times -- once exactly as it was shown in the video and a second time with a circular crack in the bottom of each egg prior to boiling. Both ways worked better than simply trying to peel the old fashioned way, but the pre-cracking and soaking made all the difference. Without these first two steps, it took significantly more work to get the shell to come off in large pieces.

Another thing to note is that, in general, eggs that are a few weeks old are typically better for boiling. However, the eggs I tried this with were just a few days old and it still worked very well.