Baked Hard "Boiled" Eggs

(Original post September 3, 2012 @ mtable.wordpress.com.)

It's difficult to know what to title this post. The pin didn't have a title. When you say "hard boiled eggs" people know exactly what you're talking about. You drop a shelled egg into boiling water until it's cooked. Then you peel and eat. Yumm! In this case, "boiled" is entirely inaccurate seeing as I didn't boil anything. I baked, but if I say baked eggs it loses the descriptiveness. So, for today's post, my title will have to be slightly wrong to be sort of right. Or something like that.

The Pin: Baked Hard "Boiled" Eggs by imgfave

Difficulty: 2 (1 = Easy, 10 = Hard!)

I'm just going to go ahead and post the picture directly from this dude's website.

They look so pretty.

And that's all (s)he wrote. Literally. That's all there is on the site about this "recipe." We like eggs in our house and hard boiled eggs are great to have in the fridge. I'm all for eggs that are "tastier" and "easier to peel" so let's bake some eggs!

Just about to go into the oven.

I baked them for the full 30 minutes because I've been told my oven is not super hot. 30 minutes later...

Well that doesn't look like the picture!

This is the second time I've tried this recipe and both times my eggs have come out covered in brown spots. Since there is no information on the recipe's site about this phenomena, I was uncertain what was wrong. Is it rust from the pan? Is there gunk dripping from the roof of my oven? Neither! After a few minutes of Googling I found out those brown spots are normal. Thanks Alton Brown (courtesy of Greetings From the Asylum) for clearing that up. Their page has a slightly modified approach to this recipe where you place the eggs into ice water immediately after they come out of the oven. Since this wasn't part of the pin (and I didn't read it until my eggs had been cooling for at least 10 minutes), I didn't do this. Possibly because of this my eggs were slightly overdone. The yolks were a little dry. Next time I would either bake the eggs for the minimum suggested time (25 minutes) or cook them for full 30 minutes then put them straight into ice water.

This second website says, "Baked eggs are better because they are less sulfurous (smelly) and the texture of the finished eggs is creamier." The pin says they are "easier to peel." Are they right? Were the baked eggs better?

Mostly, yes. Let's break it down.

• Smell: The baked eggs didn't smell as ... well, eggy as their boiled counterparts. Sometimes I find boiled eggs stinky. The baked version wasn't stinky at all.
• Peelability: So far, I've found that all of the baked eggs are easier to peel. My husband said he found a difficult one, but I've yet to encounter a tough shell.
• Texture/Taste: When I tasted the first batch I made a couple of weeks ago, I thought they had a slightly better texture and flavor baked than boiled, but with this latest batch I didn't notice a difference. It's possible they only tasted better because I was expecting them to. I'm not sure. Still, they were good, and I'll probably continue to cook them this way.

Final Rating: 5.5123479827394712347982734 (1 = Egg, 10 = Egg)

It's hard to rate an egg. I mean, it's a hard "boiled" egg. You either like them or you don't. Now go bake an egg!