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Daily Record
Daily Record
Lifestyle
Lucy Farrell

The secret to 'perfect' soft boiled eggs as woman shares little-known cooking hack

Boiling an egg should be an easy thing to cook, but the simple task can sometimes lead to disaster.

While a timer is the best way to help you get your preferred yoke texture, peeling them can often be a real pain - especially first thing in the morning.

Peeling a boiled egg is a delicate process and one wrong move can leave your breakfast in pieces. But there is a clever cooking hack that can make sure the shell peels in seconds.

Posting on the TikTok profile @howtohackittm, one woman explained that piercing the bottom of the egg with a handy device known as an "egg piercer", will give you a perfect peel every time.

While this is probably well known among cooking experts, it may be news to others who regularly peels chunks out of their eggs in the morning.

So to get that perfectly peeled boiled egg, first you must fill your pot of choice with boiling water then add a few drops of vinegar, which also helps the peeling process.

She explained: "So we use vinegar because vinegar softens the shell and makes the egg much easier to peel."

But it's what happens next that is she says is crucial. "The next step is really important, you need to prick your egg."

You should pierce the rounded part of the egg, as air between the shell heats on cooking and escapes out of its pores. Pricking the egg provides a quick escape route for the air, which gives you an egg with a smoothly rounded end.

This will stop the egg from cracking while cooking and separate the shell from the egg on the bottom, giving you a perfect peeling start point.

If you're a cooking novice who does not own an egg pricker, a safety pin or sewing needle will do the trick.

After boiling the pierced egg for seven minutes, the woman is able to peel the egg in seconds. "That's where the hole was and that's where the pocket of air was created," she said. "Do you see how easy that egg is to peel, because of that vinegar?"

She then cuts the cooked egg in half, unveiling what she describes as a "perfectly runny" soft boiled egg.

Eggs are one of the most versatile foods. As well as being a staple ingredient in baking, they can also be the star of the show and cooked in so many ways.

We previously reported how a chef makes poached eggs "perfect every time".

As well as sharing his industry method, he highlighted that you should always use the freshest eggs at room temperature for poaching.

If you are boiling eggs straight from the fridge, you should add 30 seconds to your cooking time.

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