Smart Kitchen Tip: How to Hard-Boil Eggs in the Oven

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Last week, someone I follow on Instagram raved about a new foolproof technique she’d discovered for hard-boiling eggs. Instead of boiling them in water on the stove, she tried baking them in the oven. Thirty minutes later, she had a batch of perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs; the shells, she said, slid off in almost one piece. Interesting.

Now, I know hard-boiling eggs on the stovetop isn’t particularly difficult. And I know using older eggs, instead of fresh ones, makes the shells come off more easily. And I know boiling them in water takes way less time than this baking method.

But. Have you ever needed to hard boil, say, a dozen eggs at once, perhaps for a recipe or a week’s worth of lunches? And you found that boiling all 12 eggs at once resulted in a lot of shells that cracked mid-boil? It’s definitely happened to me, which is why I think this baking method, whereby each egg is separated individually  in a muffin tin (no risk of collision-induced cracking!), is so brilliant.

I took an informal poll at our staff meeting this morning and discovered that no one had heard of this hard-boiling technique, so I figured at least some of you haven’t either. Check it out, then stow it somewhere in your mind for safe keeping. I guarantee this will come in handy eventually.