"Peter Aitken" > wrote in message
. com...
> "Nancy Young" > wrote

>>> > The green part is from overcooking. Put the eggs in cold water,
>>> > bring to a boil, keep covered and remove from the heat. After
>>> > 20 minutes, put the eggs in ice water to cool.

>>> I've always been dubious of this method -- I was raised believing
>>> that you had to keep 'em boiling for 20 minutes, and that the green
>>> resulted from not cooling them fast enough when done cooking. But
>>> I need to make devilled eggs for Easter Sunday, so this morning I
>>> tried Nancy's method (and followed Sheldon's advice about keeping
>>> the eggs in a single layer). I cooked an extra egg and ate it just
>>> now -- WONDERFUL! None of them cracked, fully cooked, and not a
>>> hint of green!

I did some bad snipping, J*ni. Sorry.

> I am very doubtful about both of these explanations for green yolks
> (overcooking and not cooling fast enought). I know it is accepted wisdom
> but I have had several experiences that lead me to believe that something
> about the egg itself plays a large role.
>
> For example, my standard practice is to bring eggs and water to a boil,
> cover, let sit off heat for 20 min then immediately put under fast running
> cold water for at least 5 minutes. Usually this works fine but now and
> then I get a green yolk.

Perhaps it's smaller than the others.

> Same thing when I simmer for 10 min and then cool. The real clincher was
> when I cooked 4 eggs from the same carton together, cooled them together,
> and three were without a trace of green and the fourth had very bad green
> on the yolk. How can you blame this on cooking time or cooling speed?

I've boiled dozens of eggs in this manner with no mishap. I don't know why
you have had a problem. I know I was raised on green ringed hard boiled
eggs, I have managed to avoid that since I tried the new (to me) method
for ages and I'm happy with it.

nancy