Being the lunch-hater that I am (just making it, I really like eating lunch. I wish restaurant food were free and always healthy and that it either came to my house automatically or I could go sans toddler), my default go-to lunch at home has become an open-faced egg salad sandwich like Sara shared not too long ago on the OBB Fit Club Instagram account. Which brings me to kind of a funny/embarrassing story about middle school romance and that time our middle school went skiing and I asked my friend to ask my 8th grade “boyfriend” (because in 8th grade, all communication took place via friends and notes in lockers) what his favorite sandwich was so I could lure him into the woods with a romantic picnic lunch. Turns out he didn’t actually love egg salad, he was just saying that to be funny, and that having never actually talked in real life led to a really awkward egg salad snow picnic. I’m so glad social media didn’t exist in 1995.
Anyway.
If it gets to be lunchtime and I don’t have eggs boiled, I’ll resort to eating pieces of cut up ham and a GoGo Squeeze because when all else fails, eat like a 2-year-old. So I like to have about 6 handy.
The problem is, I’m terrible at boiling eggs. Sara has this fantastic tutorial on how to boil the perfect egg, every time. And if you follow the instructions, yes, they’ll be perfect. Every time. My problem is that I get distracted while the water is coming to a boil, so by the time the water is boiling, I’m not sure how long it’s been, and then I always forget about them again when the 20 minutes is up, so I always end up with overcooked eggs because I can’t pay attention long enough to get my eggs right.
So when I started hearing about baking eggs in the oven instead of boiling, I was intrigued. And I tried it. And they were indeed perfect. And they peel like a dream. Don’t be scared by the fact that when you peel them, the shells smell vaguely of burnt hair…no one ever accused hard-boiled eggs of smelling like a dream, this is just a new unpleasant smell, and the eggs themselves taste fantastic.
You’re going to need muffin tins and some eggs (really, as many as you want and as many muffin tins you can fit on a single rack in your oven).
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and place the oven rack in the center. Place an egg in each well of the muffin tin.
When the oven is heated, place the muffin tin (or tins–you can make as many as you can fit in your oven) into the oven and bake for 30 minutes.
When the eggs have about 5 minutes remaining, fill a bowl with ice water.
When the eggs have baked for 30 minutes, remove from the oven and carefully transfer each egg to the bowl of ice water and allow to chill for 10-15 minutes. Store the eggs in their shells until you’re ready to eat them.
That shell slipped off like a dream. A hard-boiled, sulfur-scented dream.
And look at that buttery-yellow yolk. Perfection.
Oven Baked Hard Boiled Eggs
Description
If you have a hard time getting your hard-boiled eggs to turn out right, these oven baked hard boiled eggs will turn out perfectly every time!
Ingredients
- Eggs (purchased about 1 week ago or longer)
- Muffin Tin
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and place the oven rack in the center. Place an egg in each well of the muffin tin. When the oven is heated, place the muffin tin (or tins–you can make as many as you can fit in your oven) into the oven and bake for 30 minutes.
- When the eggs have about 5 minutes remaining, fill a bowl with ice water. When the eggs have baked for 30 minutes, remove from the oven and carefully transfer each egg to the bowl of ice water and allow to chill for 10-15 minutes. Store the eggs in their shells until you’re ready to eat them.
Questions & Reviews
I clicked on the link at the beginning to find the hard-boiled egg recipe using boiling water, but the link only goes to the search bar. I love that tutorial-it’s perfect! I just can’t remember it off the top of my head right now. I tried the link from the tutorial page that compares this method vs instapot, but it didn’t work either. Help please!
Hi Teagon, I’m SO sorry about that! I am re-doing those egg posts, and they unintentionally got removed. I’ll be returning them shortly!
Technically, these are hard-cooked eggs, not hard-boiled, since they haven’t been boiled. 😉
I love the idea of baking eggs, will definitely be trying it. Thanks! Oh, and here’s an easy way to peel eggs: peel a small hole on top, and a big one on the bottom. Then, you blow the egg out from the small hole!
Your sense of humor kills me! I have an egg-cooker (steamer), so I was only mildly interested in this post, but when I saw that you had a story to go along with it, I knew the post would be good. I can always count on you to make me laugh! 🙂 ‘sulfer-scented dream’….. you are awesome.
Well, this 68 year old granny is simply bowled over! As you promised, the eggs came out beautifully cooked and peeled easily. Who knew??? Thank you so much for this “recipe” which I’ll be using from now on.
Such good tips on baked eggs. Gotta try it! 🙂
Tried this yesterday and followed recipe exactly. Today when I peeled one for my husbands lunch it was done on one side, but the other side the white was a little runny. Nasty, but he said he would eat in anyway. I peeled 2 more and they were fine. Weird. I think I will try the steaming method. We have our own chickens and I have not found a good method so they will peel without taking half the white with it.
Well, I have never heard of this before! Each day you learn something new. I see a lovely ceramic muffin tin being used, I wonder Is it possible to use a metal muffin tin, since that could affect the process? But thanks so much for this great tip!
I had no idea there were so many ways not to boil a boiled egg! I can only eat my eggs scrambled (or in cakes and cookies!), but my kids like to take boiled eggs in their lunch and I could cook a lot more at once this way. Thanks for the instructions.
For some reason even that didn’t work for me but I finally found a way. I use an electric pressure cooker and cook the eggs at low pressure for 6 minutes, natural release (about 10 minutes) and place in ice water. And you can use fresh eggs. I found this on Hip Pressure Cooking.
This has become my new go to way to cook hard boiled eggs! I love it because much like yourself I get distracted and forget all about whatever may or may not be boiling on the stove 😉
Steam your eggs. Best kept culinary secret!
Awesome, I am so trying this. My last batch at Easter was a disaster. Never leave your husband in charge of peeling hard-boiled eggs while you to go to a wedding shower.
For the most part, I’m anti-single-use-kitchen-gadget; HOWEVER, the Egg Genie (http://amzn.com/B0026RXLGU) is the stuff! We were given one as a housewarming gift and laughed at how we’ll never use it. Fast forward several years and we use it all.the.time. You get perfect hard-boiled eggs in about 20 minutes. It also poaches eggs and steams vegetables. My 18mo LOVES eggs. I love that I can make as few or as many as I want without heating up the whole kitchen. Ok, gush session over. That said, my MIL uses your oven method and is a big fan. 🙂
I had the same problem with never noticing when the water boiled but I read about and have tried and LOVED this (fast and super easy) solution: steaming your eggs. They come out perfect and peel SO easily. Bring water to boil (doesn’t take long because you only need enough to steam!) then put eggs in a steamer basket over the boiling water, time for 13 minutes (more or less depending on how you like your yolk – I like mine like yours in the picture!), and then plunge into cold water. Seriously, you have to try it. We go through at least a dozen hard-boiled eggs a week. It’s changed my life. (I also go ahead and peel them all, since we will use them within a couple of days).
Steaming them IS so quick and easy. If you already have your oven heated up (say, to bake the breakfast muffins, or whatever) it might make sense to also bake a pan of eggs, but it seems like a much slower and busier process. I guess it’s good to know you CAN bake them, even if it’s not your go-to egg cooking routine! (And thanks, Kate and Sara, for all your wonderful recipes and hints!)
I do that, too! 1/4 inch of water, 9-10 minutes, ice bath, perfect eggs. I don’t have a steam basked, though, I just set my eggs in the pan. High five!
This is just a really good idea. I always want boiled eggs in my salad because as a gym teacher I need the extra protein in order to keep up with my students. But wife sometimes bursts a few eggs when she makes them stove top. Really good idea here! thanks ~ tom.