by Lois Mauk » Sat Apr 03, 2010 9:41 pm
It's probably too late for those of you fixing hard-cooked eggs for Easter Egg Hunts, but maybe you can file this away for your next batch of egg salad, tuna salad, deviled eggs, etc.
I just found out you can quickly cook eggs in the shell in your Pressure Cooker! I tried it myself this afternoon and they were perfectly done in 4 minutes after the cooker came up to full pressure.
I've got FIVE Pressure Cookers of different types and sizes, but the one I use most of the time is a stove-top Revere one that only has two settings (8# and 12#). That's the one I grabbed a little while ago to try this new technique.
I don't care for soft-cooked eggs myself, but I found a suggestion to cook the eggs for only 60 SECONDS if you want soft-cooked eggs instead of the 4 minutes for hard-cooked eggs -- after the cooker comes up to full pressure.
Give this a try! I did it today and the large eggs I fixed came out beautifully. They also peeled like a charm even though they were "new" eggs I just bought last night. (I've always heard you need to boil eggs that were at least a week old to get easy-to-peel hard-cooked eggs.)
This idea came from a pressure cooker email group I belong to.
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EASY-PEEL HARD-COOKED EGGS
These eggs are so easy to peel that sometimes the whole peel comes off in one sheet after you roll the egg with a little pressure on the counter. I'm at 1,000 feet and I have gradually reduced the 4-minute timing to 2 3/4 minutes for my stove-top Kuhn-Rikon 4-quart cooker. The eggs are a beautiful yellow throughout --- no sign of any darkness around the outside of the yolks.
You might have to play with the timing by gradually decreasing 15 seconds each time you cook eggs to see what works best in your cooker, until you get eggs with no darkness around the yolk. I started out with 4 minutes and gradually arrived at 2 3/4 minutes...works every time.
Rita
1. Place eggs in the steamer basket or on the trivet of your pressure cooker and cover completely with cold water.
2. Bring the cooker up to full pressure and cook for 4 minutes (2 3/4 minutes works best for me; see note above).
3. Quick-release the pressure under cold running water.
4. Cool eggs in ice water for 15 minutes or so, then peel.
NOTES:These eggs are "large" eggs, right out of the refrigerator. I suggest that the first time you cook them, you might want to try cooking just one egg and cook for 4 minutes. They will probably be done, perhaps even have a thin dark ring around the yolk. I didn't have a problem with a little underdone yolk if that should happen. You might have to adjust by 15 to 30 seconds or so, depending on your cooker and how fast it comes to pressure.
I have not tried cooking eggs in a digital pressure cooker. Since the quick-release feature of a digital pressure cooker takes quite a bit longer than that of a stovetop model under cold running water, you might try cooking the eggs for 3 minutes (maybe even 2 minutes) at high pressure and then use the quick-release button to release all of the pressure.