At some point during the life of an average man – and assuming the average man does a little cooking – it will become necessary to boil an egg. Boiling an egg is not rocket science. You put the egg in some boiling water, give it about ten minutes and you have yourself a hard-boiled egg.
Hard-boiled eggs are useful in dishes like deviled eggs, which are really not all that appetizing unless the egg has been boiled first. This average man tried deviled eggs without hard-boiling (I forgot which eggs had been boiled) and the results were not good.
Boiling an egg is relatively easy for the average man. Peeling a hard-boiled egg is a different story.
On occasion, when an egg has been boiled, it becomes so pissed off at what has just happened that it refuses to let go of the eggshell. Rather, the egg secretes some kind of internal epoxy, which makes peeling the shell neatly from the egg an impossibility.
In cases like this, a hammer is first used to break through the shell, then a chisel is employed to dislodge the contents. When an egg behaves this way after boiling, a platter of deviled eggs is not very appetizing. It ends up looking like a white and yellow landfill on a plate.
Martha Stewart says if you use eggs that aren’t fresh, they will peel easily after they have been boiled. Martha may know when a particular hen laid the egg in the carton she is considering, but this average man has no clue as to the age of a particular egg in the dairy compartment. He assumes that they couldn’t have been there that long, or they would have been marked down or something – and you hardly ever see an egg that has been marked down.
I suppose the solution to this dilemma is to plan ahead about ten days, buy the eggs, put them in the bottom of the refrigerator and try not to forget they are there, lest green, sulfuric fumes emerge from the depths of your Kenmore appliance.
So, bottom line: If you’re thinking about boiling and peeling an egg fresh out of the carton, try not to piss it off.