A Month-of-Eggs: Muffin Pan Easy Hard-Cooked Eggs

I know I have always allowed you to choose what February’s Month-of food will be, but eggs have never been the top dog, and I really want to do them! Back in the day, legend goes, a chef earned his toque at the end of training by demonstrating he (because it was a he) could make eggs one hundred ways. Thus the 100 pleats on old-time toques. So eggs it is! I only have to show you 29 (Leap Year) egg tips and recipes. But there will be more than that, as usual.

To reprise, I started doing the February Month-of food blogs in 2012 with soups. Loved the soups, hated how it filled my freezer! You can’t do small soup recipes easily.

In 2013, I shared more than 28 chicken recipes with you. That was more manageable for sure. Many chicken recipes can be adapted for one or two as well as large groups.

In 2014, February was the month of appetizers. I love to throw appetizer parties so that was an easy bunch of recipes to put together.

February 2015 was mini-desserts. That was fun, wasn’t it? You felt so virtuous by limiting your calorie intake! You can find all of these February recipe collections in the “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” archives.

2016 is the Year of the Egg! And, you know what? I’m not a food photographer (as last year’s photos will attest!), so I may not have a picture for every recipe. I’ll try to remember to take photos, and I’ll try to take good ones, but either of those could be a problem so no photo, or I’ll find a beautiful one from Fotolia and use it!

I want to start this month by sharing how I never hard-boil eggs anymore. Remember the icky stuff that floats out of a cracked egg as it bangs around in the pan? Not fun to clean, eh?

Actually, not even Martha Stewart hard boils eggs. She says that eggs need to be gently-boiled rather than hard-boiled. But I don’t boil them all.

At my house, we love hard cooked eggs. We eat them as a mid-morning protein snack, carry them on day hikes, make egg salad, use them in salads, eat deviled eggs, and more. They’re just darn good and a great food value for the price. And now that it’s okay to eat eggs again (in moderation), we have them more often at my house.

Especially this month, right? I think we’ll get cholesterol checks when this month is over.

So here’s what to do so you never scrub the hard water scum or broken egg white off your pans again. Get out your muffin pan. Directions for how to do this are all over the Internet.

Muffin Pan Easy Hard-Cooked Eggs

Preheat your oven to 325-350 degrees. (Use an oven thermometer to check if your oven heats to the right temperature and adjust for this recipe, if needed).

Get out an old muffin pan you were going to throw away. Fill each cup with one egg. You can cook six or twelve eggs at once with this method.

Place in oven for 30 minutes. Little bubbles might appear on the shell. No problem.

Remove from oven and put eggs into an ice bath for ten minutes or so, until they are cool. I use a large mixing bowl with lots of ice and added water.

Peel egg shells off as usual and use in your favorite recipe.

NOTE:  There will be a small dark spot where the egg rested on the bottom of the pan. Cut it off or just ignore it if making eggs salad, it won’t show.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up. Honestly? He didn’t know there was any difference. He just knows the refrigerator always has hard cooked eggs for him to grab as a snack or for part of his hiking lunch.