Tips, tricks or hacks.

I shared on another thread about getting as much juice as possible from a Lime - not only do I roll them around the counter under the heel of my palm, but then I tried microwave for about 15 seconds on high (1200W) - I got TWICE as much juice as just rolling it about!
 
I expect experienced bakers know better than this idea, but I'm a bit of a noob with doughs and stuff.

When I use my mixer to make pizza dough, it leaves the mixer and utensils covered in sticky dough which is a pain to clean off. Once time I got lazy and left it overnight and in the morning the dough residue had all dried up and it just flaked off easily when I scraped it with a spatula. It made the cleaning a lot easier!
 
Once time I got lazy and left it overnight and in the morning the dough residue had all dried up and it just flaked off easily when I scraped it with a spatula. It made the cleaning a lot easier!
What I usually do is just toss in a bit of flour, maybe two or three teaspoons, and rub it around the bowl - it pulls the dough residue right off. Works for your hands, too.
 
I kept seeing these kitchen gadget thingys to help with hard boiling an Egg and it being easier to peel.
Basically, it makes a small prick in the shell prior to boiling ... $19.95 thank you very much!

WELL!
I took a straight pin from my sewing basket and oh so carefully made a small pin hole in the "fat" end of the Egg.
I was assuming that's what this whatchamacallit did, so ... :woot:
IMG_5147.JPG

WOW WOW WOW!!!
The shell peeled nicely away with no [edit-lose] loss of whites involved!
It's just too bad that I was making Egg Salad and not Deviled Eggs
:laugh:
 
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$20 for an egg piercer is highway robbery . . .
ours was a (free) party favor from a "home sales party" of something . . .
used an ice pick for dozens of years . . .

the air sac is in the big end - rare exceptions occur. piercing allows the internal pressure to escape, so if there's any flaw/crack in the shell it doesn't goop all over the pan.
but the key to peeling is an ice water bath immediately out of the boiling water.
these "peel" in essentially two pieces....
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it has been 'widely' reported that steaming - not boiling - fresh eggs works.
steaming apparently also produces better results using "old" for some people than boiling.

"the world wide web of bad information" has "expert opinions" on "how old should an egg be" before they peel cleanly.
those "expert opinions" vary from 3 days to 3 weeks, so apparently one has to remain flexible.... (g)

for USA types, eggs with the USDA Grade A seal:
(a) USDA does not require a sell by or use by open date; only (the usual coded) pack date
(b) for words implying "sell by" - that date is 30 days from pack date
(c) for words implying "use by" - that date is 42 days from pack date
(d) eggs can be laid and kept in storage for many days to weeks before inspection&packing . . .
(e) it is not illegal to rewash/re-inspect/repack eggs that have gone "out of date"

there are many conclusions and inferences one can draw from the above factoids.
 
it has been 'widely' reported that steaming - not boiling - fresh eggs works.
steaming apparently also produces better results using "old" for some people than boiling.
The internet is awash with a mixture of crap, rubbish and truth. With first hand experience (admittedly only 8 years of it mind you), I know it makes no difference to eggs very recently lain.

The main issue is that the egg is lain with a very small air sac, so this temperature difference affecting the air sac is more problematic the smaller the air sac is. Laws of physics come it to play. The smaller the air sac, the less ability to expand or compress without breaking the shell.

As an egg ages, the air sac grows in size (hence the float test for freshness). The larger the air sac, the more space there is inside the egg to accommodate change in air pressure inside the egg as it heats up.

Streaming still takes the egg to more or less the same temperature to cook. It just takes longer to get to that temperature than boiling water does.

Plus the main issue when trying to peel a very freshly lain (and some specific chooks eggs) is that the white adheres to the shell which has nothing to do with the size of the air sac, but more to do with the contents of the egg itself. It doesn't matter how you cook them in the shell at this point, they still don't peel cleanly or easily. So typically we use these eggs for meals needing eggs out of the shell if we can (such as pancakes). However, even that fails when the egg of specific chooks doesn't behave in the typical manner, such as the ones we had last night which were poached. We've noticed repeatedly, that her whites don't stick to her yolks. The 2 separate in the pan whilst cooking. Other chooks' eggs behave normally. But I guess most people don't know the chooks that lay their eggs, and if they do, fewer know which chook laid which egg which is something we can tell because of the mixed flock we have.
 
"the world wide web of bad information" has "expert opinions" on "how old should an egg be" before they peel cleanly.
those "expert opinions" vary from 3 days to 3 weeks, so apparently one has to remain flexible.
Fortunately, I'm free of all that faff. I buy my eggs in the local store and have absolutely no idea whatsoever when they were laid. When I get them home, they all go into the egg basket , outside of the fridge.
We eat a lot of eggs, so they never spend more than a week without being consumed.
Since I'm the absolute opposite of a mathematical genius, I would probably drop dead from an apoplexy if I had to work out how old they were. :hyper: :hyper: :):):)
 
as eggs age, more CO2 comes out of the white - a migrates to the 'air sac'
that affects how 'firm/high/ is the yolk' and how 'watery' is the white.
so "air sac" is not the only parameter.

piercing the 'air sac' has no more effect than adding salt/baking soda/lemon juice/vinegar/etc etc etc to the water.

a quite viable theory to cold shocking the eggs . . . when removed from the boiling water / steam the egg continues to "cook" and gives off water vapor. that water vapor condenses inside but on the egg membrane due to the ice water 'bath' - creating a fluid film lubricity to peeling them.
(multiple membranes, diagram available on request . . . )
 
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