The Perfect Hard Boiled Egg

Bedeviled by dark rings around your hard boiled eggs? Do you fear judgement from your epicurian cohorts? Fear no more, friends. Fear no more.

Put a dozen eggs in a regular sauce pan and cover them with cold water with about an inch of water above the eggs. Put the uncovered pan on your stove over high heat until the water starts to boil. Starts to boil ... not boils like a big pot of pasta boil and not boil like there's only a couple of air bubbles on the bottom of the pan. Think of something in between those two things. Like Al Gore.

Now here's the trick: Water started boiling? Good. Take the pan off the heat completely, cover it and let it sit for exactly 13 minutes. No more heat. No lifting the lid to peek. (They're eggs in hot water. What are you expecting to see?) At the end of the 13 minutes, drain the hot water and *immediately* run cold water over the eggs. Add some ice if you're feeling gourmet. Anything to get the heat out of the eggs pronto.

And you'll have a hard boiled egg Martha Stewart would pat you on the back for. Of course she should ... it's her recipe in the first place. Well, okay. Probably some poor, harried staff member's recipe. But she's got all the muscle in that operation, so don't challenge her when she's patting you on the back. Just smile and say, "I couldn't have done it without you, Martha." She likes that kind of thing.