Facts To Know About Hard-Boiled Eggs

Facts To Know About Hard-Boiled Eggs

There’s arguably no food more versatile than the egg. It can be cooked in so many ways that the 100 folds in a chef’s hat are said to symbolize the 100 ways you can cook an egg, though there are at least 101 ways by our count. Perhaps the most versatile preparation is the hard-boiled egg. Unlike soft-boiled eggs, which are only partially cooked resulting in a runny yolk, hard-boiled eggs are cooked all the way through. Delicious on their own, hard-boiled eggs are also the star of (or at minimum the best supporting actor for) dishes like deviled eggs, Cobb salad, and egg salad sandwiches.

While you may already know the difference between a hard-boiled egg and a soft-boiled egg, as well as how to cook the perfect hard-boiled egg with a creamy yet fully set yolk, there’s plenty you likely don’t know about this superfood. From their humble beginnings and nutritional profile to all the tricks for peeling them, here are facts you should know about hard-boiled eggs.

People Love Hard-Boiled Eggs

n 2022, the food blog Pantry & Larder compiled Google Trends results from all over the United States to determine the most popular egg-cooking preparation in America and, perhaps surprisingly, the boiled egg came out on top. To get the data, P&L looked at the most-searched egg styles from state to state and compared that with the national average. In 17 states, the most searched egg style was the boiled egg (the next closest was the poached egg, with 10 states searching it more than any other style).

To break things down even further, the blog looked at the trends differentiating between hard-boiled and soft-boiled eggs in all 50 states and found that the hard-boiled egg was the clear favorite with 30 states preferring it (based on search frequency). There are certainly some limitations to this analysis since we can’t get into the minds of Americans during their Google searches (and it’s possible that everyone already knows how to make the best scrambled eggs or fried eggs). Still, that many searches for hard-boiled eggs certainly means a lot of people are making and consuming them for more than just Easter and Thanksgiving.

Hard-Boiled Eggs Are A Quick Source Of Protein

Protein is an essential nutrient not only for your muscles (just ask any bodybuilder), but also for building healthy bones, cartilage, and even skin. While many of us may eat some form of meat as our biggest source of protein, hard-boiled eggs are also a great source of the important nutrient and are much more portable than some other sources like meat and fish. One large egg contains 6.3 grams of protein and is considered a complete protein because it contains all nine of the essential amino acids humans are unable to make in their own bodies (we can make the other 11). While there are other portable sources of protein like nuts, seeds, and even vegetables and whole grains, those sources of protein don’t contain all nine of the essential amino acids and are therefore considered incomplete proteins.