The Perfect Hard Boiled Egg

After reading Jim's post on Facebook this morning about his recent experience cooking hard boiled eggs, I decided to let Google lead me to the best way to cook them. I typed in, 

"The perfect way to hard boil eggs"

My answer appeared in 0.59 seconds and there were 214,000,000 results. Hmm........

I decided the response time was impressive and the result count, while not astronomical, indicated this issue is one with many opinions that when discussed will result in possibly heated debate. Hard core kitchen folk can be unwavering about cooking anything.

Of course when compared to googling "Trump", there is no comparison. That took Google  0.85 seconds to respond with 843,000,000 results. If Donald gets wind of the fact that his name only drummed up a paltry 843,000,000 results, I am sure he will try to strong arm and shame Google into bumping the count to over a billion just like he has done with his financial wealth claims and election tallies. Nothing makes a man feel better about himself than lying about the size of anything he has on his person or the number of votes he knows he really deserved in an election. 

This is to be expected. The planet is more interested in the stupid, the inane, and useless information like the madness that swirls around Trump than they are about such serious, life changing stuff like cooking the perfect hard boiled egg. Having finally purged Trump from front and center in my mind, creating the perfect hard boiled egg has more value to me than reading about a wannabe despot who cheats at golf.

So, of the 214,000,000 million hits, the first page is supposed to have the best answers. The number one response claims to be the best, but I don't know. Seems to me that with hard boiled eggs, it might be possible to create the perfect hard boiled egg a number of ways. But the one thing the good recipes all call for is cooling the eggs thoroughly before trying to peel them. 

But then a new questions arises. What is the best way to peel an egg? 

Okay okay, I have definitely dropped down a rabbit hole here. A hole made up of silly questions with millions of answers. When I googled how to peel an egg ................... in 0.46 seconds I had 43,400,000 results that brought me back to .......... Yeah, that's right, how to hard boil an egg.

Help, I am trapped in an ovum and egged into a many egg layered horror house that is an endless loop with no set solution, just a multitude of opinions that may be right, with some more right-er than others. 

All this playing on Google reminds me of when I first found Google before they were the 800 pound gorilla they became. I was fascinated by how fast and how many results I could find regarding the wackiest minutia. I was reminded of my time trying to read the whole World Book Encyclopedia as kid after my parents purchased it when I was seven or eight. I got to "M" before my interest finally petered out. But over the ensuing years I often would pull a volume down open it up to anywhere and begin reading. I learned a lot doing that. I have done the same with Google.

And finally, because my head aches from reading so many different takes on boiling an egg, I offer up my wife's surefire method to cook that elusive perfect hard boiled egg. Not sure what the baking powder does. I assume it is just more of her VooDoo Magic.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ..........................................

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The first three tunes I checked out tunes with "eggs" playing some part in the song, well, they all were excellent in a range of differing ways.

The first one was "Egg Man", by The Beastie Boys. I am not much of a fan of Rap / Hip Hop. But some I like. Of all the earlier Rap I listened to,  I liked the Beastie Boys and Ice-T the most.

Next up was a fine Benny Goodman tune, "Egg Head". His clarinet playing still gives me the chills.

And finally, of all of them, by far the best one is "Eggs and Sausage", by Tom Waits. His lyrics, his voice, and his piano playing; Hell, the whole package. There is a reason Tom is Legend. This song took me back to those late nights spent in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures in college. When the night had played itself out and I was headed back to the barn, I always felt an obligation, a pull on the steering wheel that would invariably deposit me into the parking lots of all night eateries that existed in Flashing Neon Greasy Glitterness on my scattered routes home. ......... Yeah, Tom catches the feeling of so many inebriated people sharing some time filling their pie holes before they went their separate ways to lay their heads down for the night.

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Image at top - "Humpty Dumpty did not fall", by Richard Gerhard