How to Cook Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs For Easter

This is important: Stop whatever it is you're doing; hold the phone; bar the door. This changes everything.

Patch went all out in scouring the land in search of the best advice on egg hard-boiling technique, a necessary precursor before dying eggs in time for Easter.

That exhaustive search for that egg guru (because we have your back, always) ended in our East Coast bureau, where noted chef Michele Wieser outlined her preferred method.

Side note: Wieser is not only an accomplished chef (she's known in the Tri-Valley as "Chef Shell the Dinner Belle"), but a mom as well. So she's doubly qualified to dispense this important insight into preparing perfectly hard-boiled eggs.

She knows many things, and her advice on this matter should be heeded. Again, she knows things. Here's her technique:

• Put eggs in pot and cover with water.
• Add a tablespoon of baking soda to water.
• Put stove on high until water starts to boil and then start your timer for 13 minutes.
• Remove eggs from pot and immediately place in ice water bath until cool enough to peel.

The result: Egg-ceptional hard boiled eggs (excuse the pun). No need to crack open a recipe book (sorry again), and that's no yolk (again, apologies).

The American Egg Board (yes, it's a thing) reports the average person ate 24 eggs last Easter.

Another egg fun fact: To make eggs easier to peel, the Egg Council (yes, that is also a thing) recommends using eggs that are about 7 to 10 days old when hard boiling.

Another eggxiting (sorry) story related to eggs was aired by NPR a couple of years back in a broadcast that has ongoing reverberations to this day: Americans are almost alone in reflexively chilling their eggs. People from other countries leave their eggs out in the open, alongside the onions and potatoes.

"We Americans, along with the Japanese, Australians and Scandinavians, tend to be squeamish about our chicken eggs, so we bathe them and then have to refrigerate them," the NPR story states. Why? Spoiler alert: It has to do with fear of salmonella, primarily.

But read the NPR story for yourself here. You've got some down time; give it a read.

Of course, we can't end a story about eggs without touching on the polarizing white vs. brown eggs global debate. In many parts of the world, the brown shell is the preferred vehicle for the tasty contents within. Americans and Canadians prefer white eggs, while Argentines and the Dutch have no preference (they sound like cool, laid back people).

A 38-country survey by the International Egg Commission (again, yes, this is another actual thing in our world) found the Irish, French, Czechs, Hungarians, Portuguese, Nigerians and Brits opt for the brown egg. Finns, and Indians join the Americans and Canadians is preferring white shells.

Happy Easter, everyone, whatever your egg color preference might be (we don't judge). Happy egg boiling as well.

>>> Photo via Morgufile

Do you have any tips for hard boiling eggs? Any other interesting egg fun facts? Tell us in the comment section. We really want to know. We're interested.