Can I hardboil eggs without the shells?

[chrishel]

I have a lot of quail eggs and they are a pain to peel. I just want to make egg salad with them, but is there a way to hard cook the eggs without the shells? Since I'm chopping them up, they don't need to be pretty. Is hard poaching my only option?

I've looked at the Eggies contraption, but they sound like more trouble than they are worth.

There are about 7 quail eggs to 1 large chicken egg, so you can understand my desire to peel first. It takes me about 5 minutes to peel a dozen and I've had lots of practice!

[ipsedixit]

That's called poaching.

[jujuthomas]

saw an idea for making baked hard cooked eggs online... a few times... the current one on pinterest says put eggs in muffin tins, bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes.

disclaimer... I have not tried this method and I'm not sure if it would work for quail eggs. :)

[Sharuf]

Why are you using quail egg$$$ for egg salad? That's like using tenderloin for hamburger.

[chrishel]

I raise the quail for eggs and meat in my garage. Our house isn't zoned for chickens but quail are gamebirds so I have a $10 license and since they are caged, I can keep them in the garage and no one really knows. Shhh...don't tell! Anyway, they are pretty neat pets.

I get about 17-19 eggs a day. The yolk to white ratio is higher than chicken eggs, so baking with them can be tricky. I've used 7 quail eggs and 2 chicken eggs for cakes with pretty good results. Otherwise, they come out much heavier and richer than normal. Not a bad thing as long as you change your expectations.

We got a pair of quail egg scissors which makes breaking raw eggs open much easier, so using them is a lot easier also.

[FrankJBN]

I've worked with quail eggs some, why peel them at all?

Boil them, cut them in half and scoop out of the shell halves with a butter knife.

[todao]

Wish I had thought of that. Good idea .....

[todao]

Inasmuch as you're not particular about how they look, keep in mind that an egg is "hard boiled" when cooked in hot water, whether or not it's in its shell while it's cooked. Poaching an egg until the yolk is hard is the same as hard boiling it; just a different approach. Therefore, it would be perfectly correct to break them all into hot water and cook until yolks are hard before turning them out into a strainer, allowing them to cool and chopping them in an egg salad.
If that's somehow undesirable, try cracking them into a small heat proof glass and putting the glass in boiling water until they're cooked hard.

[chrishel]

I will have to try poaching them. I haven't had much experience poaching and so far I've been really good at making egg drop soup instead! Practice makes perfect and we have a new stove so I will hopefully, have more control over the water.

[jjjrfoodie]

LOL.

Aside from Eggies (to which I have a dozen and hate hate hate them as they are a solution in search of a problem), quails eggs prove to be a lesson in frustration, thus I use them raw or lightly poached then submerged quickly in an ice water bath for sushi dishes and the like. Fried is also easy, Hard boiled I have never had luck with.

Might want to do a French style salad with poached quail eggs and a nice basalmic vinegar and go the chicken egg route for hard boiled eggs.

While I;m a patient man, I do have my limits. Hehehehehe.

[ferret]

My wife bought the Eggies because she wanted a quick way of making hard-boiled egg whites only (from whole eggs or a carton). Works fine for that, less so as an alternative to plain old hard boiled eggs.

[calliope_nh]

I had to Google Eggies. They look like plastic egg coddlers. I have some porcelain ones with birds on them.

[sunshine842]

if you break the shell, they're poached. The only way to hard-boil them is in the shell.

For quail eggs, let them cool, then gently roll the eggs on a paper towel to crush the shells (GENTLY- it's far too easy to smush the whole thing)

Drop them into a pan of *cold* water. Let them sit in the cold water while you work.

After a couple of minutes, peel away -- the water gets under the shells and the membranes, and the peels lift right off.

I can do 4 dozen in about 10 minutes with this method.

[chrishel]

Thanks! I will have to try this. Currently, I put ice on them while hot, then roll them and peel under running water. Works great for the first 50 or so, but then they are too cool and the "egg shrinking from the shell" effect goes away. Either that it just feels harder to peel after 50...haha!

[sunshine842]

incidentally, the only one not happy about this discovery is the dog -- he gets the eggs that were too damaged to use....and there aren't nearly as many of them anymore.

I also keep a bird-beak parer on hand -- once in a while the membranes are a little hard to tear -- the bird-beak can be kept in one hand and used as needed.