Hardboiled eggs are one of those things that are great to have stashed away in the fridge. They are perfect high protein snacks (they even have a built in wrapper!) and make a great breakfast on the go as well.
The not so nice part of hard-boiled eggs? The sitting / waiting for a large pot of water to boil.
As it turns out, cooking them in a rice cooker is much easier and faster too!
I first got the idea to do this when I saw an awesome post on the Digging Food blog about how to steam fresh eggs. I had no idea that you could steam eggs before I read their post.
After a little experimentation, I figured out how to make perfect “Hard-boiled” eggs in a rice cooker.
Let me walk you through how to make them…
Step 1 – Place your desired number of eggs in a heat safe bowl (ceramic or metal is fine).
I use a Tatung 10-Cup Multifunctional Cooker (the most useful piece of cooking equipment known to man). It’s a great rice cooker / steamer, and when I was in college (and living in small dorm room) I managed to make 60 tamales from scratch in one.
Step 2 – Add water. I pour about 1/2 cup of water in the bottom of the cooker before adding a rack that looks like this (you can buy it pretty inexpensively in a larger Asian grocery store like 99 Ranch).
Step 3 – Put the bowl on the rack (this ensures that your food won’t scorch on the bottom of your bowl).
Step 4 – Cover the rice cooker with the lid and turn the rice cooker on, then set your timer.
My rice cooker takes about 5 minutes until I start to see steam come out the sides of the lid. Your rice cooker make take more or less time to heat up, and it may take a little trial and error before you figure out the right amount of time to cook the eggs to your liking.
For my rice cooker (from the time you turn the rice cooker on to when you turn it off):
Soft Boiled – takes 13 minutes
“7 Minute Egg” (Like the one pictured) – takes 14 minutes
Hard-boiled – takes 20 minutes
Step 5 – Turn the rice cooker off.
Put on an oven mitt and transfer the eggs into an ice bath using tongs.
****Please be careful not to burn yourself **** The steam is pretty hot and you can use the lid of the pot to fan the steam away from you before you take the eggs out of the rice cooker.
Step 6 – Leave the eggs to rest in the ice bath for at least 30 minutes.
After this, the eggs should be pretty easy to peel. I like the keep them in the fridge unpeeled (I just like the ritual of peeling them right before I eat them) or you can peel the eggs and keep them in an airtight container in the fridge.
The most I’ve done at once is 4 eggs in one batch, and the cooking time doesn’t change if you cook 1-2 eggs or 4 at the same time.
Update – Jan 14, 2018 – I’ve found that it does make a difference what bowl you use to cook the eggs in. You want a sort of normal serving bowl and not something that’s super deep with high sides so that the steam can surround the eggs better. My preference these days is to cook 6 eggs at a time for 18 minutes (perfectly hard boiled , dunk them into ice water and then keep them in fridge for breakfast / snacking.
I hope that this helps make your breakfast / snacking / meal prep a little easier!
How do you like your eggs for breakfast?
– Elaine
