How I Cook and Use Eggs

I have a whole system when it comes to eggs. I react mildly to egg whites, but I have no reaction at all to egg yolks, so I cook and eat primarily hard-baked eggs. I will bake the eggs in 12 muffin cups, peel off the shell, then peel off the white, and just eat the yolk. Even so, no part of the egg is wasted.

I will often eat 6 egg yolks in a sitting at the breakfast table, so most often I buy the 18-count egg carton at the grocery store. I will only buy pastured eggs, and I don't really care what brand. I buy them at Vitamin Cottage: Natural Grocer in Lafayette, CO or Alfalfa's Market in Louisville, CO.

I feed the hard-baked egg whites to my dog and put the crushed egg shells at the base of the trees in my backyard. When I peel off the eggshells from my hard-baked eggs, I place them on a plate until I have peeled all the eggs I am going to eat. I then place the egg shells into a quart plastic freezer bag and step on them with my shoe until they are all crushed. I do not yet have a produce garden in my backyard, so I anoint the bases of all the trees back there with all my used tea leaves and crushed egg shells. If you slice up the hard-baked egg whites into very small chunks they also make excellent high value training treats for most dogs.

Most often I bake all the eggs at one time and then store them in the fridge in the egg carton they came in. Here is my recipe that I use for hard-baked eggs!

Hard-Baked Eggs

Implements:

2, 12-space muffin tins, stainless steel or stoneware

1 large glass or plastic mixing bowl

ice, to halfway fill the mixing bowl

water, to 2/3 fill the mixing bowl

kitchen tongs

Ingredients:

18 pastured eggs

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 225 or 250 degrees, depending on how thoroughly you want your egg yolks cooked. I prefer mine with a little moistness in the center, so I cook mine at 225 degrees. If you live below 3,000 feet in altitude, decrease oven temperature by 25 degrees.

2. Place all 18 eggs into the muffin cups. When oven reaches the preset temperature, place muffin cups into the oven on the middle rack and bake for 30 minutes.

3. When you have 1 or 2 minutes on the oven timer, put ice and cool water in the mixing bowl. When the timer goes off, place muffin cups on the counter on top of trivets and transfer baked eggs to the mixing bowl with kitchen tongs.

4. Set kitchen timer for 10 minutes. Remove and pat dry baked eggs with a paper towel and place back into egg carton.

5. Store eggs in the egg carton in the fridge for up to a week.

#TipsandTricks #recipes