When the cafe opened two weeks ago, we featured egg salad as our first special.  A few of you, observing that the only eggs that can be obtained off the farm these days are usually only a couple hours old, wondered how we managed to successfully boil and peel them to make the salad.  The trick is to know how to boil a fresh pasture-raised egg properly, so that it will peel without falling apart and taste delicious, bursting with the flavor of a bright-yellow, creamy yolk, surrounded by a soft and yielding egg white. I spent a lot of time working with my food editor, southern food guru Damon Lee Fowler, experimenting with farm fresh eggs when I wrote Long Way on a Little, and here is the method that we found works best:

Cover your eggs with one inch of water, put the lid on the pot, and bring to a full boil, then lower the heat and simmer for one minute.

Turn off the heat and allow the eggs to rest for 8-10 minutes for gas and induction cooktops, and 4-5 minutes for electric cooktops.

Drain off the water, then crack each egg and hold it under cold running water. Put them in a bowl of cold water for five minutes, then drain them off and refrigerate them for 12-24 hours before peeling. This added chill time makes all the difference when peeling your eggs the next day.  Looking for the egg salad recipe we used?  I’ll get to that…