Cooking tips

Everyone has to start somewhere! If you’re a total beginner and cooking eggs for the first time, we have some useful tips to get you on the road to chef stardom. Eggs are easy to cook, but there are a few things to keep in mind when setting out for the first time.

Below, we have covered some simple cooking terms for you to get used to as well as some advice on how to peel, prepare and cook your eggs so that they turn out just the way you want, every time.

Cooking terms

Firstly, let's look at some common cooking terms you might come across! 

Eggcellent tips

  • If you struggle to peel the shell from hard boiled eggs, it's usually because they are too fresh! Eggs peel more easily when they are a few days old. Try using the back of a teaspoon handle to peel the egg. Simply insert between the egg white and shell – easy!
  • To prevent eggs cracking in boiling water, make a small pin prick in the shell at the rounded end to allow the steam to escape.

  • If you want to check if an egg is hard-boiled, spin the cooked egg on a clear surface (making sure it cannot fly off onto the floor). If it wobbles it is still raw, if it spins easily it is hard boiled.

  • To separate your egg yolk from white, get two small bowls, crack the egg in half, tip the yolk into one half of the cracked egg (taking care to hold it over one of the bowls) and the egg white will automatically fall into the bowl below. By switching the egg yolk from one half of the cracked egg shell to the other, the rest of the egg white will fall into the bowl below. You can then put the separated yolk into the other clean bowl.

  • One simple test of freshness is to place an egg in water. Generally, if the egg is stale it will float and, if it sinks, it is fresh. This is because as the egg gets older, the size of the air sac increases, making the egg float.