How To Hard Boil Eggs The Right Way

If you overcook an egg when boiling it, it gets a sulfuric taste and dark green ring around the yolk. Yechh! Peeling eggs are much harder if they are farm fresh! Eggs a few days old are best, your supermarket's eggs are probably a few days old when you buy them. If you absolutely must use eggs hatched the same day you plan to hard boil them then steam for 20 minutes instead of boiling. They should be easier to peel that way, if they still aren't put in the fridge for a day and they should be fine.

Preparing perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs are a snap if you follow these simple steps:

1. Put eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water.
2. Set heat on high and let water slowly come to a boil.
3. When water is at a hard boil remove pan from heat and let sit for 12 minutes.
4. Cool by pouring cold water into the saucepan or by setting the eggs on ice.
5. Store in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

Sweet Plantain

You may have seen this dish called "platanos" or "platanos maduros". Platanos means plantain, but maduros means mature. This is because the plantain are very ripe, maybe even over ripe when you make this dish. Don't be fooled for recipes that call for sugar, yellow plantains, cooked correctly are sweet enough to serve for dessert. 

Ingredients

2 yellow plantain

2 tbsp butter

1 tbsp oil

Cut plaintains in half lengthwise.

Cut plantain pieces into smaller pieces.

If I'm cooking other components of the dinner I put the plantains in a bowl and cover with a damp paper towel to keep it from going brown. 

When you're ready to fry heat oil and butter in a frying pan until the butter is bubbling. Add in plantain.

Cook each side for about 4 minutes on medium heat, turning each piece around every so often to make sure it's not burning. The sugar in the plantain can be so sweet, or burn so bad.

When the plantain is browned on both sides remove from pan carefully as they will be so tender and fragile. It's best to use a spatula to remove from oil.

Serve warm. Feeds 4

American Style Bacon

Bacon and eggs are the classic American breakfast. First you make this, then you make our recipe for perfect scrambled eggs. Put those two together and the result is a very satisfied tummy.  That little teaspoon of oil is the difference between uneven amateur bacon, and perfect restaurant style American bacon. While bacon is usually made from side and back cuts of pork, in the United States, it is almost always prepared from the belly of the pig ( and is thus referred to as "streaky", "fatty", or "American style" outside of the US and Canada).

Ingredients

1/4 lb bacon
1 teaspoon oil

Put the teaspoon of oil in a spacious frying pan and set the heat to medium high.

Lay your bacon out flat. Now cut it in half for easier handling in the hot pan.

When oil is HOT add in bacon one piece at a time, be sure to not overcrowd the pan, there should be one layer of bacon in the pan. Overlapping pieces make for chewy uncooked sections of fat in the bacon.

As bacon sizzles, flip over pieces as the underside gets brown and crispy.

When bacon is a lovely brown all over, remove from oil and place on paper towels to drain.

Serve warm, feeds two people but I could easily eat all that bacon myself.

A popular quote on the mania around American bacon follows:

"There is: bacon ice cream; bacon-infused vodka; deep-fried bacon; chocolate-dipped bacon; bacon-wrapped hot dogs filled with cheese; brioche bread pudding smothered in bacon sauce; hard-boiled eggs coated in mayonnaise encased in bacon — called, appropriately, the 'heart attack snack'; bacon salt; bacon doughnuts, cupcakes and cookies; bacon mints; 'baconnaise', which Jon Stewart described as 'for people who want to get heart disease but are too lazy to actually make bacon'; Wendy's 'Baconnator' — six strips of bacon mounded atop a half-pound cheeseburger — which sold 25 million in its first eight weeks; and the outlandish 'bacon explosion' — a barbecued meat brick composed of 2 pounds of bacon wrapped around 2 pounds of sausage."

— Arun Gupta

Picnic Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

6 eggs
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp sweet pickle relish
salt and pepper to taste
paprika for garnish

1. Boil eggs until hard-boiled. Set aside in ice until cool enough to handle.
2. Peel eggs and slice in half lengthwise, scoop out yellow yolk and add to a bowl.
3. To the bowl with the yolks, add the mayonnaise, mustard, relish, salt, and pepper.
4. Combine until very smooth.
5. Scoop or use a pastry bag to fill the empty "cups" of the egg whites.
6. Dust with paprika and serve!

Serves 6 people.

This dish can easily be complimented with our other Simple Picnic Foods recipes.