Preparation

• Take your raw eggs out of the refrigerator and put them in an appropriate sized saucepan. Don't pile the eggs on top of one another. Leave enough room for them all to sit next to one another. At the same time, don't use a large saucepan for just two eggs. A medium saucepan is perfect for two to four large eggs.

Cooking

• Fill the saucepan with just enough water to barely cover the eggs, and put the pan (uncovered) on the stove top over high heat. Once the water starts to boil rapidly, cover with a tight-fitting lid and turn off the heat. Set a timer for 12 minutes.

Peeling

• When you have just a couple minutes left on the timer, fill a bowl halfway to the top with ice and add enough cold water to rise 1 to 2 inches above the ice. Once the timer goes off, transfer the eggs, using tongs or two small spoons, into the bowl of ice water. This will immediately stop the cooking process.

  Wait one minute, then remove one egg from the ice water and bang it gently against the rim of the bowl--just hard enough to crack the shell, but not so hard that it smashes the entire side of the egg. Start peeling the egg, dipping it back into the ice water if it feels too hot to hold. The shell should slide off in two to four large chunks. Repeat for each egg.