Hard Boiled Egg Holder Wire Rack

Step-by-step perfect Hard Boiled eggs with the stainless steel egg steamer rack holder for any pot – review

Product review and step-by-step guide on the hard boiled egg holder. A better way to boil eggs is through steaming eggs. If you are looking to boil an egg the traditional way, with water, visit our front page.

With this simple how to cook step-by-step guide on how to cook hard boiled eggs with a steamer rack and a product review on the rack.

Not everyone has a pot and pan set comes with a steamer, which is why we found an egg steamer that was not expensive, is light weight and small in comparison to the regular in pot steamer. Also, the egg rack can also be used to hold eggs when not cooking them, for example when coloring them as a decoration, hold hot plates off the counter top, in instapots, and great for camping, RV’ing or sailing.

This stainless steel rack, or as we used it, egg holder for boiling eggs, is easily available on Amazon, the price is around $13.00

What is great about this wire rack?

• Light weight
• Well made and strong
• Eggs fit perfectly in the holes and did not move when they were cooking
• The eggs are easy to remove when they are cooked
• Stable when sitting on the counter top or in the pot
• Stainless steel and well made
• Will hold up to 7 eggs
• Can steam 1 or more eggs at any one time
• Sits nicely in a larger pot
• Cools quickly when out of the pot
• The welds seem very secure (holding the circles in place on the rack)
• Overall width 7″ (18 cm) height 2″ (2.5cm)
• 1″ of water is all that is needed to steam the eggs
• When storing, it fits easily in any cupboard or draw, or it can be hung
• Finally, for what it is, this is cheap and a great solution if you don’t have a company manufactured steamer that came with your pots and pans

What we did not love about this wire rack

• I could not fit this rack in a smaller pan, width-wise
• It is not Teflon friendly, so it had to go into a stainless steel pot
• It was a little tricky picking it up with tongs after cooking, when it was still a little hot to touch (on searching Amazon, we discovered they have others with handles, this would still be hot to pick up in the steam but maybe better, and we will test this steamer at some time as well).

Cooking and testing

Now we put the egg holding wire rack to the test

The big question, does this egg holding steamer cook the perfect boiled egg?

Here is a step-by-step guide. Firstly, let’s talk about steaming. If you have not seen our other posts, steaming is better than boiling. The egg moves less in the pot, cooks better, whites are smooth, not rubbery and yolks are creamy. Also, the egg peels perfectly and easier. Steaming makes a better hard boiled egg than boiling an egg in water.

Just want to note, we generally boil or steam an egg with a total cook time of 13 minutes, but for this product test, we wanted a little softer boiled egg, and set the timer for 12 minutes cook time. The total time was 12 minutes to bring the water to boil and 12 minutes cook time.

Prep time. Cooking tip, it is always handy, before you begin to have everything ready before you start. This means making sure the wire egg holder rack fits in the pot, before you put water in it and turn it on to boil water.

Secondly, test the eggs, put two or three on the rack, without water and heat and see if they sit in the rack without the rack falling over or the eggs falling off. you don’t want problems when working with the heat of steam.

So, let’s begin:

Step 1 – It starts with the Pot and the Rack

Test the pot and the rack. The pot you should ideally use is stainless steel, but you can use other pots, just make sure the steel rack does not scratch a Teflon surface. You want to place the rack in the pot, and see that it will sit nicely and firmly in the pot. Remove the rack and go to step 2.

Step 2 – Add water

Place the pot on the stove, and add enough tap water to fill the pot, about 1 inch. The cooking rack is 2 inches tall, and the water should not reach the egg when the rack and the egg is in the rack, so up to 1 inch is perfect.

Step 3 – Turn up the heat

It takes approximately 12 to 13 minutes with the lid on the pot to boil the water. Put the heat on near to high. When the water boils, lower the heat to just under half or medium.

Place the lid on the pot and turn up the heat

After 3 minutes, you will start to see the steam rise and start to form water vapor on the lid

After 6 minutes the steam starts to turn into water bubbles on the lid

After 9 minutes of cook time, the water beading becomes more obvious and you see a slight movement in the water heating up in the pot

To check if the water has boiled, remove the lid

Close up view of water boiling but not enough to start cooking eggs

Replace the lid and continue to heat the water to a rolling boil

After 12 minutes of total cook time, the steam continues to rise

The water has now reached a rolling boil

Step 4 – Add The Hard Boiled Egg Holder

It is a little tricky here because steam is hot and the rack is a little difficult to place in the pan. The best way is to remove the lid when the water is boiling, take a pair of long tongs, and place the tongs within the rack holes and move the rack to the pot and place gently inside the pot. The longer the tongs the safer for you, as you want to try and avoid the steam from burning or scorching your hands.

Step 5 – Add Eggs

Again, using the long tongs to avoid being scorched with the steam, place each egg thinner side down into the egg rack.

You will notice we tried both the thinner side down and thicker side up. Really it does not matter for cooking, there is no difference in cooking an egg one way or the other. Where the real difference is will be when you peel the egg. The air bubble is typically at the fatter lower end of the egg, if you position the egg the other way, the air will try to move to the top of the egg. When you break the shell, as you will see, it is more difficult.

Also, you can cook 1 or up to 7 eggs, the same cooking time as they are all on the same level. More eggs will be a little tricky with this rack.

Step 6 – Cover and cook eggs

Cover the pot, make sure the heat is around medium and set the timer for 12, 13, 14 or 15 minutes. For this exercise, we set the timer for 12 minutes. The yolk was creamy but 1 more minute would have made for a perfect hard boiled egg. Our egg was a little soft on the inside.

Set the timer and the eggs start to cook on a medium heat

Checking on the eggs cooking

Eggs continuing to cook in steam

10 Minutes into cooking and the steam has once again risen to the top of the lid and is forming water bubbles on the lid

Step 7 – Prepare The Ice Bath

Make an ice bath. Icy cold water and ice in a pot, enough to cover the eggs. When eggs are placed in an ice bath, they stop cooking. You don’t want your eggs to keep cooking after they are removed from the pot, they will become rubbery with a grey ring

Step 8 – Time Is Up

Turn off the heat and carefully remove the lid from the pot.

Steam is very hot, and the lid will be full of water which accumulated from the steam.

As you remove the lid, take care as the hot water that is on the lid will be running back into the pot, ensure that you let the water run off the lid as much as possible so that you don’t get scolded from the water

With the tongs, remove the eggs from the rack and the pot, one by one, carefully not to scorch yourself, and place in the ice bath.

Removing the eggs one by one and placing them into the ice bath to stop the cooking

The pot and rack have time to cool as the eggs sit in the ice bath

Step 8 – The 5 Minute Cool

Leave the eggs to cool for 5 minutes, then you can put them in the refrigerator to keep for a few days or eat them as they are or in your favorite recipe.

The Results

The 12 minute hard boiled egg… Time to see the results

A few things to remember here, we had the eggs upside down and the right way up and at a 12 not 13 minute cook. 13 minutes, we have found is the perfect time for a hard boiled egg when steam cooking. Also steaming eggs hard boiled makes them easier to peel, especially when placed in iced water.

2 Ways To Easily Peel Hard Boiled Eggs

There are two ways to peel an egg, which we tried in this test

The first egg – crack and peel method

Gently crack the middle of the egg, all around the egg, with a knife to break the shell.

Then in ice water, peel the shell. The water acts as a lubricant, to help the shell come off the egg easily. Even if a little challenging to remove the shell, the water helps the egg to become slippery and the shell to come off.

The egg peeled nicely

Cut the boiled egg and see how it turned out

The second egg – roll and peel method

This is where the boiled egg is rolled round the middle then cracked at the larger end of the egg where there is an air pocket.

Roll harder around the middle of the egg to make sure tge shell is cracking to allow the water to seep in and the egg will peel easier

The center of the shell is cracked, also tap the larger end of the egg to break the shell where the air pocket is

Then place the egg in the water, to allow the water to seep in and help the shell to fall off the egg.

If cracked well, the shell will peel easily, if you have trouble, place the egg in the water and peel in the water

Perfectly peeled boiled egg

Cutting the egg to see how well it cooked

This 12 minute egg cooked nicely with very soft but firm whites and velvet yolks

The Conclusion on the Boil Egg Wire Rack

What is our recommendation for the egg steaming rack? We love it! It is handy, durable and held the eggs perfectly. It helped to make a great hard boiled egg and there is no bulky steamer rack needed. Highly recommended and a great Amazon price.

We hope you enjoyed this review on how to steam a hard-boiled-egg with a wire rack and if you currently use an Instant Pot to make Hard cooked Eggs, without a wire rack, this will work nicely in your Instant Pot as well.