Pickling Eggs

A restaurant in Austin has habanero pickled eggs on the menu, and let me tell you they are yummy. So I want to start pickling eggs myself, and I’m going to document my progress here.

Batch #1

So to start this off, I wanted to learn how to boil eggs effectively. I have attempted to boil eggs in the past, but it’s never gone very well, and I usually only end up with 2 or 3 decent eggs out of a dozen.

I looked up “boiling eggs” on Youtube and found this video. The steps they outline are…

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil (enough water to cover the eggs plus an inch or so).

2. Remove the eggs from the fridge so they have a chance to warm up a bit while the water is boiling.

3. Once the water is boiling, lower the heat to low, and gently put each egg into the water (using a ladle or similar).

4. Turn the heat back up, and cook for some number of minutes depending on how cooked you want the eggs

- 6 minutes: Runny yolk, mostly cooked whites
- 8 minutes: Slightly runny yolk, cooked whites
- 10 minutes: Soft yolk
- 12 minutes: Mostly cooked yolk, still a tiny bit of softness
- 14 minutes: Fully cooekd yolk

5. While the eggs are cooking, prepare a bowl ice/water to place the eggs into once they're finished cooking. This will cool them down quickly so they stop cooking.

6. Once the eggs have been in the ice water for a few minutes, peel them while running under cold water. Crack the wider end of the egg to get started.

For pickled eggs, it seemed like 12 minutes was appropriate for cook time. Everything went well untli the peeling step, when I realized that my eggs were very undercooked; the whites of the egg were still very translucent and just fell apart as soon as I broke through the shell.

After consulting with my girlfriend, it seemed as if the issue was my inaccuracy in judging when the pot of water was boiling. I thought that the water was “boiling” once you started to see the first bubbles rise, but apparently it’s not until the bubbles are rising rapidly. Oops.

So, I re-heated the water to an actual boil, and dropped the remaining eggs back in for a few more minutes. The second peeling attempt went better, but I still only had about a 50% success rate with getting pickling-suitable eggs. They were all cooked fully, but I butchered 5 of them during the peeling process.

For the remaining 6, I started my pickle brine…

1. Combine 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup water, ~tsp salt, ~tbsp sugar, and peppercorns in a saucepan, and heat until boiling, stirring frequently.

2. Let boil for a few minutes, and then take off heat.

3. Let cool for a few minutes because you're paranoid about the hot liquid breaking your glass jars.

For 6 eggs packed into a standard mason jar, this pickling brine recipe resulted in just a little less liquid than I needed; the top egg or two in the jar weren’t fully covered.

After 24 hours

Vinegar Intensity: 🥗
Egg quality: 🥚
Overall: ⭐⭐

These eggs were good, but didn’t taste substantially different from just a regular boiled egg. The vinegar taste wasn’t very strong, and the eggs were probably a bit overcooked from my “not knowing what boiling means” issue. There also wasn’t much of a salty taste.

After 48 hours

Vinegar Intensity: 🥗🥗
Egg quality: 🥚
Overall: ⭐⭐

The vinegar was a bit more noticeable after an extra 24 hours, but not enough to bump up the overall rating.

This is only picture I got of this batch, since I didn’t decide to write this until this point.

Batch #2

I ordered habaneros and jalapenos from the grocery store, thinking I’d use them together to make my next batch, but instead decided to separate the variables first and make two separate batches. I didn’t expect to really like a strong jalapeno taste much, but I just wanted to try it out to see anyway.

Oh, but first the eggs. I waited until the water was actually boiling this time, and did every other step the same. I don’t know if I just got lucky with these eggs, but I batted 1.000 on peeling them this time. 12 for 12. I set six aside for pickling, and left six alone for my girlfriend 👩 who prefers non-pickled eggs somehow. I got two of my mini mason jars and put three eggs in each.

My brine was a little different this time. I used a 1.5/.5 cup vinegar-to-water ratio, and boiled the brine for at least 10 minutes. I don’t remember exactly how long I boiled it for the first batch, but it wasn’t 10 minutes. I also just eyeballed the sugar and salt, which I’m pretty sure resulted in more of each than the previous brine.

In one jar I added a single habanero sliced in half, and in the other about 3/4ths of a big jalapeno sliced into…slices I guess. Circles. I had some extra brine after filling the two jars, so I threw in the rest of my habaneros and jalapenos into a separate jar and just pickled those by themselves. For fun.

Here’s the squad hanging out before they headed into the fridge.

After 48 Hours

We tried one of each egg after 48 hours. The habanero egg had a very strong vinegar taste, and a slightly less noticeable habanero taste. It also had a tiny bit of spice, but really not much. The egg was noticeably less cooked than the first batch; the center of the yolk was a teeny tiny bit gooey and darker colored, just like the person from Youtube said it should be. Overall, these were great, but a bit strong on the vinegar taste.

Vinegar Intensity: 🥗🥗🥗🥗
Habanero Flavor Intensity: 🫑🫑
Spice Level: 🌶️
Egg quality: 🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The jalapeno egg had a very strong jalapeno taste, which, like I predicted, I didn’t enjoy all that much. Jalapenos on their own just don’t have a great flavor…I guess I never really thought of that because I usually eat pickled jalapenos. The vinegar was still there, but overpowered by the jalapeno taste.

Vinegar Intensity: 🥗🥗🥗
Jalapeno Flavor Intensity: 🫑🫑🫑🫑🫑
Spice Level: 🌶️
Egg quality: 🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚
Overall: ⭐