Use A Whisk To Easily Remove Hard-Boiled Eggs From Hot Water

Kitchens have barely enough room for all the dishes, appliances, and other stuff we need to keep in them, so there's just no point in letting little-used, single-purpose kitchen utensils and gadgets – what "Good Eats" host Alton Brown dismisses as "unitaskers" — take up valuable space or fritter away hard-earned money. Instead, invest in multitasker tools — like a good, old-fashioned whisk. 

A wire whisk has uses across many kinds of recipes both savory and sweet, like combining liquid ingredients, blending dry ingredients, and turning egg whites into a frothy meringue. It's definitely a multi-purpose tool. And now some clever home cooks have found yet another way to use a whisk that you may not have considered: retrieving hard-boiled eggs from a pan of boiling-hot water. 

Don't try to scoop the egg with the whisk — instead, press the loops of the whisk against the top of the egg. The wire loops easily slip around the egg to trap it inside, like a little cage. Then lift the whisk to take the egg out of the water. Pretty neat, huh? 

Picking up hard-boiled eggs with a wire whisk is a fun little trick, but the nagging question is whether this is really necessary. Most kitchens have some sort of slotted spoon or handled strainer that can also pull hard-boiled eggs from boiling water very quickly and effortlessly. (Slotted spoons are definitely kitchen multitaskers.) Also, if the whisk in your drawer has silicone or plastic loops — or if it's an older whisk whose loops have started to lose their shape — they may be too flimsy to keep the egg inside while trying to lift it. No one wants that egg to splash back into the boiling water, or worse, hit the floor. 

Another potential problem with this whisk and egg approach is removing the eggs from the whisk. After all, they've both just been in scalding-hot water, so handling them to get the egg out is going to burn. If you're just boiling one egg for breakfast, then it's no big deal to let the egg sit inside the whisk on the counter until they're both cool. But what if you're boiling a dozen for a deviled egg recipe? Are there that many whisks in the drawer? 

The verdict on this hack: try it once for fun (and who doesn't look to a pan of hard-boiled eggs for some fun?) but then go back to using a slotted spoon.