How To Peel Hard-Boiled Egg Easily

Hard boiled egg are one of our favourite dish. We have them in our cooking recipe such as fried chilli egg, egg stew or added to our salads. For that, clean and smooth peeled hard-boiled egg is what we looking for. The problem is, sometimes it is difficult it to remove the egg shell smoothly without making dent or scar to the egg surface. But not anymore, now I have simple procedure that make peeling hard boiled egg easy and fun to do.

These are simple steps of peeling hard-boiled eggs. You can easily follow and get consistent result. 

Steps for creating easy to peel hard-boiled eggs :

1. Boiled enough water in a pan so that you can cover the entire egg surface in it. The pan should deep enough to fill with water about one inch above the egg surface. Also make sure that the pan wide enough to fit the whole eggs in one layer. Stacking egg one another is not recommended and can crack the egg shell. This is important. A flimsy pan will not work well. It will conduct uneven heat and make unconsistent cooked eggs.

2. When the water boiling, add about one tablespoon of baking soda. Adding baking soda to water make the cooking water alkaline. The alkaline from using baking soda loosening the bond between the egg whites and the inner membrane of the shell. Thus it will make the eggs easier to peel. 

3. When the water still actively boiling, place egg using ladle or spoonlike tool so that it carefully placed in the base of the pan. Boil the egg approximately 12 minutes. You don’t have to boil at high temperature at the whole time. When the water back to boil, turn the temperature (heat) lower. You can then continue boil eggs with lower heat. That is to avoid splashing and overcooked. The sign of overcooked egg is mostly the greenish tint shown to the york. It is not harmfull to ingest, just not very pretty to look at.

4. After 12 minutes turn off the heat. Remove the pan and drain the boiled water. Wait for 5 minutes to cool down. 

5. Now is time to peel the hard boiled egg. I will show two ways to do it. First by using glass jar and second by using ice water. First. Peel the hard boiled egg using glass jar. Fill ¼ of the glass jar with water, insert hard boiled egg into the jar. Close the cap and shake the egg back and forth until the shell crack evently. Take the egg off the jar and peel the shell by hand. The shell should peel easily. Do these steps again with other eggs. 

Second. Peel the hard boiled egg using ice water. Put the hard boiled egg into a basket of ice water, leave the egg on ice bath for about 10 minutes. After that, take the egg out, crack, roll against cutting board and peel one by one. The shell should peel easily by now. The egg white seperate smoothly from the shell. Egg shells are porous and plunging them into ice water will help seperate the shell and the membrane from the flesh of the eggs.

That it. Done. Enjoy your smoothly peeled hard-boiled eggs.

Note :

• Try to avoid hard boiling any egg that has an obvious hairline crack in it. Because it will most likely to break when egg put into boiling water.
• The easiest way to peel the eggs is to peel immediately after removing them from the ice water. They will still peel nicely a day (or a week) later but the shell will practically fall off if you peel them right after making them.

Watch the video of how to peel hard boiled egg easily here :

We think Peel the hard boiled egg using ice water is the best technique we have ever tried to make easy to peel hard-boiled eggs. It doesn’t matter how old or new the eggs are, the result is consistently good. Cheers.

How to repair gas stove burner flame being too low

This is happen to me before, my gas stove has low flame problem. I called service center to repair the gas stove. When the repair man worked, I watch him clean the stove and pay attention to a particular job that actually solved the low flame burner problem. With that and further information from the internet, I am confident I can do the repair by myself.

The Problem : The burner port or nozzle is clogged

The gas port or nozzle is not delivering gas seamlessly to the burner. The burner port is small hole located in the middle of gas burner base. The low flame problem occur when this hole has been cover by grease or something. This is blocking or clogging the gas flow to the burner. 

The Solution : Clean burner port or nozzle.

You need to clean this grease with something tin, small and strong. To do that you can use straight pin, needle or small gauge wire.

Cleaning Procedure :

Safety first. Turn off the gas flow to the stove. Make sure the gas regulator turn off or you can disconnected it off the gas tank.

Now lets work on the burner. open the cap burner and the spreader. clean the cap and spreader from grease. look for the burner port or nozzle. On standar burner you will likely see the port in the base of the burner (at the center). sometime it is difficult to see the hole because it cover with grease, so look closely it is there.

Use the straight pin, needle or small gauge wire. Put it into the the port or nozzle. Push around gently until the port loosen and free of blocking material or grease. Caution. Do not overdone it. Clean the clogged port only to remove things that block the gas flow. Do not try to enlarge or distort the port or nozzle because this will lead to unstable flame. The size of burner port is vary so you better use the smallest straight pin, needle or small gauge wire to fit all the port size.

Put everything back in. Fit the spreader and cap burner properly at it place. Burner cap and spreader should also fit flush with burner base and have very little side to side movement.

When everything set in place. Turn on or connect the gas regulator again. Turn the ignition on. The flame should now bigger and burn better then before. 

That it . Done

Attention / Caution :

• Do not use a wooden stuff like tooth pick and such because it can break off and felt into the port or nozzle (difficult to remove) and prevent gas flow properly.
• Do not clean the port or nozzle using detergen. Detergen can clog the gas port.
• Again, Do not overdone it. Clean the clogged port only to remove things that block the gas flow. Do not try to enlarge or distort the port or nozzle because this will lead to unstable flame
• Always clean the burner cap after a spill over and routinely clean the burner caps. A clean burner cap will help avoid poor ignition and uneven flame.

Most of the time these simple (Do It Yourself - DIY) steps can solve the low flame gas problem, save the repairment fee and enhance your cooking expirience. cheers.

For video footage on how to fix gas stove burner low flame, you can watch it here :

Betawi Traditional Food and Drink

Betawi people is a group of jakarta dwelling community and its sorrounding. Betawi people is creative and imaginative in using materials found in their sorroundings such as durian flower, jengkol (dogfruit) and melinjo. Betawi dishes are usually stir fried to release the fragrance. Betawi cooking techniques are diverse with cultural acculturation of culture such as Chinese, India, Arabic and European.

The following are Famous Betawi Culinary :

1. Ketupat Sayur

Ketupat sayur is a delicious dish, we usually have it for breakfast. Everyone in our house love it. Ketupat sayur is a rice cake dish or lontong served with lodeh soup. Lodeh itself is a dish made from long bean, pumpkin or young papaya sliced thin with coconut oil cooked in seasoning of hazelnut,turmeric, onion, garlic and pieces of ebi (dried shrimp). All the ingredient is affordable and easy to find in the market. 

You can find the ketupat sayur sold by street vendor in the morning or during lebaran festive (idul fitri and idul adha). In the house of betawi family, people usually eat ketupat sayur together with boiled egg and fried tofu covered by fried onion on top. 

The ketupat sayur dish is light, hot  and spicy. the smell indulge your sense and increase your appetite. 

2. Kerak Telor

Kerak telor is one of betawi people’s favorite snack and it is widely popular. This snack is an authentic Batavian food made from omelet of chicken or duck egg with sticky rice and seasoned with shredded fried coconut, ebi and fried shallots.

The use of shredded fried coconut is a main signature of kerak telor. The kerak telor taste delicious and has distinguish burn smell and flavor of ebi (dried shrimp).

Today, less and less vendor sell kerak telor, they do sell it at Jakarta Fair event and certain spot around the tourist area like fatahillah museum and monas (nasional museum).

3. Bir Pletok

Bir pletok is traditional betawi people’s drink. It made from mixes of herbs like ginger, pandan leaves, and lemongrass.bir pletok is suit for drinking in rainy season where it’s cold. The drink help your body to stay warm. Furthermore, the drink has other advantage like it can smoothing your blood circulation.

4. Sayur Babanci

Sayur babanci is one of iconic betawi dish that started to disappear nowadays. This is due to the difficulty to gather the ingredients. The dish required 21 ingredients.  The meat used in the dish comes from the cow’s head especially the cheek. To make the dish, special skill and extra patience is needed. 

The name “Babanci” come from the difficulty to clearly identify this dish. The dish can not event classified as vegetable soup as there is no vegetable used in the dish.

Nowadays, betawi people serve the dish only at religious festivals as family menu such as breaking the fast, eid al-fitr and eid al-adha.   

5. Gabus Pucung

Gabus pucung is a dish of snakehead fish, doused with thick dark soup from pucung fruit. Pucung is a betawi language for kluwek/keluak (football fruit), an ingredient commonly used as rawon seasoning. But despite the similarity of using kluwak, gabus pucung is thicker than rawon dish. Pucung presents a mixture of salty, sour, sweet and savory tastes.

6. Sate Lembut

For a moment, sate lembut look like sate lilit from bali. Actually sate lembut is a rare satay recipe of betawi people. The satay is made from ground beef mixed with grated coconut and spices, wrapped around flat shaped skewers. The satay taste sweet and savory, then mixed with peanut sauces makes it more delicious. This satay usually served with laksa betawi.

Source : Betawi Culture, Jakarta City – Government Tourism and Culture Office.

Indonesian Style Rujak

Rujak in general is a traditional dish made of mix fruits and vegetables and then served cover by special seasoning. In Indonesia, you can find rujak almost everywhere from restaurants to street food vendors. In another country like malaysia and singapore they call it “rojak”. There are many version of rujak here in Indonesia, such as :

1. Rujak cingur

Rujak cingur is a traditional dish from surabaya, east java. The word “cingur” means mouth, it refer to a cow mouth. That is they mix part of a cook cow mouth into rujak cingur. They mix “cingur” with slices of fresh fruits, vegetable and rice cake then served it covered by special condiment made of chilli, peanut and brown sugar. The taste is fresh and meaty.

2. Fuit Rujak

Fruit rujak made of various sweet and sour fruit like young papaya, kedondong, young mango, rose apple, bengkuang, pineapple mix with hotsweet seasoning made of chilli, peanut and brown sugar. The fruit rujak is so fresh (sometimes they served it cold) you can enjoyed it best in hot weather.

3. Rujal bebeg

The name of rujak bebeg refer to the making process of the rujak. That is you mix all the fruit, slice it tin, and then process it by mashing all the fruit until they all mix and soften. They mix and mash the fruit using lesung (deep bowl) made of wood. The rujak bebeg usually served using banana leaf that made the flavour even better. But today more and more food vendor use plastic as it is more practical and durable compare to banana leaf.

4. Rujak serut

Rujak serut is made of tin shaved fruit and then served it covered by peanut hot and sour sauce. The selection of fruits are vary according to the season or fruit availability.

5. Rujak juhi

Rujak juhi is a traditional culanary of betawi tribe. They call it “juhi” because they made rujak by using fermented and dried squid then mixed with noodle, cucumber and other vegetable. Rujak juhi is almost look like gado – gado. 

6. Rujak petis

Rujak petis is a traditional culinary from east java. Rujak petis is made of slice of cucumber, bengkoang, young mango, kedondong, tofu, beansprout and kale. We mix them together then served it with seasoning made of shrimp “petis”, chilli, fried peanuts, salt, sugar, young banana and water.

7. Rujak soto

Rujak soto is a traditional dish from banyuwangi, east java. This rujak is a unique combination of rujak cingur and soto babat. Rujak prepared as usual with pieces of fruit and vegetable and then served  it covered by peanut butter dressing and sauce from soto babat. This combination enchance flavour and create unique culinary experience. Rujak soto is a must try for a visitor coming for vacation or seeking culinary adventure in banyuwangi.