Alton Brown’s Trick for Making Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs in the Oven

Did you know you can make hard boiled eggs in the oven? OK, so they’re not technically boiled, but you can still get the same eggy goodness without heating up a drop of water.

Everyone has their go-to hard boiled egg technique: Some swear by using their Instant Pot and the 5-5-5 method while others claim adding a dash of vinegar to the water before it boils makes all the difference. But I’m sure most of us never even considered popping them in the oven instead.

I certainly hadn’t, which is why I was so intrigued when I found the trick in one of Alton Brown’s old blog posts. It’s pretty simple: Pre-heat your oven to 320 degrees Fahrenheit, place your raw eggs in a muffin tin, bake for 30 minutes. Like a lot regular boiling methods, Brown also recommends placing them in a bowl of ice cold water once they’re done to stop the cooking process.

I obviously had to give it a try! It felt a little silly putting un-cracked eggs into my muffin tin, but I could already see this coming in handy for meal planning a week’s worth of eggy snacks (or dozens of deviled eggs for a party).

My old school oven doesn’t have super-exact temperature options, but I figured setting it to the 325 mark wouldn’t make too much of a difference.

I also took my eggs out a few minutes before the 30 minute timer. A previous attempt with the full time suggestion resulted in some being slightly over done, so I wanted to avoid that.

Here’s how one looked after taking them out of the oven, giving them the ice bath, and peeling:

The first noticeable difference of “hard boiling” eggs in an oven is a few brown spots on the shell and inside the egg. I’m guessing this is because of the dry oven heat hitting in certain spots a little more. But I was sure those small spots wouldn’t affect the flavor (spoiler alert: I was correct).

Brown also warns in his post about the oven method making the shells more difficult to peel off. I didn’t notice any extra struggle, personally. I even tried the hack of swirling eggs around in a cup of water and it worked just as great as it does for traditionally boiled eggs!

As you can tell, my yolks were on the softer side, especially right in the center. I actually prefer that, though, so this sliced open egg looked perfect to me! And it clearly produced the same results as, y’know, actually boiling the eggs in water.

This method of “hard boiling eggs” in an oven definitely takes longer than other techniques, but I think that could be an advantage. You don’t have to worry about rushing to snag eggs from piping hot water or releasing the steam of a pressure cooker while you wait. That’s also time you can use to get other meal prepping work done, wrangle your kids, or, if you’re like me, relax while catching up on your latest Netflix binge.

I definitely recommend trying this out the next time you’re in the mood for hard boiled eggs, especially if you want to whip up more than just a few.