The Vinegar Hack For Preventing Smelly Hard-Boiled Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs make a great snack at the office and are a healthy addition to any packed lunch. The only problem with hard-boiled eggs is that sometimes they can have an odor –- especially while they are being cooked –- that tends to hang around and is rather unpleasant. 

Luckily, there is one ingredient that can help get rid of that sulfurous boiled egg smell once and for all: vinegar. Specifically, adding some vinegar to the water you use to boil the eggs can make all the difference. So, how do you do it?

To get rid of any pungent sulfur smells while making hard-boiled eggs in your kitchen, simply add a few teaspoons of white distilled vinegar to the pot of water before you start cooking. Then, hard boil the eggs as you normally would. While cooking, you will notice the slight odor of vinegar in the air, but no rotten egg smell. When you are done cooking, the vinegar odor will also disappear. With this hack, you will be left with a fresh-smelling kitchen every time.

Vinegar, besides being a mild disinfectant that can even be used to clean your kitchen, is great at getting rid of pesky odors. This works because white vinegar can easily attach itself to smell particles floating around in the air, helping to get rid of them, as Popular Science explains. This is why many websites recommend leaving a bowl of vinegar in a smelly room or spraying a mist of vinegar solution around your house to freshen it up.

Unfortunately, however good vinegar is at getting rid of smells already in the air, this useful kitchen staple is not able to pass through an eggshell membrane to get inside the egg and neutralize odors there. This means that if you want to bring boiled eggs into the office, but are worried about the smell, simply adding vinegar to the pot while boiling them might not be enough.

As it turns out, the best solution for making the boiled eggs themselves less smelly is to simply cook them properly. This is because only overcooked boiled eggs will release that unfortunately pungent rotten egg smell. So, to avoid smelly eggs, make sure to cook hard-boiled eggs perfectly every time.

Besides helping to get rid of that sulfurous egg smell, there are other reasons why adding a few teaspoons of vinegar to your pot of boiling eggs is a great idea. First, many people believe that a little bit of vinegar will make hard-boiled eggs easier to peel. This is because the natural acidic properties of vinegar start to break down the eggshell during the cooking process. This leads to eggshells that break and peel away more easily.

Another great reason to add vinegar to boiled eggs is that it may be able to help keep the egg whites inside the shell if there are any cracks. Usually when an egg cracks while boiling, some of the raw egg leeches from the shell and creates a bit of a mess in the pot. However, vinegar helps the egg white of a cracked egg harden faster. This means that pieces of your egg are less likely to escape. Your egg will be mostly whole and your pot will be easier to clean.