Boiled eggs. Keeping a special pan.

Callistemon to both your last posts!

I too have a special pan for boiling eggs, as did my Mum. In fact I think I may be using the one I inherited from her as don't remember ever buying one!. We live in a hard-water area now, as we did when young. I presumed it was some of the calcium from the eggshells that leached out and is deposited on the side of the pan. Have tried suggesting to both sons that they also use a separate pan but they can't be persuaded!

Don't remember my Nan or Mum having a seperate egg pan but I did have a friend who's husband liked fried tomatoes and she had to keep a special pan for those. He liked them fried until they were nearly black and she was only allowed to wipe the pan out with paper and never wash it.

We have a small very old egg pan. Our water is very hard and there is some scale on the sides which doesn’t bother me as it’s not used for anything else. Nothing superstitious.

You get warts from warts, they are caused by a virus. The egg-shell story was a myth. No-one believes any more that you catch worms from picking your nose, or VD from sitting (fully clothed) on a contaminated seat in a railway carriage (toilet seats weren't shocking enough), or that TB is hereditary and caused by "bad blood". I heard all of these when I was young.

No need to use a separate pan because of a myth.

I also have a pan used solely for boiling eggs, but I have no idea why! It is possibly because the pan is smaller than the others and therefore uses less power to do the job? Very prosaic, I know.

Yes, my mum had an egg pan, but I just use a small saucepan which is dishwasher safe !

I do have a set of baking tartlet pans that I only use for little Yorkshire puddings. They look disgusting but on the odd occasion I have washed them, the puddings don’t rise well. Now I just keep the pans out of sight of visitors.

I was always taught to put a little vinegar in the water to keep the pan clean.

I too have a special pan which is 46 years old.
Used to have a special box for the Christmas tree and decorations which was called "box". It went to the great box in the sky last year and we were all heartbroken. It must have been over 30 years old.

Yes, I too have a special saucepan for boiling eggs in. My mother, my grandmothers and all my aunts did too.

I use mine for warming almonds that are to be blanched, but never for anything else.

I began this thread and it wasn't intended to make everyone paranoid - promise!

I was merely curious because, like with lead pipes which were in common use until 40 years ago, I thought that something in the metal pans could be leaching out and being absorbed into the still porous eggs. Or worse that something in the eggshells was powerful enough to not just discolour a pan but to corrode the metal making it leach.

The bacterial side of things had never occurred to me.
A peck of dirt afore you die and all that.

I can recall my Mother having an egg pan and when first married I did too. Not long after though I decided it was done for no apparent reason and stopped the habit. Recently I bought an electric egg cooker and I love it. No boiling water creating steam and having to keep an eye on the water level. And strangely, no smell of cooked eggs. Worth the £10 I paid.

I have a cheap pan that I use solely because the water is so hard here.

My DM didn’t have a special egg pan but swore the water the eggs were cooked in was poisonous. When I was pregnant with DS1, I awoke in the night with a terrible thirst. I sleepily drank some water from a jug(!) on the bedside. Turns out it was water the eggs had been boiled in and DH had brought it upstairs to empty onto the howling tomcats!
I was so worried I’d harmed the baby.. I’d never use egg water to cook anything in even though DM’s assertion was an old wives tale with no evidence.

I think its the size of the pan really,my 'egg pan' as was my mums,is just a small enamel pan,known also as a milk pan,so i do use it for other things,but as its enamel i put it in dishwasher.

Apparently you can use egg boiling water to put on plants & flowers,as it helps with aphids,(greenfly) and also the crushed up eggshells as it helps 'feed' them,is particularly good for roses.

My father (born in 1895) was a widower before he met and married my mother. Always in a rush in the mornings he used to put eggs in the kettle to cook while he boiled it to make tea. His sister told him he shouldn’t do it, because it would give him warts. So he stopped. Who knows ??‍♀️

While we are on about eggs. Someone please tell me how to peel a hard boiled egg without a lot of the white coming away with the shell.

I think it means they are very fresh, Granless

I don't know what the answer is though, sorry.

Callistemon

Egg water, when cooled, is wonderful for potted plants, and flowers. Don't know why, but my little houseplants thrive on it.

I have very old milk pan I use for eggs. Love a boiled egg!

Granless As soon as they are cooked, bash and roll them vigorously on a hard surface to fragment the shells, and hold under the cold tap, or drop them into a bowl of cold water. Also, don't use very fresh eggs.

Granless I plunge them into cold water and wait until they are cool before peeling but occasionally you get an egg that refuses to be peeled. Then I mash it with mayo and use it for sandwich filling.

Lead pipes. Another possible thread here.

We still have a lead pipe bringing cold water in. My grandparents always ran the tap in the morning before filling the kettle to get rid of the water that had stood in the lead pipes all night. Although I expect with our hard water the pipes were all furred up and the water didn't actually touch the lead.

Yes, something tells me this is something I’ve always known and I am quite old! If you looked at the pan I use only for boiling eggs, you’d realise it shouldn’t be used for anything else but I couldn’t tell you why!

In all my long life I have never heard of keeping a special pan for boiling eggs. I have a small non stick saucepan which I use a lot for cooking veg and rice as well as boiling eggs and it is washed up after every use. Surely if a pan is cleaned after each use it shouldn’t get scaled up however hard the water?

I'm Canadian and this doesn't exist in our country. I'm from mixed heritage, (Jamaican and Irish) and neither of those cultures do this, either.