9 Egg Gadgets I’ve Tested (So You Don’t Have to)

It seems like every week or so I’m alerted to a new egg gadget out there. Many of them claim to help “boil the perfect egg.” Others say they can make removing the shell from a hard or soft boiled egg easier. (Admittedly not THAT difficult a task to begin with. )

But while many of these gadgets aren’t necessary, some of them are fun and novel. So I’ve tested a few of them below (so you don’t have to!)

1. EGGSTRACTOR Egg Peeling Gadget

The Eggstractor is supposed to simplify your life by making hardboiled egg-peeling a breeze, but does it work? Well, before we answer that question, we need to talk a little bit about eggs.

As you’ve probably noticed by now in your egg-eating life, some eggs are easier to peel than others. Some shells slip off with just a couple of well-placed cracks, while others cling tightly to the white, leaving chunks of egg behind clinging to the shell.

Why is that? Well, essentially it has to do with age. The sweet spot for getting perfectly peel-able eggs (we’re talking about commercial eggs in the U.S.) is 7 to 10 days.

As a rule, the fresher the egg, the more difficult it is to peel cleanly. The albumen (white) of a just-laid egg contains a store of dissolved carbon dioxide, a weak acid. (CO₂ is what makes very fresh raw egg whites appear cloudy.) Over time, the gas exits the egg through thousands of tiny pores in the shell. As this happens, the pH of the white gradually increases, making it less acidic.

from SLATE: BROW BEAT Food Explainer: Why Are Some Boiled Eggs Easier To Peel Than Others? BY NADIA ARUMUGAM SEPT 20, 2012

Of course there are caveats and exceptions to this rule, so if you’re as fascinated by this subject as I am, you can read more here.

But if you’re always using new eggs for your hard or soft boiled experience, or you just like playing around with gadgets, you could always turn to the Eggstractor which is supposed to peel hard-boiled eggs with ease, just by tapping it.

According to the instructions, all you have to do is place your boiled egg on a little tray, and plunge down on it with a plastic accordion-like apparatus. Your egg is supposed to poop right out, all peeled and happy.

What’s Not to Love?

What I was most interested in was, why doesn’t the accordion piece just squash the egg? How does it remove the egg shell without crushing the egg?

You can find out if the Eggstractor peels or crushes below. (And be prepared to duck!)

2. TKG Tamago Kake Gohan Maker

What is tamago kake gohan, you ask? It’s a simple Japanese dish of white rice, raw egg, green onions, and sauce. Most often served for breakfast, it’s both nutritious and delicious.

Now you can most certainly make this delicious tamago kake gohan without the gadget — Seroius Eats has a good recipe here — but to get white separated from the yolk and whipped up to a gorgeous, frothy cloud of meringue this little gadget does surprisingly well!

The machine will crack the egg, separate the yolk from the white, and then whip the egg whites for you. All that’s left is to add the soy sauce, MSG, and green onions onto your bowl of rice. (Or, if you don’t want to make your own, you can buy the TKG sauce (Amazon Affiliate link.)

You can watch me test the TKG maker below.

3. EGGLETTE vs. EGG

The question posed by this gadget, the Egglette, is, which is better: to hard-boil an egg in its shell, or to remove said shell, replacing it with a plastic case?

Now, before even testing this gadget, I was skeptical. I mean, can you really improve on nature? After all, we’ve most likely been boiling eggs in the shell for hundreds if not thousands of years. Do we really need to reinvent the wheel here?

But I guess those who find peeling an egg to be a nuisance have created a market for a gadget like the Egglette!

And after thinking it over a little more, I did come to the conclusion that perhaps the one advantage the egglette may have over just a regular egg is that after cracking your egg and dropping it into the plastic container, you could possibly add flavorings to make your hard-boiled egg comes out already seasoned.

As an added bonus, the Egglette does come with a recipe booklet, though admittedly most of the recipes are just for variations on the hard-boiled egg theme — like deviled eggs. However, the booklet does contain a recipe for a Mexican-style omelet in which you add a teaspoon of salsa. So at least there’s that.

You can watch who wins — Egglette or Egg — below:

4.The Rollie / As Seen on TV Test

The Rollie is one of my all-time favorite gadgets. I mean, who wouldn’t love a device that cooks then extrudes a cooked egg from a tube?

And according to the documentation, and the TV ad, using the Rollie is as easy as 1, 2, 3….. You simply add some spray, crack an egg into it, and it just pops out cooked — a vertical tube of eggy goodness.

But if an egg tube is too basic for you, you can also make an egg dog, a breakfast burrito, a pancake sausage Rollie, a pizza Rollie, a French toast Rollie, a pizza stick Rollie, a barbecue Rollie, a Cuban Rollie, a tuna melt Rollie, a vegetable egg Rollie, a PB & J Rollie, and a cinnamon Rollie. Wow! Impressive, Rollie!

You can watch the Rollie fun below, or, if you want to see the French toast Rollie or the pizza stick Rollie, click on the links above. Happy Rollie-ing!

5. 🎶BEEP EGG Timer

This fun gadget, the Beep Egg Timer, doesn’t actually cook your eggs, rather you place it in the boiling water with your eggs and it plays music for you when your eggs are ready.

The Beep Egg is a German-made gadget which I first learned about in an interview with Christopher Kimball in the New York Times. I remember him saying that he has some fondness for gadgets, and in particular he liked the Beep. As it wasn’t clear to me whether he liked it for the sake of the novelty of it singing, or if it actually worked, I decided I should try it myself to find out.

According to the instructions that come with the Beep, your egg or eggs and your Beep Egg must initially be at the same temperature, so they recommend storing the beep bag in the refrigerator with your eggs.

But, since cold eggs just out of the refrigerator may crack when subjected to boiling water, you may want to bring both up to room temperature before cooking by placing them in a bowl of water for an hour or so. And since the Beep egg works based on temperature rather than time, it’s critical that the two be at the same temperature.

One further note: the beep egg, a golden egg about the same size as a large chicken egg, only works when placed in boiling water. DO NOT PLACE IT IN THE MICROWAVE!

So What Are The Songs?

For soft-boiled eggs, the gadget will play Oh Susanna. For medium-boiled Take Me Out To the Ballgame, and for hard-boiled Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here. So all very classic, easily-identifiable tunes.

And each song is played three times during each of the stages, so if you like really soft soft-boiled eggs, you take it out after the first rendition, medium soft-boiled the second, hard soft-boiled the third, etc.

Now while the Beep egg timer worked as advertised, there are a couple of drawbacks as far as I could tell. One, you are boiling your eggs in a pot together with a plastic gadget, so there is the possibility of plastic leaching out (though, admittedly the eggs are protected by their shells.)

Additionally, you cannot replace the battery on the Beep Egg Timer, so once it goes, it’s dead, and you’ll just have to throw it out. A bit of a waste if you ask me.

So there it is: the Beep Egg Timer. You can watch me fooling around with it in the video below:

6.Eggies

The Eggie, just like the Egglette above, trades on people’s fear of egg shell sticking to egg. The solution? Get rid of the shell right off the bat, and cook your egg in a piece of plastic.

Now whereas the Egglette took around 14 -16 minutes to hard-boil an egg, the Eggie purports to do the same thing much faster. And I’m guessing the reason for this is the thickness of the plastic.

The Eggie plastic is much thinner than that of the Egglette, hence a faster cooking time of 10 minutes. (Though the booklet said for a medium hard-boiled egg it should be about six minutes.)

And similar to the Egglette, the Eggie requires cleaning after use as some of the egg ends up adhering to the plastic. What’s more, you do need to prep the Eggie by wiping with oil before cracking your egg inside.

My advice? Skip the gadget and learn how to cook a boiled egg properly. It will be the best thing you ever learn how to do. And it’s not hard! You can watch how in the video below, as I do a side-by-side comparison of the Eggie with a good old-fashioned egg.

7. 1970s ELECTRIC Egg SCRAMBLER

Since this gadget hails from the 1970s, I’m not sure how easy it will be to find. But if you’re looking for it online, it’s made by a company called Vision 2000. My particular machine is from 1977, a very good year.

The Scrambler uses a spinning needle to beat the egg inside its shell. (Sounds very much like a solution in search of a problem, if you ask me.)

After piercing your egg with the Scrambler’s needle, the needle then spins around, mixing the yolk and the white together. Once blended, you can cook the egg in its shell, or you can crack it and use it for omelettes or any other recipe that calls for beaten eggs.

Now, of course, you can get the same results with a fork or a whisk, so the only net positive that I can see is that you might save yourself from cleaning a bowl if you use this gadget.

But despite all that, the spinning needle was enough to sell me on this gadget. Slightly dangerous, and almost wholly silly, I knew I had to try the Scrambler when I saw it on the thrift store shelf.

So What Did I Cook Using the Scrambler?

I decided to keep things simple, so after scrambling my egg with the scrambler, I wrapped it in foil, adding one teaspoon of water, and placed it in a 500℉ oven, baking it for seventeen minutes.

Unfortunately, my egg imploded at the hole made by the Egg Scrambler, so I didn’t really need to cut it when it was ready, but the instructions that come with the gadget said that in order to take the egg out of the shell, you just cut it in half and scoop out your baked scrambled egg with a spoon.

Upon scooping, my egg was completely homogeneous, looking a lot like scrambled eggs. But in terms of taste and texture, honestly they weren’t very good. They were rubbery, reminding me a lot of cafeteria-style scrambled eggs that have been sitting on a warming tray for far too long.

You could reduce the baking time, but I think I would just probably skip this method of cooking, because it does take seventeen minutes. For the amount of time it takes to cook the egg, you might as well just go ahead and hard boil an egg.

I guess there’s a reason this gadget is no longer around. It’s definitely fun and unique, but in the final analysis, superfluous.

8. Brain Egg Mold

Not sure if this one can be technically considered a gadget, and it’s not even originally intended to be used for eggs, but I present it to you here nevertheless. It’s a mold for making brain-shaped ice cubes, but I commandeered it to make a brain-shaped egg. Endless Halloween, you know?

Made by Fred, it’s called the Brain Freeze Silicone Ice Cube Tray (Amzn affiliate link.) And since it’s made out of silicone, not only can you put it in the freezer for ice cubes, but you can put it in the oven to bake with, too.

So, I decided to cook some eggs in it with the intention of cutting the “brain” in half to have the yolk ooze out for some extra spooky fun.

How Do I Cook in an Ice Cube Tray?

First, you’re going to take a little bit of olive oil and coat the inside of the mold, swishing it around inside. I recommend taking your finger to rub it in, making sure you get it into all of convolutions and folds of the brain. (You want to ensure that your egg releases when it is cooked.)

I decided to only cook one egg at a time, because I imagined it would be easier to release one egg at a time than four.

Simply crack your egg into the mold and it’s ready to cook.

For this recipe, I steamed my eggs for 14 minutes inside a steamer basket. (Make sure it has a lid.)

Once your timer has beeped, take the mold out and place it in some cool water. The trick with silicone molds is you’re going to pull to release. (You can watch me demonstrating the technique in the video below.)

Now Let’s Make a Meal with our Brain

Now that we have our beautiful brain-shaped egg, let’s make it into a meal.

I decided to have my brain with natto over rice. Now I can understand that natto can be an acquired taste — many people are put off by its legendary stinkiness — so I wouldn’t be offended if you used some other bean, vegetable, or meat for this dish.

But get yourself at least a bowl of rice — nice and hot — and get eatin’ those brains. You can watch me devour them in the vidoe below.

9. Your Fingers: TikTok Egg Yolk Pinching

There are so many gadgets out there for separating the yolk from the white, like the Bogeyman egg separator I used in my Squishy Fluffy Condensed Milk Cake video.

And while all egg white separators essentially do the same thing, recently on TikTok there have been videos going around claiming that all you need to do to separate the egg white from the yolk is to rub a clove a garlic or a piece of brown bread with your thumb and forefinger before pinching out the yolk with your fingers.

Now I reasoned that it wasn’t actually the garlic or the bread that allowed you to do this trick, but rather the fact of your fingers being dry. So I tested my theory out, and sure enough, all you need are dry fingers, so before pinching your egg yolk, dry them on a towel and you’ll be good to go. (You can watch the egg pinching technique at about the 6:15 mark in the video below.)

What Did You Make with Your Pinched Egg, Emmy?

I’m glad you asked! When lovely viewer Nicola shared the story of air pie with me, I knew right away I had to make it. It (and she) come from the Lancashire region of England. Nicola’s gran (and others like her) used to make this pie when they couldn’t afford fish for Fridays, a day on which many Catholics abstain from eating meat.

Also, known as butter pie, this lovely, simply pie is not only easy to make, but low-cost and hearty. I used Deja’s Foods’ Lancashire Butter Pie recipe and was quite happy with the results.

You can follow along with me in the video below.

All right, lovelies! That’s it. Happy egg gadget hunting. Let me know in the comments below if there are any other egg gadgets out there that i absolutely must try.

Toodaloo! Take care! Byeeee!