Recipe – Instant Pot Hard Boiled Eggs

It’s time for me to share my first recipe for the Instant Pot! This isn’t really a recipe, but I felt it was important to share. Hard boiled eggs were the first official thing I made, kind of as a test run so that I could familiarize myself with the IP. 

I love hard boiled eggs – they are delicious, nutritious and versatile. I am kind of ashamed to admit that I have never really mastered the process of actually hard boiling them. Awhile back, I saw something on TV that showed the person baking their eggs and achieving the same results. Since then, that had been my preferred cooking method. That is, until now. Baking the eggs can take awhile (30+ minutes in the oven, not ideal in the Vegas summer), so I was really happy to see that boiling eggs in the Instant Pot would take less than 10 minutes.

The Perfect Peel

Most of the recipes I’ve seen online said that the eggs should be cooked on high pressure for 5 minutes. However, there were many reviews of these recipes that also said that they thought the eggs were under cooked. I took the advice of some of these reviews and upped the cooking time to 7 minutes.

Now, if you are new to the Instant Pot community and to pressure cooking in general, here are a few tips and terms you may find helpful:

IP – Instant Pot

PC – Pressure cook

QR – Quick release – when you are using the pressure cooker function, you have to release the pressure before you can remove the lid. There are 2 ways to do this – via a natural release (NPR) and a quick release. The natural release involves you allowing the pot to sit for an extended period of time, slowly releasing the pressure on it’s own until the floating valve (metal pin) completely drops. The QR is when you turn the steam release valve from “sealing” to “venting,” speeding up the process. Most recipes will specify which of these to use, as the release of pressure can affect the quality of your food.  

For our eggs, we will be cooking at HIGH pressure for 7 minutes, then doing a natural pressure release for about 5 minutes. After that, use a quick release to complete the removal of pressure. Here are the official instructions:

Instant Pot Hard Boiled Eggs

Author: Teri

Cook Time: 7 minutes    Total Time: 17 minutes (not including time it takes for IP to come to pressure)

Ingredients

• Eggs (as many as you want)
• 1 cup water

Instructions

1. Pour water in the pot. Place the rack (also called the trivet) that came with the IP in the bottom of the inner pot. (If you have one, you can also use a steamer basket)
2. Close the lid and ensure that the steam valve is turned to “sealing.” Note that this valve is supposed to be a bit loose and doesn’t sit firmly on the lid (this worried me at first). If you haven’t already, plug in the IP.
3. Press the “pressure cook” button on the front of the IP. To adjust the pressure level to HIGH, press the “pressure level” button in the middle section until the screen shows HIGH. Use the +/- buttons to adjust the cooking time to 7 minutes (this time will produce firm, hard boiled eggs. You can lessen the cook time if you prefer your eggs more on the soft side).
4. It will take around 5 minutes for the pressure cooker to build to HIGH pressure. Once the cooking cycle is complete, allow the IP to naturally release it’s pressure for around 5 minutes, then adjust the release valve from “sealing” to “venting” and manually the remaining pressure until the metal pin drops, allowing you to open the lid.
5. Immediately place the hot eggs into an ice bath to stop the cooking process (this will also help make them easy to peel!). Eggs should remain in the ice bath for approximately 5 minutes. You can peel the eggs immediately or leave shells on until you are ready to eat them.

As silly as it may sound, I found these to be some of the best hard boiled eggs I’ve ever had! They are so easy to peel – you don’t end up with any damaged whites, and at times half the shell would come off at once. I am totally obsessed with these eggs and have made a few batches since getting the Instant Pot. Our 9 month old baby absolutely loves them, so I regularly give her one with her breakfast in the morning. They could easily be made into egg salad or awesome deviled eggs and this is a great first recipe for Instant Pot newbies to try out!