HOUSTON – Deviled eggs, tuna salad, potato salad: Hard-boiled eggs are a common ingredient in a lot popular dishes. Peeling the eggs can make preparing them less enjoyable.
The makers of Egglettes claim they can boil eggs without the shell.
Consumer expert Amy Davis recruited egg enthusiast Beth McCalla to test the product for As Seen on TV Tuesday.
"I like to make deviled eggs and egg salad, my tuna fish and potato salad," McCalla said. But she is less enthused with the prep work.
"I hate peeling hard-boiled eggs. I can never get them peeled right," she admitted.
"Peeling hard boiled eggs is such a hassle. It takes forever and is such a mess," says the announcer in the Egglettes infomercial.
"Introducing Egglettes: The new silicone sensation that lets you cook hard-boiled eggs without the shell!"
"I really thought it was a neat product," McCalla said. "I was afraid to buy it without knowing if it worked."
We ordered a pack of Egglettes for $9.99 and delivered them to McCalla's kitchen. She read the directions that claim you just crack, boil and then pop the eggs out of the silicone shells. The directions do add one more step to the process.
They direct you to add nonstick spray or oil into the pod before you crack the egg. After adding the eggs, McCalla twisted on each cap and plopped them into boiling water on her stovetop.Sixteen minutes later, she moved them to a cold bath to cool before she finally popped them out.
"They look like a perfectly hard-boiled egg to me," she said.
They were not as perfect as the smooth eggs pictured in the infomercial. We noticed a lot of pock marks on each egg. They resembled craters on the moon's surface. McCalla believes she may have used too much oil in the silicone pods.
Still, she said the taste was right on target.
"I love it," she said.
You can pay more for a larger set of Egglettes, but McCalla said four suits her fine. Now she's clucking and crowing about the product.