Is peeling hard-boiled eggs becoming too much for you? You have company! Although hard-boiled eggs are a healthy and adaptable food, cracking open their shells may be an annoyance. Prepare to be delighted if you’ve ever had to deal with a jumbled mass of cracked eggshells. French celebrity chef, cookbook author, and TV host Jacques Pépin is here with a secret weapon that will change the way you cook forever. If you want to peel eggs like a pro, try this easy approach.

Eggs that have been hard-boiled may be a major nuisance to peel. As if acting independently, the shells adhere tenaciously to the egg white. The moment you try to peel them, they rip apart, producing a disgusting mush. Have no worry, however; Jacques Pépin has rescued the day with a fantastic plan. One little tweak to your cooking method yields flawlessly peeled hard-boiled eggs every time.

Jacques Pépin suggests poking a tiny hole in the eggshell’s broad side before dropping it into boiling water, rather than blindly hoping for the best. Yeah, it’s really that easy!

You may slowly release the air pocket within an egg as it cooks by making a tiny hole in its shell. When peeling hard-boiled eggs, this apparently little change makes all the difference. The egg white may stick tenaciously to the shell due to the retained air, which makes clean peeling a genuine task. The egg, however, almost falls out of its shell as the air pocket is freed.