How to Perfectly Crack an Egg

Here we have it! How to crack an egg without getting any shell in the bowl. Ever. Learn how here.

Since I was a child, I often found the process for cracking eggs to be frustrating. Eggs were one of the first things I learned how to cook, and I struggled endlessly with bits of shell dropping into my bowl. I don’t need to tell you how frustrating it can be to try fishing a stray bit of egg shell out of a bowl of yolk.

So how does one go about cracking an egg perfectly every time? There has to be a trick to it, right? Professional chefs have it down to a science, cracking hundreds of eggs per day. While there are several ways to crack an egg, I believe one method above all others tends to work best.

Best Method to Perfectly Crack an Egg

When cracking an egg, it might be tempting to smack the shell on the side of a bowl, pull it apart, and dump its interior contents into said bowl. This is a recipe for disaster for most home cooks.

Why?

Cracking an egg along the lip of a bowl shatters the shell instead of breaking it. Think of your eggshell like a cell phone screen. Sometimes you drop your phone and there’s just one clean line of a crack. Other times the screen totally shatters, creating hundreds of tiny shards just waiting to break off and impale your fingers. With eggs it’s the same. Shattering the shell creates many more errant shell particles that can then break off and slide into your bowl. This also breaks the thin membrane surrounding the interior of the egg, allowing the shell shards to mix in.

What you want is a clean break along the center of the egg; one long crack that you can easily and cleanly pull apart with your fingers. The way you achieve this is by cracking your egg on a smooth and flat surface.

A table or countertop typically works best.

• Grasping the egg in one hand, tap it on the flat surface until it cracks.
• There will be a clean side to side crack and an indentation in the shell.
• Place your thumbs on either side of the crack and pull the egg apart slowly.

This creates a clean break and causes any excess shell shards to stick to the membrane, rather than fall into your bowl.

What’s your tried and true egg cracking method? Sound off and let us know!

This post originally appeared in May 2018 and was revised and republished in April 2021.