Pickled eggs. Easy, right? Eggs, vinegar, how hard can it be?

That’s a fair point. It’s pretty much that easy. But as always, there are some details that can help to know.

Pickle brine ingredients for 12 large eggs.

Put all ingredients together in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, cut the heat, and let the brine steep overnight while your 12 hard boiled eggs are chilling out in the fridge.

Next day, peel the eggs and place in a suitable container. Pour the brine over via sieve to remove the spices. Allow the eggs to steep in the brine for between 1 and 7 days. The longer they steep, the deeper into the egg the brine flavour will penetrate. Eat out of hand, chopped into a salad, or turn it into pickled egg salad.

Simple, right? Hah! Hold on a minute. Which vinegar do you use?

Unsurprisingly the vinegar you use directly affects the flavour. Here’s the ones I tested with:

white vinegar: sharply tangy, the gold standard of vinegar, but no real flavour
white wine vinegar: a touch more flavour than white vinegar, but not a lot more
red wine vinegar: more flavour than either the above, also stains the eggs a fetching red
malt vinegar: richer than red wine, stains the eggs a rather nice brown (NOTE: NOT GLUTEN FREE)
balsamic vinegar: oh, so much going on here! Caramel flavours as well as staining the egg white an astonishing black! Also astonishing is what happens to the vinegar: it goes transparent as the eggs absorb almost all of the colour from the vinegar

Over to you. What vinegar do you prefer?