Do This One Thing Today for Better Easter Eggs

If you plan on decorating Easter eggs next weekend, there’s one thing you should do today: Buy your eggs. Yes, buy them now (especially if you plan on hard-boiling them or putting them in the pressure cooker)! Buy them during your lunch break or on your way home from work. Just buy them! You don’t have to do anything else with them right now — buy them today and put ’em in the fridge for later.

What’s the rush, you ask? You want to buy your eggs now because you want them to be old by the time you go to hard-boil them.

It’s true. Younger eggs are more likely to stick to the shell, which makes for a heck of a time when you go to peel them. The closer your eggs are to their expiration date, the easier they’ll be to peel. (If you absolutely can’t get to the store until next week, look for a cartoon that’s closest to its expiration date.)

As eggs age, they gradually lose moisture through the pores in their shell, and the air pocket at the tip expands. The pH of the whites also changes, going from a low pH to a relatively high pH, which makes them adhere less strongly to the shell. It’s science!

• How To Boil Eggs Perfectly Every Time
• 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Hard-Boiled Eggs

If you buy your eggs now and let them age in the fridge, they should peel nicely on Easter, which means your oh-so-cute decorating work won’t get entirely ruined.

Oh, and even if you’re not hard-boiling your eggs (maybe you’re going for the old poke-some-holes-and-blow-out-the-egg method?), you still might want to buy your eggs today — you know, before the stores get ransacked and supplies dwindle down to nothing.