The hard-boiled egg is a very simple food. It can be sliced and used as a garnish on toast or salads. Deviled eggs can transform it into a fancy finger food. They can also be eaten plain with a little salt and pepper and perhaps a dash of tabasco. While hard-boiled eggs are simple to prepare, peeling them is a different story.

When they’ve cooled and the peeling begins, things can get messy, if not downright difficult. The shells either become stuck or break up into a million different little pieces. However, a simple trick shared by Lifehacker can make peeling boiled eggs easier.

Jacques Pépin, a well-known French chef, cookbook author, and television personality, invented a simple method for peeling hard-boiled eggs. According to the chef, in order to get the perfect peel on your eggs, you should poke a small hole in the wide side of the eggshell before placing it in boiling water…

This means that the air pocket inside the egg has been released, making the egg easier to peel. Of course, he cautions against using something as small as a pin or thumb tack to make the hole without breaking the shell.

This not only solves the problem of peeling the eggs after they’ve finished cooking, but it may also solve some aesthetic issues. Instead of being lumpy or bumpy, the released air means that the egg will be perfectly shaped, with rounded ends rather than flat ones.

Of course, if you don’t have a pin or a thumbtack handy, there are other methods for getting the eggshells to peel off easily. For example, dipping them into an ice bath after boiling or peeling them under cold water should make things easier.