Every year around this time, millions of eggs are hard-boiled, artistically decorated, and then thrown into the garbage.

Most hard-boiled eggs are pretty terrible. The whites are rubbery, the yolks are pale and mealy and, even worse, surrounded by that sulfur-green ring of shame.

Cooking hard-boiled eggs is easy; cooking them right is not. Unless you know what you’re doing. Then it’s as close to a foolproof no-brainer as you can get in the kitchen.

Here’s what you do: Arrange the eggs in a single layer in a wide pan. Cover them generously with water. Bring them to a boil without covering the pan. Turn off the heat and let them stand for about 15 minutes. That’s it. The white is firm but still slightly creamy, the yolk is deep orange and rich.

The science behind the process

If you really want to know how to cook a hard-boiled egg, it helps to know something about what’s going on inside it.

Eggs consist largely of protein. As the eggs are heated, strands of proteins unfold and link up. This is why egg “whites,” which are clear when raw, are white when cooked.

The higher the temperature, the tighter the links, at first getting firmer but then getting tight enough that they squeeze out the moisture. That’s bad.

The perfect temperature for a hard-cooked egg is right around 160 degrees (a little lower for the white and a little higher for the yolk, but we’ll settle for an average).

If the eggs are heated gradually (as opposed to dropping cold eggs into boiling water), you won’t have any problems with shells cracking during cooking. Air can leak gently out through the porous shells.

One final hint: The eggs will be much easier to shell if after cooking you give them a gentle crack and then put them in an ice water bath. The cold shrinks the egg just enough to pull it away from the shell.