Smoked Hard Boiled Eggs

[seemore]

I found a recipe for hard boiled eggs.  First you have to find small sized eggs.  Then you boil them accordingly, and cool them down.
Next you let the eggs sit on a towel overnight to dry.
The next day, check each egg to make sure there are no cracks.  If there are cracks, they cannot be used.
Make a brine with one quart of water and 3/4 C plus 2 T salt.  Add the eggs and make sure they are covered by the brine.  This amount of brine should cover 10-12 eggs.  Be sure to use a glass container.
Brine the eggs for 72 hours at room temperature.  Then rinse the eggs off and let them dry overnight on a towel, unrefrigerated.
The next day, put the eggs in the smoker and slowly bring the temp up (over a 45 minute period) to 140 degrees WITH NO SMOKE.
Hold at this temperature for 4 hours.  Then, over a period of one hour, slowly raise the temp to 195 degrees. 
Look at the eggs.  There may be tiny droplets of water on the shells. 

If there are no droplets, or only a few, begin smoking.  They say the smoke will penetrate the microscopic holes in the shells, dissolving in the moisture escaping from those holes.
The flavoring components of the smoke will pass through, weakening the membranes by osmosis, similar to the way smoke flavor passes through a sausage casing.
Smoke at 195 degrees for several hours.  I used hickory.
After about 3 hours I checked one.  It had very little smoke, and the egg had cracked.   >:(  It tasted like a salted hard boiled egg.
After six hours I had to pull them as it was getting late.

The recipe states that it takes a minimum of seven hours of smoke.  I did not have enough time for the full 7, as I had to get ready to go to bed - had to go to work the next day.
All in all, the eggs did end up taking on a very very light smoke.
As you can see in this peeled egg, there is a 'spider vein' of smoke, where another egg had cracked during the process:

I will play with this recipe some more.  It needs more smoke, less salt, and a lower temp rise.
seemore

[GusRobin]

Seems the long way. I just hard boil eggs, peel them, and then cold smoke them for an hour.

[wyoduke]

I smoked mine with out the shells last time worked great ;D

[seemore]

We have smoked the eggs after peeling them.  We wanted to try this because it was DIFFERENT. 8)
Yes, it took more time by not peeling the eggs.  It was intriguing to us that eggs could be smoked with the shells intact.
Will we try this again?  Probably.   Will we change a few things to try to add more smoke?  Definitely.
Mrs

[Habanero Smoker]

There was either a link posted, or I came across a site which cold smoked raw eggs. It was a commercial site, so the would not give up any of their secrets on their special smoking process. That I would be interested in learning what they did.