I tried Bob's recipe recently, and was a little surprised at the results. I'd cut my eggs into small clusters, but upon putting them into the cooled brine, found that they got hard very quickly. Your instructions mentioned that single eggs should sit no more than 10 minutes, but these small clusters were already shriveled and tough in about 7 minutes.

I thought they were ruined, but decided to still finish the process. As they dried to tackiness, they seemed to get slightly bigger and soften up. Anyone else experience this? I followed the recipe exactly, except that I didn't use any dye.

Thoughts?