I’m still figuring out which steps actually matter and which don’t. Regardless, here’s the raw unrefined list of steps. I’m pretty sure most of these steps are unnecessary, but a few might be critical.

1. Buy old eggs. I mean really old. So old the shopkeeper is about to toss them out the back door. My supermarket discounts these, and I suspect age helps the membrane detach from the albumen later.
2. Refrigerate them. Then forget about them for a week (or at least several days). They’ll be well past their sell-by date, but still fine. This extra time lets more moisture evaporate, which might be important.
3. Use a cheap egg cooker (mine’s from Lidl) with a measuring cup that has a dull needle. Poke a hole in the rounder end of each egg. That’s where the air bubble is. This lets expanding gases escape during cooking, preventing cracks.
4. Load the cooker with 7 eggs, poked-end down.
5. Add a little too much water. The eggs will cook fully, but the yolks might turn green. This might not even play a significant role, but that’s what I did last time.
6. Let the cooker run dry and beep, then turn it off. Add about 20 ml of water to cool the hot surface.
7. Get distracted with cat memes or superb owls on Lemmy. Forget the eggs exist.
8. Remember the eggs 1-2 hours later. At least they’re no longer scorching hot.
9. Refrigerate the eggs again.
10. Peel one each morning. This means that the 7th egg gets to sit in the refrigerator even longer. In the meanwhile, even more evaporation occurs, which might help.
11. Bonk the egg on the counter and roll it firmly to crush the shell into tiny pieces (still attached to the membrane).
12. If done right, the membrane will tear around the equator, and the crushed shell will be flexible as it’s still held together only by the membrane. Rolling ensures the pieces are small enough to make the shell bendy.
13. The bridge section connecting the two hemispheres will allow you to bend them apart. It’s like opening a lid of a box.