Eggs: Keeping Fresh & Storage

I use to watch the Two Fat Ladies and noticed they always had their eggs out on the counter. I figure that is just a European thing. But it is more than that. First rule: if you bought your eggs from the store and they were refrigerated, then they must continue to be refrigerated. I read this article on fresh eggs, refrigerate or not. The author says after one week on the counter then she puts them in the fridge.

Here is a great article on farm fresh eggs- (I think it is great but some of our chicken raising monkeys may disagree) My Mom keeps her eggs on the counter but not because it is cute but it is what she does.

Day 13 - Must Fresh Eggs Be Refrigerated? - Living Homegrown

Storage:

There was a Doomsday Prepper show that showed a lady in Utah coating eggs that would be good for months. I always wondered if this was true. I guess I wasn’t the only one to question if you can just coat eggs and store them. The author of the article below read the book written by a chicken expert. Here is what he found out about coating eggs for long term storage:

Preserving Eggs for the Long Term | Off The Grid News


Bottom-line, it was Reality TV, they left out a lot of information. Lesson learned: Don’t not implement things seen on the Doomsday Prepper show, unless you have researched the subject.

 

OK, let me give some insight to eggs, since I am an egg-pert.
You can coat the eggs with stuff and they will last longer...
The hen coats the eggs with stuff, want them to last, don't wash your eggs. (it's called glow, I think that's butt glow).
My first experience with eggs was about 60 years ago, when I jumped off my Mom's chicken house roof and broke my leg.
Yes eggs last a long time at room temperature, which is why they have that wire basket with eggs in it on the counter.
Also in the Mid-West they used to bury the eggs in a lime mixture in the Winter, next to the house... it's called refrigeration. They would last till Spring.
I typically wash and refrigerate eggs for up to six months, anything more than a month old I break in a separate bowl first.
Store bought eggs are... probably a month old+, how can you tell..., boil one, if it peels, it's an old egg.

Rancher

 

When I joined some friends for a long ocean crossing on their sailboat my first duty as a new crew member was to wash and shellac the eggs. Yes you heard me right, I painted the eggs, first one side, let it dry, and turned them over and painted the other. Months later at the end of our journey they were just as fresh without any refrigeration.

 

Once upon a time I also worked for Cargill corp. at an egg farm in Balm Fl. We processed eggs there and shipped them to Winn Dixie stores all over Florida. We had 50,000 layers on site as well. I worked the loading docks getting 15 trucks ready for the next days delivery. Loaded a lot of damned eggs. Our warehouse sized cooler held a lot of eggs. Nothing went out in under 60 days. 1st in 1st out. Was a pain but we constantly rotated eggs on pallets in cooler to make it happen.

 

My grandmother would dip them in melted beeswax or paraffin wax for months of non-refrigerated storage, and let's not forget about pickling of hard-boiled eggs, and I can agree with TAC, farm fresh hard boiled eggs are a PITA to peel.

 

First paying job I had as a kid was working at a hatchery and during the Korean war we had contracts with the military. We coated the eggs with a liquid and they would keep for several months refrigerated, and anything that wasn't perfect was dried and canned and would keep for years. Any eggs that mom had that were to small to sell were made into pickled eggs and would keep for months. If all else failed, she made deviled eggs and hid them in the fridge, they were always gone in hours as they are better than candy.

 

...and that's a fact!

But yes, washing eggs is probably the one worst thing one can do if they are planning on lts...

 

Eggs were transported across the country by wagon train, in barrels layered in lard. It sealed them, and protected them from damage.

 

Thanks, didn't know that.

Rancher

 

Wow! never realized there were so many ways to LTS an egg. At first I wondered if some of the stuff suggested would seep in but I know when you color an Easter egg the egg doesn't turn colors. The egg shell is quite amazing

 

I have chickens. I put a dozen in my food storage area which stays about 70 degrees. I did not wash them and I coated them with mineral oil and stored them in a carton small end up. I then ate one every month for a year. At about seven months the yokes would not stay together but they scrambled fine. Ate a fresh egg along side them and could never tell the difference. Never got sick and no unusual odor.

A month on the counter is no big deal. But, I never wash those on the counter. If eggs are dirty, I wash them and put them in the refrigerator or use them right away. The last thing that happens when a egg is layed is they are coated in the "bloom", a quick drying final touch that seals the pores in the shell. That's why they are wet coming out of the hen. Wash it off and you defeat its purpose. BTY, my hen lay standing. They only sit on the nest till is show time.

 

I never knew any of this. Good info.

 

Great post, and I am in no way an expert but it was explained to me the reason I had to wash the eggs prior to lacquering them is because we didn’t know the conditions they were laid in, or how they were handled prior to acquiring them. There are some nasty bugs out there, that stick to anything. I am sure your know both of these factors and have decided accordingly. Just thought I would toss that out there.

 

I'm learnin so much stuff , my head is gona pop.

 

Water glass (liquid sodium silicate) is also good for storing fresh eggs.

There are basically two ways to preserve eggs with water glass: wet and dry.

Wet: Fresh eggs are stored in a solution of 1 part water glass to nine parts boiled water. Good for about 9 mos. Eggs found floating in the solution have gone bad, and should be discarded. ()

Dry: Fresh eggs are immersed in a thicker solution of water glass (1 part water glass to three parts water), then removed and allowed to dry. (The Old Foodie: Preserving eggs, otherwayes.) Good for 6 mos. or more.

In each case, only fresh unwashed eggs should be used, and they should be stored in a cool place, such as a root cellar. And each egg should be cracked separately into a bowl before use to confirm that it is still good.

There is a video good for showing you what happens when you haven't a clue about storing eggs with water glass. An egg from a whole crock full of floaters is cracked, and found to be bad. (DUH!)

()

And then there's this: (From Comments at Preserving Eggs for the Long Term | Off The Grid News)

CamoTim
March 5, 2012 at 6:14 pm
I am a chicken farmer that makes 5000 organic pasture raised eggs a week. And I’m in the Army on an Agri team and have written the training materials used in the Army about chickens and eggs.
There are a lot of people with a lot of silly ideas about chickens and eggs. Most people don’t realize that you can actually store your eggs in the cupboard with your cereal for a few months. There is a small air pocket that will get slightly larger over time. Meaning that you will have less egg material per egg by doing this. If you put it in the average refrigerator, your life expectancy of that egg is about 9-12 months. We experimented recently and put eggs that we had in flats, under the house. It is cool and dark but it also gets up to about 105 here during the day in the sun during the summer time. They were fine 9 months later. It is important to note that these were eggs that had not been cleaned. They will evaporate their contents faster if it has been cleaned. We have tried eating them at all stages and in my opinion, the flavor does not change at all. The only difference is that the air pocket is bigger and the yolk does not “sit up”. It is just sort of runny. Of course, there are rules which dictate how eggs are sold. They need to be date stamped right away with a 1 month date and it is labeled as a Sold-By date.
I don’t actually have information on oiling them but just wanted to clarify the life expectancy of eggs stored in non-conventional ways.
In my opinion, have a small flock of your own. It teaches kids chores, keeps down on the insects, they are far more nutritious than store bought eggs, and in a pinch you can butcher them. We order day old chicks by the hundreds and they manage to stick in a few males all the time. Over the weekend there were two with broken legs. You’ve never tasted chicken until you taste one that you just butchered and then put on the BBQ. The difference between fresh and factory frozen is like the difference between trout and salmon. And the health benefits of pasture (or home) raised over “free range” is huge. I’d link you to my site but don’t feel it is appropriate to plug it here. So just look up “Health benefits of Pasture raised Eggs” and look for articles on the subject. And remember, free range can mean 4 foot by 3 foot cage on cement with four chickens in it. Pasture raised is a much higher requirement.

 

My mom used to use sodium silicate to preserve eggs when I was a kid...and that was MID-20th century.

 

See what happens when I leave town.. Was going to mention the waterglassing of the eggs, however I wanted to check the facts I had saved back in the 90's on it.. Hard drives are at home..

There was another article on buttering the egg shells I had read back then as well, havent found it yet tho.. If I can locat the article I will post it..

 

In the 50's at the hatchery, the only eggs that were washed were the ones that were to be dried, the rest were cleaned with a soft rubber block that had sand paper on it, and if too dirty, were sent to the dried section, at a lower price for the farmer so they tried to keep them clean, wouldn't bet that the farmer didn't wash some of the dirtiest as they were a thrifty bunch. Storage eggs are best if not fertilized, used to call them blood spots, and if it showed up in the candling it went to the dried section. If you are going to keep eggs, candle them, check in front of a light, as double yolks, cracks, relative size of air pocket, blood spots etc will all show up. The people that did that were a wonder to watch, they held 3 or four eggs in each hand, shuffled them around, and sorted 100's of eggs an hour by size and condition, and my job was to bring the 30 dozen egg cases up to them and seal and take the 30 dozen sorted and inspected cases away. The army ones in those day went into wooden boxes after they had been dipped and drained for a while. The egg money almost always went to the women as it was the only check that came in every week and was available to buy food etc. Can't say that some wasn't used to buy a beer or a tonic water or smokes, but the milk check only came 1 time a month and it might be 6 months to a year between major checks when you sold your cattle or hogs and corn etc. There were no credit cards so you had to watch your pennies and not everyone was able to.

 

Blood spots do not indicate a fertilized egg, it's really a fairly common occurrence in free range chickens, just a slight injury in the ova duct, it will gross some people out, my mother used the 2 halfs of the shell to remove before cooking. If you think about it a hamburger has lots of blood spots

Rancher