There is nothing worse then barely being awake and starting to cook your eggs when you suddenly get the whiff of the sulphur river overflowing into your kitchen. Let us/Nicole help you tell if your eggs are good before you crack them open. Yes there really is a way. Watch below.
Hi, this is Nicole Rice with Real Food Real Simple and School of Permaculture. Today, I want to take a second and chat with you about eggs. If you are at a position where you are getting your eggs from farmers or even better you’re own backyard you’re going to notice that the chickens have a rhythm and cycle to their life in terms of how often and how frequently they lay eggs. One of the things that I think is really important is to understand when an egg is fresh and where the best application for the egg is.
I want to show you guys something really cool. I just got a little container of water here and I’ve got two dozen eggs. Eggs are really awesome because even though it looks like it is solid there is actually teeny, tiny microscopic holes in here that let air flow through. If you hatch the eggs yourself, one thing that is really important to prolong the life of the egg is that you actually don’t wash them until right before you’re ready to serve them.
You’ll see that these have not been washed and what happens is the chickens when they lay them they leave a coating on that you can’t see. It’s called bloom. That coating prevents air from coming in and keeps the egg fresh longer. As the egg ages that bloom will start to wear off and air will start to go into the egg. This will change the buoyancy of the egg.
I’m going to put this egg in here slowly you can see. You see how that egg goes right down to the bottom. That means it’s actually a really fresh egg that there is no air in there that is causing it to float. Let’s try an egg from this carton. You’ll see that one started to float back up. That again is because there is air that is actually in the shell itself causing it to float. This is an older egg.
A lot of times you’ll see people that if it floats it’s spoiled, it’s bad and you can’t use it and I tend to disagree with that. I think this is an older egg versus this is a fresher egg. I’m just going to use them for different application. I’m fresh eggs I’m going to reserve for eating in cases where I’m not going to cook them very much or maybe not even at all so mayonnaise or if I put them in a shake or if I’m going to eat them raw. That is when I want a really fresh egg but if you’re going to hard boil them, you’re going to bake with them, you’re going to do something where they’re going to get cooked very well then you go ahead and use an older egg.
I often get asked how do I know if the egg is bad. It’s actually not really hard. It’s really wonderful the egg tells you. If you ever crack an egg and it smells or it’s brown or you crack it and it looks like water like yellow water. All of those eggs are old beyond the point of eating. You dont want to eat those but if you crack your egg and it still looks good and it still is appetizing to you then your egg is great.
I just cracked one of the fresher eggs and I want to show you see how high that yolk is sitting. See how it’s nice and firm and sitting up that is a sign again of a fresh egg. If you crack an older egg then the yolk is going to be a little bit flatter, the white is going to be a little bit runnier and that is just something that happens since the egg ages.
I hoped you learned something new today and go have fun testing your eggs, see how old they are and dont be afraid to use them if they float. Just respect the egg and use them in the proper application.
