How To Tell If An Egg Is Bad
Today, while messing with the chickens, I happened to move one of their boxes and found an egg behind it! I’ve been short on eggs lately, and this was one I definitely could have used! But, I had no idea how long it had been sitting there, so instead of taking any chances, I tossed it into the woods.
But then I got curious about that egg. I wondered if it really was bad or not. Did I just waste a totally good egg? I decided to do a little research, and I found some very interesting advice!!
If you want to know if your egg is still good, here’s how you can tell:
Put the egg in cold water. If it floats completely off the bottom of the container, it’s bad. If it sinks, it’s good!
Isn’t that COOL?
*The only thing about that is once your egg has been in the water, you need to eat it within the next few days. The water washes off the “bloom” on the shell which protects it from bacteria entering.
So, the next time I find an egg hiding somewhere, I’m definitely doing the test before just tossing it away!
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We use this at our home. My rule is, if it floats, to goes bye bye. Ones that stand on end need eaten immediately. Sinkers get used too of course. Its very helpful when you discover a package of eggs in the back of the fridge that much older than the rest. We jsut test them as we use them (though honestly we try and use everything we find like that asap by eating scrambled eggs for dinner or something).
My MIL buys eggs and keeps them forever. We opened some once and they were bad, so now I 1. check the date on the carton and 2. do the above test. I tested a dozen that were bad and was going to toss them and my MIL stopped me. She wouldn’t believe me when I told her about the test. Once I found the same test in Joy Of Cooking, she relented and let me toss the eggs. If the egg is super fresh, it will lay on it’s side on the bottom. These are not the best eggs if you want to do hard boiled eggs, as the air layer that helps them ‘stand up’ in the water also helps you peel them. Too much air (as in floating) and they are bad.
You can tell hard-boiled eggs from uncooked by spinning them on a flat surface. The cooked ones will spin like a top but the raw ones are not stable and will wobble.
My grandmother actually taught me this trick! I’ve known this for years and I amaze people when I tell them how to tell if an egg is bad! LOL Glad I’m not the only one out there anymore that knew this trick! It comes handy when buying an abundance of eggs when they are on sale or in the summer from local farmers and you aren’t sure if they went bad yet! I didn’t know about freezing eggs though so that was an awesome tip!!
Thanks!!!
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