I think part of the article that's getting glossed over is:
"A refrigerated egg, no matter the source, will be good for four or five weeks. Unrefrigerated eggs are best used within a week, though they may be fine for two."
So, one would want to refrigerate eggs (washed or unwashed) anyway if they're not all going to be used immediately.
I live in UK and never keep eggs the fridge. They easily keep for a couple of weeks or more. So I think the "use within a week" advice is over-cautious.
Handy tip, if you want to know if an egg's good* or not, without breaking it: pop it in a tall glass of cold water. If it sinks, it's fine. If it floats it's gone off.
[*'good' as in 'still fresh'. Unfortunately it won't tell you if it's full of salmonella, or not!]
>In Europe and Britain, the opposite is true. European Union regulations prohibit the washing of eggs. The idea is that preserving the protective cuticle is more important than washing the gunk off.
UK eggs are unwashed, thus still have their protective cuticles and thus can last much longer unrefrigerated. GP's quote only applies to American eggs, which are washed.
No, I understood the article to state that washed eggs shouldn't be stored unrefrigerated at all (except to bring up to room temp just before cooking). The "1 week for unrefrigerated eggs" referred to eggs that still had their cuticle.
I live in Ireland, in the EU, and I'm fairly sure all the eggs in supermarkets here are washed. There's never a spot of dirt on them. And we always refrigerate, as does everyone I know
My brother in law is a small-scale farmer in Wales and produces chicken and duck eggs. I've previously discussed egg washing with him.
My understanding from such conversations is that eggs in the EU are definitely not washed.
Supermarket caged-hen eggs are generally clean in appearance due to the lack of items that might otherwise stick to the them.
I have found free range supermarket eggs, on the other hand, to sometimes have small features stuck to them.
I'm not sure what accounts for the generally clean appearance of supermarket eggs. Maybe eggs are brushed in some manner to remove obvious dirt. But the washing of eggs is certainly not a legal practice in the EU.
If you wash and, worse, brush a porous surface, you are pushing the water and dirt directly inside the egg. If there is not a lot of dirt on the egg surface is healthier to let the egg as is.
In the other hand, you can have perfectly clean eggs if 1) you use a modern nesting box designed to hide the eggs and 2) provide independent sleeping areas higher to discourage the hens to sleep in the nesting boxes.
You could also scratch the surface with an old credit card or a knife but is better not to use water. Storing eggs in the fridge is also convenient, eggs shells shouldn't be in contact with other eggs.
I'm from Ireland and I don't refrigerate eggs. Growing up, eggs were always in the cupboard not the fridge.
I have no idea what the most common approach is. Eggs are not in the fridge at the supermarket, so why they would suddenly need to go in there once you get them home, I'm not sure.
I'm also Romanian, however living in Hungary. Can confirm this for both countries. Eggs in supermarkets as Aldi or Lidl are not washed, possibly slightly cleaned before they receive a print stamp for the date of production.
Edit: The egg boxes are stacked outside of refrigerators at room temperature.
that's not because they are washed but they come from farms where laid egg immediately fall down to clean storage instead of lying in hen house together with crap
I live in the UK too... it's not that unusual to buy unrefigerated eggs with a use-by date of a month hence. You can leave them out, then hard boil them on that date, and they'll keep in the fridge for at least another week. I've always ended up eating them by that point though.
(I generally buy duck eggs rather than chicken eggs, though. Don't know if they last longer.)
FUN FACT: a couple of years ago I saw a Twitter thread between two British comedians/columnists/something/etc. trying to out-mock one another, and "I bet you refrigerate your eggs" was one of the lines.
As a side note on boiling eggs: older eggs are sometimes preferred for boiling because they're easier to peel, but if you're working with fresh eggs consider steaming them instead. Get the pan or steamer up to temperature, add eggs with a slotted spoon, cover, steam ~12 minutes, transfer to an ice bath to chill at least 5 minutes, peel.
For extra large or jumbo eggs, probably add a minute. Adjust to taste for future batches, 11-12 minutes should be cooked but still a bit darker in the center of the yolk.
Boiling or steaming eggs for 12 minutes results in a tough white and dry yolk.
Just put them in a pot, not large, with enough water to cover the eggs and no more. Cold water. Add heat, high, and heat to boil for no more than a minute. Remove and put in cool/running water. Results in non-plastic whites and soft yolks.
Though, I prefer poached or scrambled. For boiled, quail eggs are great (and, where I live, also cheaper).
I used to do this but actually I've started to get the water to a rolling boil and timing it just right from there.
6 - 7 minutes produces an egg where the yolks are not runny but are also not chalky and brittle. They have a creamy texture and deep orange colour. This on toast.
That's for soft boiling, surely? Hard-boiled eggs are usually left in for longer. What I do for mine: put in cold water, place on medium heat until water begins to boil (~9 mins), deactivate hob and leave for 12 mins, rinse with cold water, dry and place in fridge, leave for 12-18 hours at least. When ready to eat: peel off shell, remove skin that's left near the air pocket, stuff in piehole.
(They're fine to eat immediately after boiling, of course, with the warmth making them actually quite tasty - but it's risky. Until they've done their time in the fridge, they're often difficult to peel and/or they'll have a lot of hard-to-remove skin left on them once peeled.)
Your method is what I was doing before I started steaming them recently, though I generally let them stand in the hot water for a couple minutes longer. If doing this, older eggs are much easier to peel. You might also try peeling after just 5 minutes in an ice bath.
Steaming them makes even the ones done with new eggs easy to peel, and they cook without an air pocket in my recent experience.
After a quick search for photos of various stages of "cooked" this page has both the method I had been using (cold start, bring to boil, turn off, let stand 10-15 minutes, cold bath) and what I'm doing now with steaming (steamer at temp, add eggs, steam 10-12 minutes, cold bath).
A little more than soft-boiled, but far from green-tinged yolks; this way the egg isn't runny but still soft and golden butter-like, not yet chalky. Water takes about 2-3 minutes to boil (gas). Cooking room-temperature eggs, not refrigerated, room temperature is about 20-22C.
Why on earth do you put them in a fridge for 12-18 hours? Serious. Are you at a catering company that does these in mass?
Try peeling it under water or with flowing water on the egg. It makes the shell / skin peel off super good for me and doesn't cool the inside of the egg down either.
Yes. The lion stamp means that effectively. I think it was a national initiative: Edwina Curry took the rap. In all the EU stuff slung about lately, eggs never get mentioned.
I don't. But when mayo is made, one could use pasteurized eggs. Then the mayo should be safe from salmonella. I believe this is what is generally done when mayo is made commercially in the United States.
For perfect hard boiled eggs place the eggs in cold water, some white vinegar, place on high heat and bring to a boil. Remove from heat once it boils and time for exactly ten minutes.
'good' as in 'still fresh'. Unfortunately it won't tell you if it's full of salmonella, or not!
All UK chickens are vaccinated against Salmonella so there should be no chance of getting it from eggs. That's one reason why washing is considered unnecessary here.
> All UK chickens are vaccinated against Salmonella
I think it's most, but not all, chickens. Vaccination is part of the red lion quality brand mark, and approx 80% of birds are part of that; and many farmers not part of it vaccinate too.
Vaccination isn't mandatory. There are some vigorous testing requirements as part of the National Control Programme for salmonella.
Maybe I'm wrong though, has this changed recently?
> 1.1.3 The Advisory Committee on Microbiological Safety of Food (an expert independent group which advises the Food Standards Agency) considered Salmonella in eggs and reported on its findings in May 20011 and considered that the widespread vaccination of egg laying flocks against S. Enteritidis combined with improved flock hygiene measures had had a significant effect on the prevalence of Salmonella contamination of eggs and on salmonellosis in humans. In the UK a voluntary industry operated scheme (British Egg Industry Council) Lion Quality requires its members to vaccinate their layer flocks and to operate to specified hygiene standards. About 85% of egg production belongs to the Lion Quality scheme. In addition many producers who are not members of the scheme also vaccinate their flocks on a voluntary basis.
> I think it's most, but not all, chickens. Vaccination is part of the red lion quality brand mark
Ahh, you're right. But I believe that all (or virtually all) eggs sold into the supermarket supply chain carry the red lion mark. The other 15% are presumably used by commercial customers where they are guaranteed to be pasteurised or cooked enough to prevent any onward contamination.
When my youngest child was a baby and I was binge watching tv while comforting her, I found myself watching a doomsday preppers show. There I learned by oiling eggs they could be stored months. http://www.offthegridnews.com/off-grid-foods/preserving-eggs... looks to have confirmed the reality tv show: "[eggs] will, however, eventually develop an off-flavor, and this off-flavor is especially pronounced in eggs stored at 34°F for more than four months".
Tonight I also came across "best way to preserve raw eggs is to store them in a solution of slaked lime (you can find it at a building supply store) and water, which, in his test, had a 100 percent success rate after eight months" http://modernfarmer.com/2016/08/bizarre-ways-keep-eggs-fresh...
If you preserve the egg in lime, ash, and a few other ingredients for long enough, the egg turns into a "Century Egg" with an almost jello like look and consistency
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
I can't help but imagine the origins. Long ago, someone either found an egg or tried to preserve an egg this way. They opened it up and found ... that ... and ate it anyway. After not dying, a delicacy was born.
> Tastes kinda gross though (but I might be biased)
For context: according to Wikipedia the yolk contains hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide produces a distinct "rotten egg" smell, ammonia is basically what makes cat urine smell like cat urine.
I guess it might be an acquired taste and there are likely preparations that make the taste more palatable and mask the smell, but it's fair to say that it's not much of a bias to find century eggs repulsive if you're used to less pungent edibles.
Egg shells are amazingly robust. When I throw whole out-of-date eggs into the compost, they will still look exactly the same when I come to use the compost 2 years later. Everything else has turned to "soil", but there's a whole egg sitting there. Inside they look similar to the Chinese preserved "century egg" (although of course not produced in the same way, and I'm not going to try to eat one).
"may be fine for two" sounds extremely pessimistic. I live in France, and we regularly eat eggs that have been sitting on the shelf for a month and they taste good and nobody gets sick.
I'm from Spain and just use the old tricks transmitted through generations...
For boiling, if the egg sinks in water it's good, if it floats it's bad.
For frying or anything that needs breaking the egg, I break it carefully so that the yolk will not be broken by the hit, then I dip it into a plate. If the yolk keeps tight and nice the egg is good, if it breaks spontaneously or leaks some liquid, not good.
I've never had any problems and yes, usually they keep fine for a month without problems. I suppose the industry just prefers to be on the safe side with their recommendations.
It is probably good enough, but slightly more inconvenient considering how the eggs are prepared. It is pretty easy to slip an egg from a plate into a frying pan - some folks do this as standard practice. I was never sure of the origins until now.
If you are boiling, you are drawing some water anyway. It isn't a big deal at that point to have test water and add it into the pot when you are done.
Milk used to kill a lot of people yet many would drink it without issue for decades. So, your sample size is a little small in the grand scheme of things.
2-4 weeks seems reasonable. The eggs we got sometime this week (UK) have a Best Before date of 5th March (and the Best Before only indicates when they start to lose their quality - they remain safe to eat for some time after that).
That is due to EU regulations. We used to have 4 weeks on eggs in Norway, but was forced to limit it to 2 weeks. Apparently it was all about salmonella risk, even though that is very rare in our eggs.
I've learnt something today. I don't think I have ever looked at the expiry date on eggs here in Norway and I've been here over thirty years! I definitely keep eggs for longer than two weeks unrefrigerated.
That seems backwards to me. When I lived in suburbia grocery shopping was always a "trip" 5+ min drive, find a place to park, walk through the parking lot into a large store, etc. Grabbing even one thing meant at least 15 min of overhead so you'd usually try to stock up.
Whereas now I can be inside of three convenience stores and a full service grocer within 3 minutes of walking. If I drive I pass several other full grocers on the 8min/2.5 mile trip home.
This is in Milwaukee, not a NY or Sf type of place. Most people in my neighborhood still drive everywhere, you just don't have to.
San Francisco is quite walkable by American standards but certain areas are very lacking. For example the southeast portion of the city has a dearth of hospitals and the Tenderloin and Bayview neighborhoods have a startling lack of grocery stores.
The southeast could definitely have a dearth of hospitals (I think everyone should live near a hospital within a few minutes of them, esp. with San Francisco traffic), but Tenderloin has a grocery store (with fresh veggies, eggs, milk, etc) on nearly every block, with many having TWO. I get that quite a few people refuse to shop anywhere that isn't 70+k sqft, like Costco or Whole Paycheck, but these areas are not food deserts.
No, The Tenderloin does not have grocery stores on every block. They have liquor stores (corner stores, bodegas, whatever you wanna call them) that typically have a mediocre selection of fresh produce (if any at all).
It's not about having a large floor plan, it's about access to fresh food. The Bayview sees the same thing, although as SFGate points out Fresh and Easy did try. They failed too.
Because I can afford to do so, I choose to live in a nice walkable neighborhood where I do have a grocery store within walking distance, but this is absolutely not the case in most poor urban neighborhoods, including many areas of my city.
The USDA's Food Desert definition is total bullshit, for example, you could drop me nearly anywhere in Tukwila, WA and I could be in a large grocery store within 10 minutes of walking. If we include smaller stores, I can be in a store buying eggs, milk, fresh veggies & fruit of higher quality than Costco or Whole Paycheck in a 6 to 7 minute walk, and pay with EBT at any of them (if I qualified).
This is exactly why attempts to tackle this supposed "food desert" problem have fallen flat on their face. These areas aren't food deserts, they just don't have a mega-store every other block, thus they are incorrectly classified as a food desert.
With some basic cleanup, the USDA could focus on areas that are actual food deserts, where there is a need and their efforts won't go to waste.
Thats the thing though, a "proper" grocery in most HN readers minds is a large supermarket. Most actual groceries aren't sold by chains though, bodegas, corner delis, green grocers, and an assortment of Asian, Mexican and other small grocers sell a huge chunk of the fresh fruit and vegetables here in the US, since they have the upper hand when it comes to location, price and quality.
That being said, many are quick to dismiss them since they don't have the nicest/largest stores, or the most advanced systems. By doing so your ignoring reality, as that is how most people get their food, hence why they (generally) accept EBT.
In my state, almost everyone takes EBT. Even farmers markets. A proper grocery in my mind sells produce, dairy, a locally appropriate fresh meat selection and dry goods.
In an urban market, these type of stores are 15,000-30,000 sqft. We have a few markets like this in my city, but they are in nicer areas.
Poor folk have corner stores that are <3000 sqft. We don't have the Asian produce markets or Mexican markets that you are thinking of. They generally don't sell produce, and if they do they low quality and 2x expensive.
We had a crisis about a decade ago because 80% of these stores were temporarily shut down after the owners were arrested for accepting food stamps for heroin. They aren't nice places that anyone chooses to do business with.
Not in the US. San Francisco is one of the US's densest cities, and eastern SoMa is one of its densest neighborhoods, right next to downtown. It's about a square mile, and there are no real grocery stores in it at all (east of 4th St).
What are you talking about? East of 4th in SoMa I count 7 grocery stores, and if your unwilling to shop at anything sub-70k sqft, there are two. Most of the neighborhood east of 4th is within 1 to 2 blocks of a grocery store (with eggs, fresh fruit/veggies, and other essentials), and within 4 blocks of a megastore like Whole Paycheck or Costco if you really want their prepackaged crap.
This is just like the whole "Food Desert" scheme by the USDA, where they try to create stores in areas with local grocers already. For example, they define Tukwila, WA as a food desert [1], yet there are multiple places within the area they defined that stock fresh food and are EBT approved (Seafood City, 99 Ranch, Costco, Cash & Carry, etc).
This is why the attempts to get rid of these supposed deserts fall flat. Those that need or want to shop local already do, at places others like yourself ignore cause they feel they aren't of high enough caliber.
I've never considered that shopping habits might play a role in the whole US/EU wash-or-don't discussion.
Where I live most people go to the supermarket regularly. I go almost daily, for example. As a result, stuff doesn't need to have a very long shelf life (and refrigerators here are, to many of my American friends, hilariously small).
I'd propose as an amendment that you're on to something that its cultural, but probably much less controversial in that its merely a simple sorting system.
Does it never expire? Looseleaf tea, sugar, honey, spices, salt ... that goes in cabinet.
Does it expire/rot eventually no matter if its hours or months? Simple, all that stuff goes in fridge.
No need to ponder or remember or search two places. If its eternal its stored over there, if its not eternal, it is not.
This has obvious cultural side effect with my people have large fridge and only really use maybe two kitchen cabinets unlike recent trends in American kitchen remodeling where the average kitchen has a relatively modest (stainless steel, of course) fridge with about thirty kitchen cabinets presumably full of butter and eggs and milk or something.
There are even more cultural issues... I've met people who claim to hate the taste of walnut oil because they've been conditioned to believe the only walnut oil that exists is rancid bitter and gross so people like that who none the less for some weird reason like bitter rancid oil will naturally store their oil on the shelf to maximized its awfulness, although I store mine in the fridge and its delicious even though I have to warm it each time I cook with it (ditto butter). Perhaps there are people acclimated to rotten eggs such that they would actively dislike fresh eggs. Kinda like how beer gets skunky after a couple days exposure to sunlight in a closed bottle, there are probably people who actively like skunky beer.
Spices lose their potency fairly fast. Obviously they don't need to be refrigerated in their ground state, but they definitely expire in the sense of usability.
They are harder to make, though. The albumins break down over time, leading to a more liquid egg white. This, in turn causes the egg to spread out more when you are poaching them. Making a perfectly round poached egg by dropping it into a pot of salted, simmering water is very difficult if the egg is less than a few days old. That's why Starfrit sells egg poachers.
BTW, I don't know about the US, but in Canada, the supply chain often delivers eggs to the store that are 2 weeks old, so it's quite likely that most people have never cooked with a fresh egg before in their life.
Thanks for making me realise why I stopped liking poached eggs. I was just using old eggs.
And I have heard similar things about the supply chain in the US. However, I have had a fresh egg that was no more than 24 hours old (I think younger) and I didn't really notice a difference. Then again, I think it was scrambled, so I don't know if you can tell anyways.
Personally, I can't tell the difference in flavour between a fresh egg and an old egg. Texture is the only thing I've noticed. Though, for instance, that can be quite important in some egg dishes like tamagoyaki. For flavour, a much bigger difference can be seen from the diet of the hen. Grain fed battery hens have pretty bland eggs. I obsess about my tamagoyaki, so I'm willing to go to some extremes to get good, fresh eggs.
If you know anyone with chickens, get an egg off them. The difference between the eggs and store bought, free range, is night and day. I don't know why, but the yolk is orange for starters. It may have been due to the species of chicken I suppose?
It's to do with diet. IIRC, some farmers feed their flock flax in order to get more orange yolks. But free range hens that have access to insects tend to have a nicer flavour in my experience. Generally speaking, an egg with a hard shell and a very bright yolk will be nicer and that tends to correspond with free range hens. But, climate where you live will influence how realistic that is.
I had an upstairs neighbor at my condo in Chicago raising chickens on the porch. When the association put a stop to it he moved them to the community garden next door.
Many cities are launching urban chicken programs to allow people to keep their own coops. I figure if you're going to allow dogs in all their kid-biting, sidewalk-pooping, late-night barking glory, why not allow chickens in the city?
The rural folks likely have less rigid constraints on the number of chickens and more room for the chickens to roam. If you only have room for 2 chickens, choosing a male for one of the two halves your laying capacity.
Some roosters start crowing at 5:00 am, they sing non-stop for 15-20 minutes and wait for an hour. When people are sleep again they repeat the bursts. This can last from 5:00 am until 9:00 am or so. All days of the week including sundays and holidays.
Is basically torturing your neighbours, specially if they are of the night owl kind.
I'd always heard that you shouldn't store unwashed eggs in the fridge, as the cold can cause them to contract, which makes it more vulnerable to infection if parts of the cuticle are damaged. It sounds like this isn't actually true?
Unwashed eggs may have muck on the surface. Germs can't enter the egg while it's dry. That's essentially both sides of the game, there.
Putting a mucky egg in a moist environment (like a fridge) provides a transmittable medium. Doesn't matter that it's cold, it's not cold enough to kill (eg) salmonella. That enters the egg and may be a significant enough volume to cause its consumer problems.
Eggs fresh out of a chicken will last for ages. Months even. The only reason people keep eggs in the fridge is because of how long they've already been out.
Also, egg quality is very poor, you can't eat raw eggs in the US for example.
Exactly, I don't get why people are downvoting you. Egg quality in the US is terrible, instead of culling salmonella infected flocks, we wash away the protective coating of the egg and potentially spread the salmonella into the egg itself.
In Europe and many other countries, their version of the USDA have teams that regularly test flocks droppings for salmonella, and where it is found, the whole flock is culled and the section of the farm is cleaned and left fallow. They also have cleaning rooms where the farmer/workers change into salmonella free suits prior to interacting with the flock.
Hence why Europe has fewer issues with salmonella, its very rare in eggs over there.
To be honest, I think that all the "external protective cuticle" part is faked. Eggs have a porous shell. You can't rubb anything from the surface of a still warm and clean fresh egg.
Who knows. As I said those who grew up in a rural setting know that things like raw milk are incredibly delicious and good for you. The absolute diluted sweetened garbage they label as "milk" in the store is vomit inducing.
Same thing with the lies the federal government spews about eggs. Which when you have your own chickens you realize that one, eggs are not white, ever wonder how they get white? You should, and the yolks are a bright orange not yellow and taste so much better.
It's like looking at a farm raised salmon fillet in the store sitting next to a wild salmon fillet. The farm raised is pale and sick looking.
There is a reason the government has lied to you about eggs and raw milk "safety". It's not about safety it's about protecting massive agribusiness. Period.
People before refrigeration and the FDA in the country were not dying from raw milk and unrefrigerated eggs. Downvoting me for this is ignorant. It's a fact. And half the people from the U.K. posting are telling you basically the same thing about eggs I said. Store bought eggs in the US are sickly and gross. Eggs from your own chicken or a neighbors keep for a very long time unrefrigerated.
> eggs are not white, ever wonder how they get white?
Eggs are white of course. Not all of them, but some are white. There is a small trick. Look at the hen. If the nude round skin patch covering the ears is white; their eggs will be naturally white also. There are a lot of chicken races with this characteristic, Leghorns for example. Marans instead lay dark chocolate eggs
Yolk can be naturally yellow, orange or even green. It depends on the diet of the mother. More diverse the foods, more carothenes and more orange in the yolk. If you feed your chicken fishes the yolk will be greenish (and also fish flavoured with a poor taste, so you shouldn't do this)
> The farm raised salmon is pale and sick looking.
Salmon diet contains carothenes since decades. They just have more (whitish) fat content.
Not explicitly mentioned, but is linked from the article:
In Europe, the understanding is that this mandate actually encourages good husbandry on farms. It’s in the farmers’ best interests then to produce to cleanest eggs possible, as no one is going to buy their eggs if they’re dirty [1]
So in Europe, you need a clean environment as you're not allowed to wash the eggs. I find this equally compelling than not wanting to wash the protective cuticle off that protects against bacteria.
Another important point is that, as the OP mentions briefly, eggs are porous. Potentially, if there's some horrible bacteria, it could have already seeped into the egg and washing won't help so much. So you want the egg clean anyway.
That should be no problem if cooked problem. The real problem was that 5% of wrapped chickens contained campylobacter on the outside of packaging, which would immediately contaminate any other items in your shopping.
I'm a swede and I had no idea, I've refrigerated eggs as long as I can remember. My parents are from Croatia though so it's kind of weird that I picked up this habit. My relatives in Croatia do not refrigerate eggs.
Most swedes that I can think of refrigerate their eggs straight from the store. The recommendation is printed on the box to refrigerate.
Now that I've read this article it suddenly makes sense why I've sometimes seen dirt (maybe poo?) and feathers on store bought eggs.
There is a consumer preference for washed eggs in Sweden now for decades (which seems to be the result of some information campaign). Therefore Sweden is the only EU country in which eggs can generally be washed but washing is tightly regulated there.
Hmm..weird. I'm from Croatia and I would be surprised to see people not refrigerate eggs. We (me and my family) always refrigerated them. Every fridge I've seen has egg holders that we would fill up.
Pretty sure that most people I know refrigerate eggs, but then again, I never really paid attention to that.
I notice quite a mix of behavior, even in just my own. Usually I refrigerate my eggs simply because they stay good for longer that way. But when I don't have much space, or when I know I'll be eating the eggs relatively soon, I'll leave them out. I've seen other do the same.
Well my relatives are from the country, they have their own chickens. But yeah, like you say, even in Croatia most refrigerators are sold with egg holders.
Im a us expat living in Russia; eggs are sold nkn refrigerated but virtually everyone's home I've been to stores eggs in the refrigerator. The only time I haven't seen it was rural houses. I've known about this factoid for some time after reading an article om NPR about it, and I guess I always just assumed it was cultural assimilation happening. That is, we see people in US tv and movies do it, so we do it. I didn't know there was a difference in preparation prior to the article and most don't seem to either. So instead we just do what everyone else does.
I think the article overgeneralizes about 'Europeans'. EU regulations may not allow egg washing and I'm sure not all stores refrigerate eggs but I imagine zillions of people all over Europe bring the eggs home from the grocery and stick them in the fridge. just like most Americans.
My father, from the States, lived and helped out on a Swedish farm for a month or so, in the Sixties. Eggs went into a basket by the door, until they were eaten. They were never refrigerated.
One little story/detail he repeats, whenever this topic comes up.
My wife bought our chickens mainly on how pretty the basket of eggs would be on the counter. This is this weeks haul that we didn't eat - https://imgur.com/a/T9x4K.
If you have the room, I highly recommend them as pets. They're quite cool and very low maintenance, and they make the best eggs you've ever had.
I also keep chickens (easter-eggers, too!), but I've got to be honest, I can't taste the difference in a store-bought egg vs my own.
Can definitely see it in the yolk color, no doubt about that.
What is the difference you taste?
Now, if you ever butcher your own, THAT is a huge difference in taste. Night and day, similar to garden-grown sweet corn vs what you get at the market.
Yep, agreed. My uncle has >10 chickens back home. They live in the countryside, and chickens are excellent at "taking care of" dangerous insects. The eggs are amazing too, so it's a win-win.
We have about 25 chickens right now and we just picked up another 18 chicks today. Our's free range on our land and they're fantastic at keeping bugs down.
We've had some problems with snakes, but we're in the country outside Austin, TX and snakes are just a way of life out here. We even had to remove a rattlesnake from inside the house a few weeks back. Skunks are a big problem this year -- lots of them out and about.
We give and sell fresh eggs to everyone we know. I routinely take them into work and sell them for $5 a dozen. We've had to explain the whole not washing or refrigerating them to most people but after they've had fresh eggs they always want more.
You can't buy pastured eggs for less than $7 a dozen generally. The eggs you are referring to are still from chickens who are stuck more or less indoors at all times, and don't get to engage in "chicken-y" behaviors. "Free range" in this case often means there is access to an outdoor patch, but there's no real reason for the chickens to go there, and the are so depressed that they hardly want to move anyway.
As such their yolks will tend to be yellow instead of orange or nearly red, as true pastured chicken eggs yolks will be.
No the eggs I am referring to are from "pastured" chickens. I have seen them go for $5 at a Whole Foods in Northern Virginia as well as the local coop around the corner from me in Syracuse, NY.
We've been mostly at a balance of production/demand and only occasionally given them away to friends. Now that the days are getting longer and the "new flock" that we got last spring is hitting maturity we're going to have to start putting more effort into giving them away or start selling them. It's common to see a cooler at the end of the driveway with fresh eggs for sale in the area I live.
re: snakes - not so far, and the other comment about them keeping potentially dangerous insects (ticks) in check is right on. Hawks and foxes are more the concern as predators around here, we've lost a few to foxes in the last two years.
I find our weird attitudes to food endlessly fascinating. For example, I feel uncomfortable with what is considered food (or even a delicacy) in many countries outside of (Western) Europe and yet I'll have salted herring without any hesitation, which many expats here are uncomfortable doing.
The thing is, salmonella is most prevalent on the outside of the shell, and that cleaning does save some lives (and misery). Meanwhile you can let your egg come to room temp if you prefer, before use. Finally, if you really want fresh eggs, you can raise them or hook up with a local farmer. Even in a big city, you can raise chickens for eggs.
The article doesn't mention it, but the majority of egg-laying hens in the UK are vaccinated against salmonella. It's mandatory for eggs sold with the 'Lion' quality mark, and these make up 85% of the market.
Europe has traditionally (as a whole) been a lot laxer with regulations. The upside is that they avoid a lot of red tape. The downside is... Thalidomide.
Bananas have always been classified by quality and size for international trade. Because the standards, set by individual governments and the industry, were confusing, the European Commission was asked to draw up new rules.
Commission regulation 2257/94 decreed that bananas in general should be “free from malformation or abnormal curvature”. Those sold as “extra class” must be perfect, “class 1” can have “slight defects of shape” and “class 2” can have full-scale “defects of shape”.
Nothing is banned under the regulation, which sets grading rules requested by industry to make sure importers – including UK wholesalers and supermarkets – know exactly what they will be getting when they order a box of bananas.
Summary: unwashed eggs are edible for up to eight weeks on the counter, and can go much longer than that if refrigerated. Washed eggs go bad more quickly, but should still be ok for a couple of months. The hard part is, you really have no way to know how long it's been since a store-bought egg was laid.
I (Europe/Germany) put them in the fridge because the fridge came with an egg tray. Simple as that, never thought about leaving them outside.
Maybe that's a simple answer to why many people put them in the fridge, independent of 'how long they will stay good'.
My fridge came with a removable egg tray which I immediately removed so as to have more space for stuff that actually needs to be cold. Also I have never seen a fridge with an egg tray big enough for a weeks worth of eggs for a family of five so what's the point in having it.
In Swedish egg farms, if salmonella is discovered (in a mandatory screening), the entire flock must be killed off. This provides a good incentive to avoid salmonella outbreaks. The state reimburses up to 50% of the costs incurred (up to 70% if the farm is part of the additional voluntary salmonella screening program).
As someone who raises chickens for eggs on our hobby farm and have done much research surrounding this, having been raised in the U.K. and now living in Canada I have the following info:
In North America, I cannot speak to the quality of the conditions in which the eggs are laid, but they are washed. The Health Department requires that washed eggs be refrigerated due to the removal of the cuticle or "bloom". In the supermarket, eggs are refrigerated accordingly and they should be refrigerated at home too.
In the U.K. the eggs don't undergo any process that removes the cuticle and thus they're not refrigerated in the supermarket and thus don't need to be refrigerated at home.
When I pick the eggs from our free as in "can come and go as they please" chickens in the morning, some of the eggs I have been stepped all over by careless chickens with dirty feet and thus I like to wash those eggs and they can either then be dipped in mineral oil to mitigate the need for immediate refrigeration or as I frequently do, I put them in the fridge after I wash them. If the eggs are clean, I don't wash them and leave them on the counter where I treat them as good for 2-3 weeks without a second thought. Of course, if I were selling these eggs, which sometimes I do, it's usually less of a ball ache my explaining why they don't need refrigeration than it is just to wash them and tell people just to keep them in the fridge as normal - unless they want the whole "farm fresh organic treated like wild chickens" experience, in which case I tell them to keep them on the counter in a little wicker hay lined basket for that farmhouse vibe... and eat them up within a week... because that way they'll buy more.
Please excuse me if my question is dumb, I've never been to the US so I might just be uninformed...
I've noticed in movies and shows that eggs in the US usually have a white shell, whereas in other countries (at least the ones I have lived in, i.e. Europe, SE Asia and Australia) they are usually of a colour that I would describe as beige/light-brown. is that because of the washing process described in the article, or is it just because of the hen's breed?
Egg color is actually a genetic characteristic. The most common layer of white eggs is the Leghorn Chicken, which is pretty common in American factory farming. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leghorn_chicken I think a big aspect is just that there is a cultural expectation of eggs being white in the US. 'Free range' and Organic brands often choose chickens that lay brown eggs though, as a way to distinguish their product and appear more 'natural'.
Not here (in this part of Norway). The eggs I bought most recently from our local Kiwi (Svelvik, Vestfold) are brown and they were the cheapest eggs I could buy, FirstPrice.
And I'm an immigrant: Knowing different colors of eggs are common in different areas makes me a bit more intrigued in that bit of farming. The farms are different here than they were in the US. Conversation points for next time I'm out on a farm! Thanks muchly.
You can buy both in the UK, but light brown are most common. It's nothing to do with washing, it's just a cultural preference... like streaky (American) vs back bacon.
And the only reason eggs arent refrigerated in supermarkets is because... well, they're only in the store for a few days tops. I personally keep mine in the fridge.
The color of eggs and type of bacon are horrible analogs - the color of your eggs has zero bearing on their flavor, whereas anyone who'd choose back bacon over proper bacon is just a monster.
This varies with region. Here in New England, more people prefer brown eggs. They come from brown chickens (like Rhode Island Reds). There's even an old advertising jingle that mostly older people remember, "Brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh!"
I don't know the history behind it, but yes, in America stores typically sell both white and brown eggs. Purely by anecdote, I notice that shoppers with a bent toward "organic" favor brown eggs for some reason. As far as I know they are the same in every essential regard, except the shell color.
If this interested you, then you might also be interested in water glass, or sodium silicate [1]. It is still used today by some sailboat crews to keep fresh eggs on board without refrigeration for up to five months, without resorting to powdered eggs.
Ah ha! I had always wondered why we'd buy a crate of 24 eggs at Carrefour in France when I lived there for two years, just off the grocery floor. I didn't feel bad not refrigerating them there, but of course must do so again now. Satisfying answer.
I live in Italy and most supermarkets only have refrigerated eggs with Carrefour being the notable exception and I found it weird when I first saw eggs outside the refrigerator
Whenever I buy eggs from the store I refrigerate them. My chickens and ducks however I don't bother with. Eggs don't last long around my house, have a few labradors who I feed a home cooked diet in which eggs are a daily item.
I think the washing/not washing discussion is interesting. It really highlights a difference in food approaches between the US and EU. One of the things that really annoys me about the US is the raw milk stuff. I live in PA so I can get raw milk pretty easily; live a mile from a raw milk farm that's been in business since 1840 or something. This farm has a good track record, some others don't. I remember in Mike Pollan's Netflix's documentary series the part about the cheese nun and the FDA. The FDA individual simply stated that in France the practices are much more rigorous than the US. Why can't we develop a system that allows raw milk from farmers who follow similar procedures? Why can I still not buy raw milk cheese under so many days old directly from France? The ban probably angers me more than anything since I'm really big into cheese and raw milk cheese from France tastes better than pasteurized stuff. Raw milk itself I'm content with since I get it from the farm nearby. It's what I grew up on, whenever I have milk from other sources the differences are night and day. The differences in food approaches is interesting.. and really shows how far the US has gone off track. Not to mention the damn ban on tonka beans.
Because I'm from the UK, and most people I know here store boxes of eggs in the fridge. That's how we've done it for decades, and that seems to be the 'norm' where I live. Certainly never seen any eggs laid out in a bowl on a table or worktop.
Maybe it's a regional thing here?
Edit: Just checked online a bit. Seems like it's a matter of individual opinion here, based on this Guardian thread:
According to the BBC article "Ketchup debate: To chill or not to chill..." [0] from a few days ago, the NHS advice states eggs are "best stored in the fridge as they will be kept at a constant temperature".
I live in Sweden and we've kept our eggs unrefrigerated in our home. However, we recently sponsored a chicken and now get to buy more ethically obtained (in my opinion) eggs from a small local farm in batches that might last a month or so. The farm owner recommended that we refrigerate the eggs, I suspect because we are not using them as quickly as you would otherwise go through a carton of eggs from the supermarket. I'm also not sure what period of time the eggs are collected over, so they could very well already be a week old by the time we receive them. So now we refrigerate to be safe.
Raised chickens for some time. Noticed my eggs would "sweat" when I'd take them out of the refrigerator vs store bought which do nothing at all; after a time at room temperature they'd reabsorb. I'd imagine that's pretty dangerous if you're running a cesspool operation - pulling in liquid contaminated by whatever is on the shell.
French here : eggs are usually sold refrigerated (Leclerc, Auchan - but not my SuperU for instance) and I keep them in the fridge, like everyone I know (and have seen manipulating eggs)
Interesting; explains why my Chinese friend has a habit of leaving the eggs out on the counter after taking them out of the fridge. Thought she was just absent-minded.
Seems like it would be fine for them to blow them off with air, and irradiate them. Then if there's some crap stuck to them you at least won't be getting salmonella.
In Austria (AUSTRIA -> EUROPE, NOT AUSTRALIA ;-] ) most of the eggs are chilled and people chill them also. I see very rarely some eggs not in the supermarket fridge and asked myself at this moment: how they prevent the eggs from decay
I have never seen anyone NOT put them in the fridge. The same goes for my time in France and England. This article is "America vs the rest of the world" clickbait. At least the headline is clickbait. The part about washing and the "protective cuticle" was interesting.
In my city eggs are sold unrefrigerated in a bag or in a huge pile for you to pick from. This is in a grocery store. The wet markets sell them similarly, though I have been to them a lot less.
america here, we used to own chickens -- the rule my wife told me is if it's fresh--it can sit for 1-2 months without putting in fridge, if it's store bought it must be refrigerated because of the cuticle. -- Though not sure on store-bought but un-washed eggs, since there's obviously handling and processing between farm and home it could obviously shorten the life span.
If you have "natural" peanut butter (ground peanuts and a bit of salt), refrigerating after stirring the separated oil back in helps to keep it from separating out, again.
It also makes it a bit less "oozy" when spreading it on bread. For those of use who like a thicker helping of PB with our J, another plus. :-)
We get our eggs from local farmers who raise chickens in old fashioned coops. In addition to tasting much richer without having to pay for "organic" eggs (because they get to run around and eat bugs), they keep longer as well. We don't bother refrigerating them either.
I love how, once again, the states are clueless, forcing companies to wash the eggs on one continent, and forcing them not to on the other continent. Another useless law, hampering the production of vital goods.
That's not at all what I got from the article. I read it as saying basically that reasonable people can disagree about whether eggs should be washed and refrigerated, and there are good reasons for either position.
I would agree, I'm still puzzled tho, because vaccine works but is not used for economic reasons. So we Europeans, mostly don't vaccinate and don't refrigerate (let's forget the health care and say it's the cheapest), but in the US you're paying for an entire cold shipping infrastructure anyways, which doesn't strike me as "cheap".
Likely varies across Europe. In the UK, 85% of eggs produced meet the Lion Mark standards, which includes mandatory Salmonella vaccination. Certainly appears effective:
> [T]he Food Standards Agency [...] in 2004 [...] tested more than 28,000 UK-produced eggs and no Salmonella was found inside any of them.
You need a cold chain anyways for all sorts of other foods, both here and in Europe. Meanwhile, washing eggs does reduce salmonella (salmonella in American eggs is practically nonexistent), and refrigerated eggs do keep longer.
What do you base that observation on? The article doesn't address whether washing + refrigeration is safer than leaving the membrane in-tact and not refrigerating. In fact, it hints at the exact opposite, saying Japan adopted the US method after a major salmonella outbreak. Who's right, or more importantly, does this even matter?
I did not read the article as I got fed up with playing the "chase the close box in this overlay" game. However, most egg vendors in Japan neither wash, nor refrigerate eggs. The main exception I can think of are the eggs at the convenience store. In my town, they even have vending machines for eggs that the local farmer fills up every 2 or 3 days. They are unrefrigerated and the eggs sit happily there are 35 degrees C in the summer.
"A refrigerated egg, no matter the source, will be good for four or five weeks. Unrefrigerated eggs are best used within a week, though they may be fine for two."
So, one would want to refrigerate eggs (washed or unwashed) anyway if they're not all going to be used immediately.