In Mexico they aren’t refrigerated and are sold by weight.
Maybe it’s the fact that the French are infamous as being “chickens”?
My family only refridgerates eggs when we have enough that they’re going to be around more than a couple of weeks. Granted, we raise chickens, and they’ve all been tested negative for salmonella (my father takes some of them to shows, anda negativetest is an entry requirement), so the risk of that is zero. I’ve never noticed any off taste in them, though I suppose that it could just be I’m so used to it that store bought refridgerated eggs are what tastes odd.
Given the alarming mortality rates among people over the “millennia”–mortality from a host of bacterial and viral infections–I wouldn’t put too much stock in tradition. Some forms of salmonella originate inside the hen.
During the same “How to Boil Water” show I mentioned, the chef claimed that you can tell if eggs are bad by placing them in a sink filled with room temperature tap water. If an egg floats, it is bad and should be thrown out. Has anyone tried this method?
I have tried it.
It works.
The gas in a rotten (or rotting) egg makes them float.
Of course, I checked the one that floated. That was not cool.
Don’t really know who this guy is, but if he’s Norwegian, he’s clearly not a cook.
Gravlaks is salmon which has been salted and rubbed with spices, then left in a cool place to, ahem, “slightly ferment”. Nothing to do with burying it, although grave does mean “bury” in Norwegian. Anyway, this can be done with many types of fish; salmon is just the most popular.
Lutefisk starts out as dried fish, usually cod. This is simply hung to dry in the open air, even today (covered with nets to keep the birds away). This fish will keep for a long time but is obviously not very easy to eat in that shape, so it is soaked in water and/or cooked for a long time. Think bacalao. Anyway, lutefisk is made by soaking the dried fish in a lye-and-water solution until it’s soft, then in plain water until the lye is out and the fish is safe to eat again. The process requires days of soaking and many changes of water, but apparently is still faster than just soaking in plain water. It does, however, give the fish a gelatin-like texture and a strong smell. You either love it or you hate it; lord help me, I married into a family that loves it.
Never heard of this myrmelk and it’s not in the dictionary nor my cookbook on traditional Norwegian cooking. Wonder if it’s a corruption of merrmelk, which would be simply mare’s milk, i.e. from a horse. Strong-tasting, I’ve been told, but not deadly.
Many Norwegians believe that Icelanders bury shark meat underground for three to six months to age it. I’ve been told by an Icelander that this is nonsense; the meat is hung to age it, using the same process meat packing plants still use for beef and so on.
And just to be on-topic, Norwegians refrigerate their eggs, but the best-before date stamped on the packages now has to show when the eggs would be safe to eat if left unrefrigerated. Some sort of European regulation.
Just had a chat with friends here at work and some others I know in cyberland and out of the 26 I talked to, only 2 either kept or have families that keep their eggs in the fridge. I know it’s not exactly a Gallup poll but best I can do!
They were from Englian, Ireland, France, Spain, Holland, Denmark and Italy.
Maybe we could turn the questions around to…
“The Americans refrigerate their eggs”. Really? 
Here (Hungary) eggs are unrefrigerated in the shops (or fresh from the chicken if you buy at a market), so I don’t know whether it’s worth bothering sticking them in the fridge after they’ve been sitting on a shelf at room temperature for who knows how many days anyway.
The only reason I refrigerate my eggs is because my fridge happens to have a handy egg-tray built in, which frees up cupboard space and prevents them from getting broken.
CnoteChris, I wouldn’t discount the concept of chicken shit burning power stations out of hand (real link follows):
http://www.fibrowatt.com/UK-Thetford/
According to a civil engineer friend of mine who was dragged out there to visit the place (he was working on a straw burning facility of similar design) and I am reliably informed that it is one of the most vomit-inducing horrible experiences ever. You see, they had a problem with the chicken shit hoppers. They were designed on the assumption that chicken shit was homogeneous in its density. Of course, it is no such thing. I decants into its solid and liquid parts, and the solids settle into a dense slurry at the bottom. As a result, the Archimedes’ screws that had to take the fowl poo from the hoppers to the furnaces were jammed. In addition, as the liquid part evaporated, the hoppers contained a far greater weight of crap that they were designed for and started to buckle, and… Look, I can’t go on with this story, it’s making me feel ill.
Zazie, je ne sais pas non plus pourquoi les gens mettent la moutarde et la confiture au frigo.
Apparently you don’t understand what irony is.
I was merely referring to the tongue-in-cheek nature of Zorro’s contributions to this thread.
Which at this point, aren’t helping any.
Yeah fine the kidding was fun and all in the beginning, I guess. But it’d help if he knew when to let up on a joke.
Listen, it’s not just a blow-off question. I’m curious about it and wonder what the health ramifications of unrefrigerated eggs are, if any.
This psuedo-bs that’s kinda right and kinda wrong, right in the middle of people sorting it all out, or at least explaining it, is confusing at worst, and at best, growing old at this point.
Ha Ha. Could we move on now?
Adding another data point, for whatever it is wort.
Sweden: Eggs are sold refrigerated (and quite often by the dozen) and I have never heard of anyone storing them in room temperature.
As for cheeses, you might know that there’s a awfully large number of different cheeses produced in France. Some are always pasteurized. Some are never pasteurized. Some comes both ways : pasteurized or non pasteurized, and you’ve to ask the vendor whether you prefer, say your “Saint Nectaire” pasteurized or not.
The issue with pasteurization is that it kills all the bacterias, and it happens that in a lot of cases, the cheese taste comes at least partly from the bacterias it contains. So, at least for people who love cheese, there’s a significant difference in taste for the same kind of cheese, depending on it having been pasteurized or not. Though I must say that, even non pasteurized, it’s more and more difficult to find a really good cheese, particulary in Paris. But then, I’ve rather high standarts when it comes to cheese.
French people don’t want their cheese to be mandatorily pasteurized. When you hear a frenchman ranting about the european union, it’s very likely that he will mention the attempt of the EU to make pasteurization mandatory, years ago, ( like it were the most important regulation the EU ever envisioned :rolleyes: ).
As for butter, it’s quite always pasteurized, except in the specialized “fromageries” (thanks for the word) I already mentionned.
Finally, french people don’t particulary like a “slightly rotten” taste in their food It’s usually only done with game meat, and even then, not everybody like this taste.
Eggs just don’t spoil that quickly (I mentionned that people refrigerate them here , but that in some shops they aren’t, so it doesn’t seem to be an issue health-wise, or else it would be regulated). Reading this thread, it’s quite obvious that people refrigerate their eggs in some countries and don’t in others. So it doesn’t seem that not refrigerating eggs is a major health hazzard.
By the way, I would mention that “pasteurized eggs”, which I understand are sold in the US, are totally unheard of here. I was very surprised to learn that such a thing existed. I’ve also been told than poultry being infected by salmonella is way more common in the US than in Europe, but I absolutely don’t know if this is true. If it is, it would possibly explain why american people and food authorities are more cautious when it comes to eating food including raw eggs, not pasteurized eggs, or not overcooked eggs.
My thoughts exactly. I thought we were kind of fussy about factual accuracy in GQ. Apparently it’s ok to write any old rubbish as long as it’s a somewhat obscure joke intended to mislead.
End result is that I can’t believe anything Zorro has to say in this thread.
A little off topic, but things like this burn me too. Here in Michigan it’s already mandatory that apple cider be pasteurized if sold in non-farm stores. Starting some time next year, the pasteurization requirement will also apply to farm stores, i.e, the farmers’ market vendors and the cider mill at the orchard. For those of you who are accustomed to non-pasteurized cider, you’ll realize the travesty in this. I guess I’ll have to plant my own orchard and build my own cider press…
Oh, this is because a few young’ns and a few old people got e. coli infections from non-pasteurized cider. Dang immune-deficient people spoiling it for everyone.
The bit about the chicken sh*t burning power plant in Norfolk was absolutely true. The rest is “based on a true story”, as they say in Hollywood.
I’m sorry if I caused any confusion.
Just to clarify: outside of China, as far as I’m aware, no-one eats rotten eggs.
Sounds like the old Dairy Mart back in Ohio!
The same goes for Denmark. I’ve never met anybody who did not refrigerate their eggs.
Also, we can by pastuerized eggs (whole or seperated into yolks and whites). There’s a general awareness around possible salmonella contamination of eggs and chicken meat, and people are advised to use pastuerized for everything that are not heated thoroughly (like icecream).