I seem to remember back when I was a kid that breaking an egg was a skill that had to be mastered to get it done without get pieces of shell in with the egg.
A nice clean break was required and took some practice.
Now it seems that anytime I break an egg the entire shell is held together by some kind of interior membrane. Even if I don’t get a clean break and the shell crackles into multiple pieces they are all staying together via this membrane. No more shell speck in the egg.
Have they modified eggs over the years to do this or is my memory fuzzy?
That membrane has been there since before people ate eggs.
Well I know of course that all eggs have membranes but have they been purposely producing ones that have stronger/tougher/superior ones?
Maybe something you wouldn’t find with free range chickens?
They do selective breeding for egg laying frequency, and probably for egg quality, but I doubt they’re looking for ease of breaking. I think thy’re looking more for uniform size, color, lack of double yolks, and such.
Perhaps it has more to do with the amount of calcium in the hen’s diet (oyster shells are used for this) or the freshness of the egg?
It wouldn’t surprise me if they were breeding for thicker shells for ease in shipping. The shells on supermarket eggs are thicker than the ones I buy at the farmer’s market locally. Thinner shells are more likely to give you small shards.
I know for a fact (well, from experience) that brown eggs shells are noticeably harder than white. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of? ETA The shells aren’t harder due to genetics, but diet. I think brown eggs come from free range chickens.
However, the broken pieces don’t seem to be any better at staying out of the egg. Come to think of it, I haven’t gotten eggshell in my eggs for quite some time. Maybe you’re just getting better at cracking them?
I find just the opposite here. The free run eggs I get have good thick shells and deep orange-yellow yolks. Commercial eggs have much thinner shells and a pale, pale yellow yolk.
I crack my eggs the Alton Brown way–on a flat surface. Cracking eggs on a sharp edge drives shards towards the interior of the egg.
Brown eggs just come from breeds of chickens that lay brown eggs. You can tell what color egg a chicken lays by, weirdly, looking at its earlobes.
Thanks, I didn’t know that. Every time I buy brown eggs they say “Free Range” somewhere on them, while the white ones don’t.
Was I right about diet causing thicker shells? My experience is the same as criminy.jicket’s.
I’ve definitely noticed the difference in shell thickness with the free range eggs. They are much thicker and harder to crack, and the yolks are a deeper yellow. I would think it is due to diet.
That’s what I was trying to get at wrt calcium and oyster shells. We used to have laying hens, but they were not free range. On a grain diet, the eggs were not very strong, and they would break very easily. We would buy crushed oyster shells to mix in with their feed and provide calcium. I’m sure layer mash these days is much better than it was back then, so this may not be necessary anymore. Oyster shells are still available at my feed store. Free range birds likely get plenty of calcium from foraging, as their diet is more varied.
These free range eggs… can we cook them on a gas range or electric, just so long as it was free?
On the topic of brown eggs, see Eutychus’s staff report:
I’m betting that it’s mostly that you’re better at cracking eggs now, than you were as a child. An incremental change is hard to notice.
Likewise, if you went back to your elementary school, you’d discover that everything has shrunk.
No, mash is just grain … you can get it medicated with antibotics [not in my household!] or plain [my favorite way] and the crushed shell for supplimental feeding comes separately.
You can buy mash either in little pellets for adult chooks, or as loose ground grains for chicks that cant get their cute little beaks around pellets.
Funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday. Seems like I spent half my childhood fishing out egg shells, but now I find it nearly impossible to get them in my eggs, even with the ones that don’t break correctly.