[QUOTE=OpalCat]
I checked that out just for fun, and put in “042” (of course) just to see how it worked. Turns out that 042 is my birthday. Does that mean that I am the answer to life, the universe, and everything?
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Eggzactly.
I picked up a copy of the Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook (you know, just in case). It says that eggs will keep at least six months when submerged in water with liquid glass (1 gal to 1 cup). Haven’t had the need to find out yet. But I would think that 3 months in the fridge would be fine.
My anecdata: I dated the president’s daughter in college. They lived on campus in the manor, and would often have official college dinners there, which were prepared by a chef, who had his own huge commercial fridge. One time I had a hankering for fried eggs, couldn’t find any in the household fridge, so pulled two out of the other, and cracked them right into the hot pan without thinking. There is nothing that smells worse than fried rotten egg.
Jeez, a dozen eggs aren’t exactly expensive. If you’re not sure toss them and go get some new ones.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
When I have questionably old eggs (we’re talking three months or more here - and I’ve only found 2 bad eggs in 20 years, one sulfured and one simply dried up), I use a two-bowl cracking method. Crack each egg into a small bowl, give it a sniff and then, if it’s okay, dump it into your food prep bowl. Repeat with the next egg. This way, if only one of your eggs is off, you won’t contaminate your whole batch of brownies. Just pitch the bad egg (put it in a snack or sandwich sized ziplock so it doesn’t stink up your trash) and wash the small stinkified dish before proceeding.
Same thing when separating eggs for a meringue or foam - use a small cup to separate one egg, then dump that white into a larger bowl. That way if you get a smear of yolk in it, you’ve only lost one eggwhite, not a whole bowl of them.
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Sound advice - I always do it that way - I’ve never had a bad egg, but I have had a few accidents with broken yolks when I wanted them separated.
Another essential item of advice - if you’re baking cakes, take your eggs out of the fridge a good while before you start - ideally the day before - room-temperature eggs make lighter cakes.
[QUOTE=The Controvert]
One thing I have been meaning to try is to freeze eggs, so they last up to 9 months. You can’t freeze em in their shells, because it would bust out. Best way is to mix it with salt and pour into an ice cube tray. 1 cube is about equal to 1 egg.
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Actually, in my experience, one tray hole = one egg white. I do this with some regularity; when I make hollandaise or mousse or something else that’s heavy on yolks and leaves me with extra egg whites, I’ll freeze 'em and bag 'em so I can later make angel food cake or a souffle or whatever. And the white from a typical grocery store egg, I’ve found, pretty much perfectly fills, or slightly overfills, the average ice cube tray hole. For an entire egg to fit in that space, you’d have to have really small eggs, or really large ice cube trays. Your egg mileage may vary.
[QUOTE=Great Dave]
There is nothing that smells worse than fried rotten egg.
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I came in here to say the same thing. I’ve only come across a bad egg once. I was frying some eggs and the bad one was the third egg I put in the pan. Jesus fucking Christ it was rank! Nothing like hot sulfur ass eggs frying to fuck up your breakfast. The only thing that kept me from puking int he pan was that I’d have to then smell my fried puke ass eggs breakfast. shudder
I keep eggs for months at a time (in the fridge), and in 30 years of such slatternly behavior have never had an egg go bad on me.
twicks, bachelorette
My grand-mother used to keep eggs in a deep drawer filled with bran (she raised chickens and there were no grocery stores around). I suppose bran acts as an insulation, keeping most oxygen from the eggs. Anybody heard about this method ?
[QUOTE=Ponster]
Hasn’t this come up several times in the past related to the fact that keeping eggs in the fridge is an American habit. Storing eggs in the fridge in Europe is usually down to each person but I normally see them stored out of the fridge like in a supermarket.
USDA says:
“4. How long will eggs keep in the refrigerator?
Use raw shell eggs within 3 to 5 weeks. Hard-cooked eggs will keep 1 week. Use leftover yolks and whites within 4 days.”
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In France all eggs are always kept at room temperature. As it was explained to me the bad bacteria that lived on the shell will not penetrate it as long as the egg is kept dry. If the egg is wet then penetration is possible. If you refrigerate your eggs and then take them out, there will be condensation on the shell and the egg will go bad quickly, even if you refrigerate them again.
We also noticed that european eggs had noticeably thicker shells than american eggs.
That would help with the protection of the egg I guess.
In the UK, eggs are not refrigerated in supermarkets, but most people (in my experience) keep them in the fridge at home. I do, but that’s more of a storage-space issue than a food hygiene issue. I’ve never encountered a bad egg - I don’t think I even know the smell, although obviously I would know it when I smelt it!
[QUOTE=danceswithcats]
ISTR a PBS or similar show about a long distance sailing trip and a comment by the galley person that eggs stayed fresh(er) by inverting them every few days-something to the effect that yolk in long contact with one side of the shell produced faster spoilage. Any truth to that?
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I don’t know about turning them, but on my long distance sailing trip we coated the eggs in Vaseline so they would keep longer.
Or maybe the crew just thought it would be funny to watch us trainees smear Vaseline on 15 dozen eggs.
An egg becoming unfresh can happen a couple of different ways. The egg can either lose moisture, lose protein adhesion, or it can become a breeding ground for bacteria or fungus.
When an egg is freshly laid into the world, it’s at the temperature of the hen’s body, about 107 degrees F. As it cools, the interior shrinks. There are tiny pores in the egg shell that allow air to pass through which a developing embryo would use to exchange gas with the outside. Since more of these pores are on the wide end of the egg, as the fresh egg cools and shrinks, an air pocket forms inside the egg on the wide end. That’s called the air cell.
As an unfertile egg sits around, it gradually loses moisture through those pores to the environment. The cardboard cartons are designed to slow that down somewhat. But, if left to their own devices, an egg will eventually dry out completely. Dipping the eggs in oil slows down the moisture loss, so the eggs are usable longer. Putting eggs in water to test their freshness is really a test to see how much moisture has been lost to the outside and, as a result, how much of that egg is now air cell.
The proteins in eggs will also gradually lose their structure, making them less gel-like. This is usually only important if you are using recipes that rely heavily on the adhesive properties of the egg. If you tried to cook old eggs sunny-side up, they would run all over the pan and be annoying. If you’re just scrambling them, then it doesn’t matter much. If you’re hard boiling them, you actually want your eggs to be a little old, so that they are slightly smaller then the shell after they are cooked and are therefore easier to peel. Turning eggs that are in storage probably would help keep the yolk in the center of the egg, making it less likely to stick to the shell and break when cracked open. Also, turning the egg means that the wide end with all its pores spends half the time sitting against a shelf, so that might slow down moisture loss. But there are pores all over the shell, so this effect is likely minimal at best. It would make you look at and handle the eggs periodically so you can find bad ones. Not the worst idea.
In the case of either water loss or protein degradation, unless extreme, the egg is still safe to eat after it is cooked. There is a local poultry professor here who will happily eat an egg that has been refrigerated for up to a year, though it might be a dried out husk.
Bacterial and fungal contamination can happen when there is a break in the shell or if, as mentioned above, the eggs are left standing around wet. Refrigerating and then warming the eggs is particularly bad, as the condensation combined with the expansion of the interior of the egg as it warms makes a suction effect, and all the bacteria on the outside are pulled into the egg with the water as a highway.
Gymnopithys’s grandma probably kept her eggs in a drawer with bran because it was convenient. In a drawer, they would be out of the way and protected from falling, and the bran kept them from rolling around when the drawer was opened. Keeping the eggs still is a big factor for making them seem to stay fresh longer. The more the eggs move, the more those interior proteins break down. When you measure freshness based on whether the whites run all over the pan at breakfast, eggs that were kept still will seem fresher than eggs that got shook. It’s why those little egg cups on the inside of refrigerator doors have fallen out of favor. The eggs would get shaken every time the door opened, and would lose freshness faster.
The folks who leave eggs to warm on the counter before baking: probably not a huge problem because cooking will kill most bad things that might have contaminated the eggs while they were warming up. However, try getting eggs directly from the source, if you can, the next time you have a recipe that relies on fluffiness. In all likelihood, you’ll get better results.
LSLguy are you sure it was the eggs? How did you cook them?
I rely on Pullet’s advice – and that’s no yolk!
Sorry. 
[QUOTE=Ellen Cherry]
Sorry. 
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Oh, you just chickened out there!
[QUOTE=danceswithcats]
ISTR a PBS or similar show about a long distance sailing trip and a comment by the galley person that eggs stayed fresh(er) by inverting them every few days-something to the effect that yolk in long contact with one side of the shell produced faster spoilage. Any truth to that?
[/QUOTE]
Well, you have to turn eggs if you’re incubating them (in the wild, the brooding bird does this periodically) - of course that’s not to keep them fresh exactly, but it could be a related phenomenon.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Well, you have to turn eggs if you’re incubating them (in the wild, the brooding bird does this periodically) - of course that’s not to keep them fresh exactly, but it could be a related phenomenon.
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Similar idea. If the eggs aren’t turned, the embryo can stick to the inside. Plus, the stimulation gets the embryo moving so the muscles and nerves develop like they’re supposed to.
Interestingly, embryonating reptile eggs should not be turned, or else the process will be ruined. Not exactly sure why that is. Not my phyllum 
Woohoo! I got an endorsement! Needs me a pride smiley.
[QUOTE=Jragon]
The general rule my parents, I, and most people I know have followed it “when in doubt, throw 'em out.” If it’s unusual I think you’d rather pay the money for a dozen eggs to the sickness you get from food poisoning.
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Or save them for that neighbor you hate…
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Well, you have to turn eggs if you’re incubating them (in the wild, the brooding bird does this periodically) - of course that’s not to keep them fresh exactly, but it could be a related phenomenon.
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I’d always heard that too, but this article talks about a scientist trying to prove that eggs aren’t deliberately being turned by the birds. Either way, the idea behind turning fertilized eggs is to keep the embryos from sticking to the shell as they develop since that’s thought to kill them. Not so much an issue when there’s no embryo.
[QUOTE=elfkin477]
Not so much an issue when there’s no embryo.
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Of course - and that’s what I meant when I said “that’s not to keep them fresh exactly” - but there may still be some connection in terms of the processes that happen if the egg is not turned.
[QUOTE=elfkin477]
Not so much an issue when there’s no embryo.
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True enough. Though the white part is the bit that loses its gel soonest (probably since the yolk isn’t all that jelly in the first place and it has its own membrane to boot). Conceivably, the bit of white that’s being compressed by the yolk might break down faster. And turning them…
Yeah, it’s a weak idea.
Refrigerate the eggs. They’re fine for weeks and weeks.
They can be kept on the counter if they haven’t been refrigerated yet, but they’ll dry out faster.
If you need them to last longer, dip them in veggie oil.
Get really fresh eggs for dishes that rely on fluffiness.
-Pullet-