Old eggs

Factual Questions
1

I’ve got some eggs with a sell-by date of November 12th. Normally I’d go “ugh! Month-old eggs!” and toss them out. But I have paprika… and the other thread has made me crave deviled eggs… so I did some research.

According to the [del]random internet strangers[/del] experts I’ve consulted there shouldn’t be a problem. One guy ate eggs that were two months old! Plenty of others have apparently eaten two, three and four-week old eggs. According to these experts, there are three ways to test if an egg is good:

1.) Break open the egg; if it smells good, it is good.
2.) Hold the egg next to your ear and give it a shake. If you hear the contents sloshing around like mush the egg has gone bad. Otherwise it’s fine.
3.) Fill a bowl with water; if the eggs float they’ve gone bad. If they sink they’re fine.

I’ve been informed that if I follow those tests the process of cooking the eggs will kill any bacteria and the eggs will be safe to eat.

So, rather than putting my life into the hands of a bunch of internet strangers with unknown qualifications and questionable intentions I’m going to put my life into *your *hands!

Well, probably not. I’m one of those people who typically and, perhaps unreasonably, refuses to eat food that’s gone beyond the use-by date printed on the container. But I’m still interested in knowing how quickly refrigerated eggs will go bad and the validity of the three tests I mentioned.

2

I’m not sure how your ‘sell by’ dates work, but eggs are fine for a month when they have been refrigerated. In Canada the ‘best before’ date is typically 35 days from when the eggs are graded and they are safe to use for a couple of weeks beyond that (source).

Eggs that float haven’t necessarily gone bad, but there is more air inside the shell and the egg is old. Fresh eggs will sink.

3

:eek: What a coincidence, my mom gave me some eggs with a Nov. 17 date on the carton just today! She was gonna throw em out, and I said “NOOOOOO! They’re still good!”

I’m going to make deviled eggs, too. I’m sure they’re all right, they’ve been refrigerated all this time.

I’m gonna do it! If you never hear from me again, you can assume I have suffered Death By Egg…

4

IIRC, eggs are good for 60 days, but the FDA requires the Sell By date to be 30 days after production.

5

Ha! We just did that today.

We did the egg-water-float-sink test, and it worked fine.

6

I bought some eggs on Dec 3rd . They are dated as best by Jan 1. They refuse to tell me how quickly they go bad after that… :frowning:

They will, however, look good next to the bacon tomorrow morning.
-D/a

7

I made brownies with April 30 eggs. They worked just fine, except for not coming out of the muffin tins in one piece. And there was a little bit of an odd taste, but I’m willing to put that down to natural variance.

8

I’ve eaten three (six?) deviled eggs. Delicious.

I’ll let you know if they kill me.

9

Ach! I’ve often eaten eggs way older than that. No problem.

10

Very public-spirited of you - be sure to post full details.

11

Only the first of those tests actually tests if the egg’s gone bad. Old eggs can lose moisture and fail test two and three without actually having gone bad. The missing moisture may make them unsuited for quite a few recipes, but they’ll still be edible.

12

Also note that order is important here. You probably should do test 1 AFTER you do test 2.
-D/a

13

Fresh eggs don’t make very good boiled eggs, the shells stick to the whites. Let them age a couple of weeks, and the shells come off much easier.

14

And, sort of reversing that, the hard-boiling process is very efficient at killing bacteria. So old eggs hard-boil better, and hard-boiling is also the best thing to do with old eggs … I have a tray of eggs in my refrigerator marked ‘best by 12/14/10’ that are going to become deviled in the very near future–should be perfectly aged for that. (Got some inspiration from a thread on my favorite message board there.)

15

Well, I’m still alive.

I was pleasantly surprised how easy the deviled eggs were to make (it was the first time I’d made deviled eggs for myself). I was expecting something… I don’t know. More difficult. The result wasn’t very pretty (I had trouble getting the hardened yolks out without damaging the white and I had trouble evenly distributing the yolk/mayo/paprika/mustard/relish sauce among the eggs) but they tasted great. Considering all I have in the house atm is old eggs and condiments I’m very happy to have rediscovered deviled eggs and I foresee a lot of them in my immediate future.

16

Mother Earth news did some testing on how to best store eggs. Refrigerated eggs are generally pretty good for four months. You can read all about it here: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/1977-11-01/Fresh-Eggs.aspx

17

I live alone and don’t go through eggs very quickly, so I routinely use eggs that are 2 or 3 months old, usually for baking (brownies, cake, etc). Only once have I cracked one open and it was clearly bad. The yolk was partially solidified and just wrong-looking. No idea how old it was, but I threw the rest of that carton away.

18

side note: stick the mix ingredients in a plastic bag and mush it around to mix them and break up the yolks. Then cut off a corner of the bag and use it as an icing bag. No more trouble with managing the filling. :smiley: