I’ve always heard that one should not store eggs in the refrigerator door although there is an egg holder in the door for that purpose. The usual reason given is that the eggs will not remain cold and thus go bad quickly.
That raises these questions:
[ol][li]Why don’t the fridge makers quit putting the egg racks in the doors and move them to the correct place?[/li][li]What else are you not supposed to store in the fridge door racks?[/li]What are you supposed to store in the fridge door racks?[/ol]
Do eggs really need to be stored in the fridge at all? My understanding is that they can keep good for several weeks even when stored at room temperature. At the supermarket, the eggs are not always kept in coolers but are often just kept on ordinary shelves.
So even if there is a benefit to keeping them cool (for example, if you live in a hot climate where “room temperature” is higher than average) it would make sense that it’s OK to put them in the warmest part of the fridge.
No idea if it’s true that the door is warmer than the rest of the fridge, though. The door is also a convenient place to store milk, which really does need to be refrigerated, and it seems to be fine there. But I admit I haven’t done any scientific experiments to see if the milk spoils earlier when kept in the door rather than in the center…
Anyway, if it is indeed true that the door is the warmest part of the fridge, then it would be a suitable place for things that don’t really spoil, but which are simply more pleasant to eat/drink when served below room temperature. Beer and soft drinks, for example.
The only people I know here who store eggs in the fridge are my fellow foreigners. Almost all the stores keep them on shelves. A few stores do put them in chilled shelving.
My fridge, getting on in years, doesn’t have egg holders at all. I never thought they were a good idea because sometimes the door gets sticky, you pull extra hard, and pop: eggs on the floor.
it think the door racks would be warmer due to less insulation.
it seems door racks are made for what is easy to store there rather than what should be. it is all frequent (butter, tall fluids including gallon milk jugs, condiments) and small containers that would to be moved a lot (condiments).
for many the milk is used quickly. other items may spoil slowly due to high sugar or salt content.
We have a few free range chickens. We collect eggs when we see them and place them in a bowl on the counter. I’ve never seen one go bad, although the longest they sit around is about a week. If they were bad we’d likely know it, as we use them raw in breakfast smoothy drinks.
Eggs are routinely found in the refrigerator in Scandinavia, an area noted for not being in the United States. I can’t speak for any other area of the world, as I haven’t really gone around checking, but it really isn’t safe to extrapolate that much from so few data points.
I’ve always refrigerated eggs, but then, I’m from a place where “40C in the shadow” is routine summer temperatures and A/C in the home was virtually unknown until a few years ago.
My mother has recently taken to freaking out if she sees them in the door, which I find pretty stupid as my combined family stored them in the door for over a combined century and we never found one that was bad.
A friend of mine is dating a Brit and she was horrified when she went to see him and found that his eggs were not refrigerated. Although I keep mine in the fridge, I have on occasion forgotten to put them back and I still use them.
What I want to know is, who uses the little egg thing in the fridge? (I took mine out.) Do you really take the eggs out of the nice safe made-to-store-eggs styrofoam container you bought them in and put them into another egg container in your fridge?
Not me. They sit in their little styrocoffin until its time for mai nomz.
Here’s the question I have: since us Merkins get our eggs refrigerated from the store (by and large), isn’t it a good idea to keep them refrigerated once we get them home?
My sole basis for this logic is that Alton keeps his in the fridge, and I think he would have told [del]me[/del] … er, would have told us if it was okay to just bring them home and leave them on the counter.
There’s no particular reason to. Eggs keep quite well without refrigeration, and are not typically kept chilled in much of the world. Here in Panama, eggs in the supermarket are kept on regular store shelves without refrigeration. (Although big stores are typically air-conditioned, I’ve seen them kept this way even in small country stores without AC.) The egg shell and membrane do a pretty good job of keeping out bacteria. Of course, eggs will go bad quickly if the shell is cracked.
Storing eggs on the refrigerator door provides them with a cooler environment than they really require.
We had chickens when I was a kid. We had no electricity. Eggs may go bad but it is quite rare. I have forgotten just how long we kept the unrefrigerated eggs but I am certain it a few weeks or more.
BTW, some insisted the older eggs were better for hard boiled eggs; easier to peel. Others scoffed at this notion.
I put them in the egg tray because I hard boil about half the eggs when I get a new carton, and keep them in a bowl in the fridge. The other half goes in the egg tray to distinguish them from the hard boiled ones (yeah, I know, I could just spin the egg on its end to see which kind it is). I like hard boiled eggs.
Eggs last several weeks without refrigeration, but here in North America we always refrigerate them. Consumer Reports always recommended not storing eggs in the egg holders that come (or came, my latest fridge doesn’t have one) because they would dry out. Now it is true that egg shells are not waterproof, but it still seems unlikely that it could be significant.
Eggs will last fine outside the fridge until the use-by date (even longer in fact). They probably last longer in the fridge.
It’s my understanding that it’s best not to store eggs in the fridge as they can absorb odours, like strong cheeses, and so taint the flavour of the egg.
I’ve also heard a tv chef say that eggs are best cooked from room temperature, I don’t know why.
I live in the UK, perhaps the fridge is better than room temperature in hotter climates.
Alton Brown claims that an unrefrigerated egg ages as much in a day as a refrigerated egg does in a week. He also says that it’s not so much about spoilage but rather the egg drying out inside the shell.