Wednesday, July 19, 2017

How to tell good eggs from bad

How to tell good eggs from bad

A bad egg will float.  Throw it away.
A good egg will sink to the bottom and rest on its side.
A so-so egg will sink to the bottom and stand on its pointy end. Use it soon!


Whenever Ralph brings back chicken and duck eggs from our neighbor's flock, I clean them off in the lake. I put them in a colander and set them in the shallow water by our beach to soak while I settle down beside them.  



A colander full of eggs fresh from our neighbor's farm sits in the lake waiting to be scrubbed clean



As soon as I arrive, I'm surrounded by a school of curious minnows eager to check out this potential new source of food.



Minnows are especially interested in a glob of dried yolk on one of the chicken eggs 


Before scrubbing the dirt and feathers off of the eggs, I test them out individually by placing them one at a time in the lake.  If an egg lays on its side on the bottom it's fresh.  If it stays on the bottom but points upward instead of resting on its side, that means it's getting old and should be eaten soon. However, if it immediately floats to the top, that tells me the egg is too old and should not be eaten at all.  Two of the eggs from this batch were floaters.  I threw them out into the deeper water knowing that some critter - maybe an alligator or a raccoon - would find the eggs and gobble them up.



Maybe a young gator will eat the rotten eggs



To clean the eggs, I use a brush given to me by my friend Maria Moniz. Although the brush, made by Full Circle, is actually meant as a potato scrubber, it also works extremely well at cleaning the dirt off eggs.  Before long I had a bowl filled with brown chicken and white duck eggs ready to take inside.



Clean eggs ready to refrigerate until used

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