How to tell if your eggs are fresh

I've got two eggs I need to test.

Not everyone checks on the cooking thread but most people cook eggs.

Cooking and baking would probably appreciate this. I like egg salad and this sounds like a good tip to make sure I don't boil a bad one

fyi

Childhood taunt.

realize I was testing their freshness. Even after I've had them a week or more, I've never had one do anything but lie on it's side. That must mean mine are always pretty fresh when I buy them.

Eggs stay good for a very long time if kept refrigerated.


One old trick is to turn them over every day or so.

For some reason, forcing the yolk to move through the white helps preserve the egg. I don't really understand this but I trust the people who have told me this works.

We used to keep chickens and sell eggs. Its a royal pain in the ass. People still do it though and we buy our eggs fresh from a guy down the road when the hens are laying. Sooner or later he'll quit too, and then we'll find someone else to buy them from. Somebody's always raising chickens.

Anyway, if you want fresh eggs that's the only way to get them. The ones sold in grocery stores are kept in cold storage for ages. It doesn't make much difference though, other than in the ability to peel them if they are boiled - old eggs peel much easier.

And that's about all I know about eggs, other than if you plan to go into the chicken business you could do a lot worse than Rhode Island Reds or Barred-Rocks; pretty hardy birds that lay well and also produce good meat if you are so inclined.

producers will hold back eggs for the upcoming holiday.

Maybe if one shops at Safeway (where I buy cat food and litter), but all of our other markets (all two of them) carry only local eggs.

so is this 1 to 3 beyond that?

The "lying/standing in water" business only works because of air inside the shell. If there's not much air, the egg lies flat. There's a lot of air, then it stands up on the end where the air pocket is. (And if the air pocket is half-way, then the egg will rotate so that end's highest.)

But if there's air in the egg after a few weeks when there wasn't hardly any when the egg was laid, then you have to ask what made way for the air.

Answer: Water.

Next question: What makes water evaporate faster or slower?

Answer: Temperature and relative humidity.

So if you get the egg out from under the hen or from among your mint and it's been there for a few days, it's likely to have lost some water. A week or three in your ice box or fridge and it's going to lose more water. This test works.

If you want to keep your eggs for months, then you need to keep them very cold (but not freezing) and you need to keep them in a really humid space. Then almost no water evaporates. Until you get it home.

Then this test fails.

We always cook them well. My wife says the old ones peel easier when hard boiled too. She grew up on duck eggs.

The sinking ones better for omelets and all that.

Works the same!

Cool tip. Thanks!

Just ask any fundy.

Oh, right. 'Cause there's no way you could lose yourself in the "crowd".