Eggs and eating them

What everyone else said.

I especially like this recipe for fertilized eggs

Cook at 99.5 degrees F. in a forced air oven for 21 days
Simmer at 90-95° F for one week
Reduce temp by about 5 degrees per week until at room temp
Let sit at room temp (with plenty of food and water) for about 8 to 10 weeks
Cook at 350 F for about 2 hours


Best egg you'll ever eat.

Chicory brought up another issue with home grown eggs. Washing. Most people in Canada seem to wash and refrigerate. I don't wash my eggs. I only sell ones that are clean to begin with. Real dirty ones get cooked up and fed back to the chickens or go to the dogs. I don't seem to get many dirty eggs anyways. Washing removes the natural 'bloom' that an egg has (which is the natural coating on the outside of the egg that protects the contents) and that shortens the time that it will stay fresh.
I also do not refrigerate right away. An egg, once cooled and them warmed up again can form condensation and you know an egg is porous and that condensation can allow things to enter the egg that we don't want in there (removing the bloom can have even more effect on this). So if I know I am going to use them up in a week, they stay in a cool spot in my kitchen or pantry. If they are around for longer than that, they go in the fridge. Eggs keep for a very long time in the fridge! Actually on the counter too, it would surprise you.
I never refrigerate eggs I am selling. I would not like them in the fridge cold and then warmed up on the trip to where ever and then cold again. That is ewwww to me.
This is what I learned in Australia and still do it here. I know many will not think it is right, but I have been doing it for a very long time and it gets WAY hotter in Oz and they kept fine.
So just a little different opinion about something. I know it is very non traditional here, but it is done many other places.

I don't wash mine either Coop unless soiled but I sure didn't know about keeping them in the fridge and then taking them out for awhile and developing condensation.

Coopslave, I know I've read somewhere that N. Americans are the only ones who refrigerate eggs.

I hear you about the condensation, that bugs me too, but how can you combat that at this time of year? The eggs I bring into the house will always be colder than the room. And leaving them outside is not an option - they will freeze.

And I do wash my soiled eggs, and wondered what the physics were to make sure water doesn't get sucked in - is it wash in warmer-than, or colder-than the egg itself? For some reason I have formed a mental block about this answer, and I don't want to Google it, I want to hear everyones' thoughts (who want to share them).

Wash in water warmer than the egg. You want the egg contents to expand. If they contract (from sitting in cold water) they can draw bacteria in through the shell (or so I read).

Fowler wrote:Wash in water warmer than the egg. You want the egg contents to expand. If they contract (from sitting in cold water) they can draw bacteria in through the shell (or so I read).

No joke to go with that Fowler?

Haha Fowler, that's a good recipe for sure.

I used to wash and refrigerate all our eating eggs but found the fridge filled up too fast. Now I don't bother washing and keep an egg bowl on the counter top (it still fills up too fast! lol) for handiness and full cartons labeled/and dated in our basement cellar. I rarely get really dirty eggs, but when I do I wash and feed them back to my birds. (I scramble the insides and dry out/crush the shells to add to their oyster shell ration, hence the washing). I also feed eggs older than 6 weeks back to the flock.

It's neat to read everyones different methods.

ChicoryFarm wrote:

Fowler wrote:Wash in water warmer than the egg. You want the egg contents to expand. If they contract (from sitting in cold water) they can draw bacteria in through the shell (or so I read).

No joke to with that Fowler?

Nope. Once in a great while even I have something intelligent to say.

This is going back about a dozen years, but in his younger years our son wouldn't eat our farm eggs because there was a rooster in with the hens. One day he stayed home while we went off to church. While we were away he got hunger and decided to make scrambled eggs. He has for a long time insisted that cast iron pans were terrible things so grabbed a large regular pan for his eggs. The pan was fun to clean after, but the avoidance of our farm eggs ended that day.

We sell eggs at the farmers' markets which means they must be washed without bleach or soap. There are no restrictions on storing eggs. They could sit in the coop for weeks, but when they leave our place to go to market they must be at 4 degrees or less and stay that way until the customer buys them.

I learned a lot from this for sure, and I'm glad I asked the questions. It seems traditions of caring for eggs are alot along the lines of the milk issue to pasteurize or not.

I'm so looking forward to fresh eggs in the morning, though I can't quite figure out how long I'll last until I'm bored of hard boiled and over easy!

I've never eaten so many eggs in my life since I got chickens - in fact, we eat them every day - soft boiled, fried, in waffles and crepes, omelettes, scrambled with veggies, poached on spinach, breakfast burritos, etc. Amazingly, I am not sick of them. I just have a hard time cracking open the blue and dark brown ones cause they're so darn pretty.

You'll probably find yourself more creative than ever on how to cook and eat an egg.