Most likely, you bring the eggs you consume weekly in your shopping basket from the market, from a neighborhood store or from your usual supermarket. It is also more than likely that they come carefully packaged in their cardboard egg cups – preferable to plastic – and that you will not find a single trace of dirt on their entire surface.
The eggs you buy in commercial establishments must be classified as category A. Which tells us that they are fresh and can be used for human consumption. And its shell must always be clean and intact.
But there may be at least two other cases. That you have contact with a small farmer in your area who can provide you with fresh eggs from their chickens. Or that you live in the countryside and have decided to build a modest chicken coop where you can feed and care for your hens, roosters and chicks in the wild.
Especially in the latter case, even if you have only been managing the chicken coop for a short time, you will have seen that no matter how much attention you pay to your chickens and the environment in which they live, it is quite common to collect some eggs with straw attached or from the padding you use. for the nesting boxes, or even the remains of the chickens’ excrement, or dirt, if they decide to leave their offspring in the shade of a rosemary or some other hiding place.
And probably the most automatic gesture is to take your basket of eggs to the sink to leave them clean as a whistle. But that washing can ruin the day’s collection: because of its nutritional qualities – the proteins it contains are considered complete as they contain all the essential amino acids for our body – and because of how they are designed.
The destiny of the egg by nature is not to end up in the frying pan, tumbling around in boiling water or integrated into the dough of a sponge cake or pancakes, but to remain under the hen to give way to a future chick after 21 days.
For this reason, its shell is designed to allow gas exchange between the inside and outside of the egg, but without other microorganisms being able to pass into the habitat where the chick is forming. To do this, it is covered with a film that protects it from external pathogens. And washing the egg all it does is eliminate that film and leave it defenseless against external threats.
Therefore, what we will do is store the egg – even if it has some type of dirt – in the place that we have designated to preserve them. And we will not clean them, in case it is really necessary, until we are going to consume them. If we are going to cook them, brushing them with a brush to remove dirt will be enough, or a dry cloth.
Outside or inside the refrigerator
On the other hand, when we buy eggs in the market or supermarket we find them in the non-refrigerated food area. But when we get home we usually run to put them in the refrigerator. It is not a bad practice because what makes eggs feel bad is not so much subjecting them to cold or heat as sudden changes in temperature, and in the refrigerator we make sure that they have a stable temperature.
When very sudden changes occur, what happens is that water condenses in the eggshell, on its surface, and this increases its porosity. The same as when they wash. And the consequence is the possibility of pathogens sneaking inside and contaminating the egg.
It is also not recommended to take eggs out of the refrigerator and put them back in if we are not going to cook them at that time. Well, there they are suffering temperature changes from more to less cold and this situation can shorten their useful life and accelerate their expiration.
However, keeping them out of the refrigerator in case there are not very sudden temperature changes in your kitchen should not be a problem either. At least during the first four weeks after the eggs are laid, that is why we always have to make sure that the eggs we buy have the date of laying printed on them or if the eggs are from your own hens, design a system to know which ones they are. the most recent and which are the oldest.
You can arrange the most recent ones in the back of the egg cup you have in your pantry or even write the date of laying on them. Of course, use a non-toxic pen or marker or a stamp with food ink.
Regarding the expiration date of eggs, as with most foods, it is a guideline. Some food may end up spoiled before its expiration date – for example because it has not been preserved as it should – and another may still be suitable for consumption after that date.
In the case of eggs, a popular way to know whether or not it is in good condition and that it works is to put it in a glass of water. If the egg sinks to the bottom of the glass and remains horizontal, we will know that the egg is fresh. On the other hand, if it remains floating on the surface it will mean that it is not fresh, but rather altered or in poor condition. In this case, it is important to observe its smell when opening it because, if it smells bad, we will have to throw it away to avoid food poisoning.
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