I know this has been discussed before, but I'd be curious to hear how all of you accomplish this. A friend in Oregon says she doesn't clean her eggs at all because it removes the protective coating, but no matter how often I clean out the nest boxes, some eggs still end up with chicken droppings encrusted on them, and we have at least one chicken, probably more, that produces eggs with blood on the shells. Dry rubbing wouldn't get either of those things off to produce a clean egg for sale - or even for eating ourselves!
Cleaning Eggs?
Same with me,I clean the nesting boxes everyday and still get poo on some of them.I take a damp paper towel and rub the spots that has poo or blood on them and then dry them with another paper towel.If I have to wash the whole egg of really rub hard to get them clean I keep those ones for our eating.
Yes, somewhere there is a thread about 200 posts long on washing eggs.
Yeah, I figured, but I couldn't find it! Since we have some new members I thought it might not be a bad idea to revisit it anyway.
Some info here;
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1064844/
Yes, I remember that, but it still doesn't address what to do with eggs that have a lot of "stuff" on them, especially if you plan to sell them, which we do.
I take a scotch brite pad, the green ones, gently scrubbed off the "stuff". Mostly hitting the stuff & not the egg so i didn't take the "bloom" or protective coating off. I read you can take a tiny bit of bleach water & dab the blood spots & they will come off.. I have NOT tried this. I just kept those eggs for my use. I really don't wash them with water, even if I'm selling them. The ones we eat, i scrub clean with the scotch pad then crack em & eat em. (cook first I recommend) I put a letter with my carton of eggs I sold explaining that I hadn't washed the eggs & why. Then stated when they came to buy once again that they were not washed & why. IF they didn't want them, they didn't have to take them. I also put on the paper to always crack a fresh farm egg in a separate bowl before adding to what your making. The people didn't mind & took the eggs.
I use the scotch brite pad bc they are washable. We bleach ours every two days that we use in dish water. I just throw this one in with those. Good hot water & bleach. I was going thru way too many paper towels trying it that way.
I also was looking for that thread. I knew it was there but couldn't' find much so I Googled & went off of what I could find there. I'm sure others have better ways & ideas than me but its a start.
and I think its more what you were asking for in general. :)
Kyttyn, yup, that was more what I was asking. Thanks! I've used the paper towels, too, and warm water, but it does seem as though I'd be taking that bloom off the egg by doing so, and I didn't know what else to do.
With the Scotch Brite pads, have you ever tried wetting them and putting them in the microwave for a minute? I do that regularly with my sponges; it gets rid of any incipient moldy odor. For me it's easier than bleach, and since they smell sweet afterwards it seems to do the trick.
I have been raising chickens for a lot of years and this seems to me to be a lot to do about nothing. Do you really believe the store bought eggs are sold as laid. I don't think so. The scotch brite pad is what I have used for years and water that is about 90 degrees, I let it dribble over the egg while I make sure it is clean which takes about three seconds. Never ever have I had a problem with any eggs or any customers either. I don't even bother trying to educate my customer as to what I do about the cleaning proccess, most could care less. I just know you would never get me to buy your dirty uncleaned eggs. I do agree however that keeping a clean nesting box means most eggs never require cleaning...and I agree with greenhouse gal about the pad and spounges in the microwave, we also do that.
So many worry about removing the bloom, well remember that chickens don't lay eggs with you eating them in mind. The bloom is a protective coating provided by the hen who by nature is protecting them from a hostile climate and the hen thinking about incubation not people eating. Pleazeeeeeeeeeee.
We were handling about 13 dozen eggs a day this past summer. Everyone of them got washed. First we picked at about 8 AM, then again at 10 AM. Most hens had laid by then. At the end of the day all were washed. We had a tub that held an egg basket. Filled the tub with water, set the basket of eggs in & just rubbed them with our fingers. Never any souring pad or soap. Took about 15 minutes to wash 13 dozen. We laid them out on terry cloth towels until dry. Then packed them in boxes & into the cooler. When we needed some to sell, we took the oldest box, candled & graded them into cartons. Back into refrigerator. Never did more than we thought we could sell on a given day.
Hay, thanks for the breath of fresh air. When I read that my friend didn't clean hers and tried to educate her customers about the wholesomeness of grubby-looking eggs I wondered whether I was doing something wrong!
I clean mine with my fingers under warm water, if necessary, and then let them dry in the cartons.
Food safety experts would probably have a fit at my methods, but this is what we do, and we have never had a problem:
1. Clean eggs or marginally stained eggs live on the countertop, unwashed until time of use. I have kept eggs on the counter for a month and they have still been fine. Many parts of Europe routinely keep eggs at room temperature with no problems. When I go to use them, I quickly rinse the shells before breaking them, to prevent any surface contamination from touching the egg.
2. Moderately dirty eggs get rinsed in warm water (not cold, because warm water tends to reduce contaminants going through pores in the eggshell because the egg contents are at a lower temperature, whereas cold would reverse that trend). I use the little plastic nail brushes from Lee Valley Tools. Those eggs get marked with a pencil X on them and are kept on the counter but used within a week to 10 days.
3. Really dirty/yukky eggs are washed in warm water with the nail brush and kept in the fridge and used as soon as possible, or even cooked up and used as a treat for the hens, goats, etc. Wild birds will also eat cooked egg if you put it out at feeders.
Let me just be clear, we do not eat eggs raw or undercooked. We both like our eggs not runny and most of them are used in omelets, custard, flan, other baked goods, or scrambled.
But commerical egg producers do replace the "bloom" with an oil....I think it is mostly to prevent the eggs from desiccating and so extending their shelf-life, .
ZZ gave me some farm fresh eggs back in August, and then I bought some at the store three weeks ago. Last week I needed to use them....both had the same size air cell.
Fresh store bought eggs...I don't think so.
Did someone say flan?
Whoops, yes, Moxie is guilty as charged. Uh oh!! What will THIS unleash?
We sell a lot of our eggs, so it's easier for me to clean them and put them in the refrigerator in egg cartons. I've been reading about your countertop storage and I'm sure it's perfectly okay, but I've been taking a little more trouble with my eggs since the summer, when DH spent most of a week in the hospital with salmonella! The infectious disease specialist said that eggs and I think dairy products were the usual culprits, and although we'd had crab dip and steamed clams a couple of days prior to his getting sick, none of the rest of us, and there were six in all, had a whisper of a problem, so I can't help thinking it had to do with our eggs.
_ And did other people eat the eggs too?
My grandmother always kept her eggs in large baskets out on the screen porch, for who knows how long. This was in South Carolina in the summer. We never found a bad one.
For eggs we eat ourselves, I would do exactly what CMoxon does. But since I'm hoping to sell them, I take a paper towel (we buy the ones you can tear off in small strips) and use hot water to wipe anything on the egg. (Clean eggs get nothing done to them) If the egg is very dirty or there is obvious chicken poop on it, then it also gets a quick dip in warm water (warmer than the temp of the egg) that has a minute amount of bleach in it. It gets dried with a clean paper towel right away.
I use two strips of paper towel for each egg - one to wipe it off and one to dry. And to repeat, if the egg is clean, I do nothing. Most of the eggs are clean.
Right now I'm storing all eggs in the fridge because there's more room in the fridge than on my counter!
Porkpal, we sell our eggs, and when we have them for breakfast I eat them too, so I don't know if it was really the eggs, but I've been more careful ever since. He didn't have a nice time of it!
Gwen, that sounds like a good idea but I'm trying to get away from using all those paper towels, so I like the idea of the Scotch Brite pad.
Greenhouse gal, the problem with those pads is that I would think they'd need to be sterilized on a daily basis. Once they touch poop, I wouldn't use them on another egg until they had been sterilized. And I really didn't want to put them in the dishwasher with all our dishes! I couldn't make that system work for me, altho I did try it.
We live on a septic and using a lot of bleach and other sterilizing things isn't good for our system. That's why I go with the paper towels. If you buy the ones that tear off in narrow strips, you don't really use too many. I usually only have one egg to clean off each day, sometimes not even that.
I'm sure your husband did NOT have fun in the hospital! I know you can get sick from eating undercooked meat and also produce that hasn't been washed well. I think twice about even ordering a salad in a restaurant nowadays because I've gotten sick afterwards so many times. I wash our produce with that produce wash you can buy at the grocery store and I usually wash it more than once. I'm less careful with produce I grow but I do wash it and rinse the heck out of it just to get the dirt off completely. Not because I think eating a bit of dirt is bad but I don't like the gritty sensation.
Anyway, I think finding a process to cleaning eggs is an individual thing and each person has to find what works for them! It pays to do a little research on the net to find out things like why you want to use water warmer than the temp of the eggs, and also to read about what is required for the big producers selling to stores. It was interesting.
Gwen, a lot of my eggs need to be washed, at least on one spot or another. What do you use in your nest boxes? We use pine shavings and shredded paper, and it just doesn't stay very clean. The chickens like to sleep in them as well as laying eggs in them.
I'm not that careful about washing produce. We buy mostly organic and so I'm not as concerned about it, and we grow organic, too. I do wash dirt off, of course! We've never been sick from anything we've eaten before, so I had never paid much attention to dirt, also figuring that a little probably helps exercise the old immune system.
I've never seen paper towels that tear off in strips; I'll have to look for them!
Leslie
Sponges and non-metallic scouring pad can be sterilized in the microwave. After I run our sponges in the dishwasher (I put them in the silverware basket) I put them in the mircowave for 2 minutes. Make sure to let them cool before you take them out, or use tongs.
I use pine shavings. I will occasionally have a chicken sleep in there.
I've read that you need to be really careful about washing organic (which is all we buy or grow as well) because it's grown in manure a lot of times or gets manure compost put on it. Even though it's aged manure, I'm still very careful unless it's something I've grown myself.
Loreen, I forgot about using the m/w to sterilize. I don't actually use sponges much. I use a wash cloth to wash things and also a nylon scrubber, which goes into the dishwasher. I replace them fairly often as they tend to come unraveled.
Also make sure the sponge is wet before you microwave it. Dry sponges can catch fire in the microwave.
I use hay in the nest boxes, turn it over often and change it occasionally. Very few eggs are soiled. I also believe a healthy immune system can handle more than a little dirt. - But we shouldn't test that of strangers.
Crab & clams cleaner than eggs ? Wow!
The bacteria is in the chicken poop, not the egg. The ones you don't wash could have been next to a dirty one & the bacteria still got on the "clean" egg.
Considering what crabs and clams eat, I wouldn't ever think of them as clean - that's where thorough cooking and/or a robust immune system come in.
My DH's immune system was challenged at the time, so that's doubtless what happened - from whatever source.
I sterilize my sponges in the microwave and it works pretty well. I guess I'll stick to my usual methods of cleaning my eggs. Nice to hear what everyone else does!
FLAN......... ohhhh OHHHHH
Claire, I cant find that link where you said how to tell if the egg was good.... I have some in the fridge and would love to make FLAN with Almond Milk..................
In general, if an egg floats, it is old. Break each egg separately and look at it. If it looks ok it probably is; and cooking kills most ills.
You can also candle them--it the inside looks dark and shadowy, the egg is bad.
But floating is easier and works well.
Yes MissJ. Float them in water in a container deep enough that they can sink. If they sink, they are fine. If they stand up on one end, they are a little stale but still fine. If they float, don't eat them.
Then I will check later today and see if they are good... FLAN HERE I COME....
I gotta make that flan! Lesseee now, where did I put the receipt....
I made a lovely flan last night...it was so easy. I marveled at how few ingredients it required. Just mix, pour and watch it rise in the oven.
Forty minutes and one bite later, I realized I had forgotten to add the sugar....it was still excellent sprinkled with sugar....
No wonder the ingredients seemed so few.
It was much fluffier without the sugar....I wonder if you could make a savoury, frittata sort of dish out of it?
Would you mind to d-mail me the recipe? Thanks
I bet you could, almost like a semi-quiche. It would probably work well with some bacon in it, maybe even shrimp. I can imagine one could add some grated cheese into the mix. Possibly some herbs and even veggies like asparagus spears or red pepper diced up...
I have it saved on my computer at home, Loreen. I'll be glad to send it to you after work...I know you can find it on a least a couple threads....but I think I found it last time by googling "flan, davesgarden, divine sock" and maybe "Creme Brulee Pie".
But Moxon...once you start making sweet custardy flan it takes a great deal of discipline to make it into a main dish instead....still, I love veggie omelets....
This message was edited Jan 29, 2010 12:52 PM
I will give that a try. I forgot it had been posted here. Thanks