Egg white on hard boiled egg turned brown???

[Lesa]

I decided to make pickled eggs last night. Got the eggs hard boiled and started peeling...Much to my surprise the entire white of one of the eggs was a tan color (almost the exact shade of the shell.) I cut the egg open and the color went all the way through the white. The yolk looked fine. Anybody ever seen this happen? The eggs weren't right out of the coop- but they weren't older than a couple weeks. Refrigerated the entire time. Any ideas??

 

[walnuthollow]

I'm not sure why this happened but hopefully someone will be able to answer this.....Inquiring minds ya know.....lol

 

[redhen]

Interesting... wonder if it was blood in the egg or something?

 

[Frogdogtimestwo]

I have never heard of that but went searching for an answer and there are few to be had, a couple people mentioned it happening but no cause. Here is what I did find:
According to the American Egg Board, the white of a hard-cooked egg may darken to a caramel shade due to a high amount of iron in the cooking water (could that be the brown/orange color of your description?)

The egg board says a carbonylamine-type reaction is the other possible cause of caramel colored whites. This is a reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars, and is the first stage in Maillard reactions — the browning that occurs in meat and bread when cooked or toasted over high heat (and which some people mistakenly characterize as "carmelization," which only occurs with sugar.)

That is the one and only answer I could find, anyone else???

 

[Lesa]

Interesting on the iron in the water... but wouldn't have all the eggs turned though??

 

[Ballaurena]

Thanks for the info. I'm trying to figure out why my two failed meringues turned cola-colored. You seem to describe the right color, but the reasons don't make sense. I had no water in my egg whites, and only the lighter of the two had sugar. They were the high nutrition organic eggs, so maybe that could contribute iron, but then wouldn't that be more in the yolk?

 

[Carolyn]

I have had this happen a couple of times always one egg in a pot of several eggs. I don't know why it happened either. My dog appreciated it.

 

[Doctor Egg]

The tan color is from overcooking the eggs. Egg whites have about 1% simple sugars attached to the protein. When eggs are cooked at too high of temperature, a browning reaction occurs, known as Maillard browning. It's rarely seen in hard cooked eggs but can happen. When you fry eggs in a skillet, the edges of the whites turn brown due to the high temperature, for the same reason.

 

[mayonnaisepertu]

I would have to concur with this reply - I recently pressure cooked a dozen eggs and couldn't get to them right away following the cook time so they continued to cook at the warm setting as the pressure naturally fell. The whites of every egg had turned a light tan color. They tasted just fine, even though they certainly were over cooked, but we've eaten them without any ill affect.

 

[Kathy3367]

I just had this occur. I boiled 6 eggs and really let them cook too long. When I peeled then one of the 6 egg white was tan. The yolk looked fine and all the other eggs looked and tasted fine. I did throw out this one as it really looked odd. I a sure it was due to the over cooking but find it extremely odd why this just occurred on only the one egg.