Preserving Your Harvest

[21hens-incharge]

It's not to late....I may set mine back up this weekend. I need better wicking material. The stuff I used decayed before summer ended.

 

[Happy hen lover]

Has anyone ever hard boiled water glass eggs?

 

[akroberts1085]

Has anyone ever hard boiled water glass eggs?

I'm wondering what it is. I haven't ever heard of it.

 

[tripletfeb]

Has anyone ever hard boiled water glass eggs?

Hmm, I'll hard boil some of mine tomorrow and report back with the results! Egg salad sounds good

 

[tripletfeb]

I'm wondering what it is. I haven't ever heard of it.

Water glassing is an old way of preserving fresh eggs for future use without using electricity or other ways to keep them cool. You use pickling lime and water, mix it together, and put clean(but not washed) eggs in the mixture. They keep for months and months. I have some that are a year old and they work wonders in baked goods and as scrambled eggs. If you are interested in more details, I can provide a quality video for you to watch

 

[TooCheep]

I'm wondering what it is. I haven't ever heard of it.

Water glassing is a way to preserve eggs. I'm in my 5th year of doing it. I use it to collect eggs in the spring to store for use in winter when the girls stop laying, but they can supposedly store up to 18 months.

It is an old-fashioned technique that predates electricity and is very cheap to do. I've found it very handy as I don't have a freeze dryer or enough freezer space to store them those ways. You basically store fresh, non-washed eggs in a container and add a lime-water mixture over them to protect them from air/light.

There is a very thorough discussion of water-glassing in this thread. If you want the short version, just watch the video in the first post.

Has anyone ever hard boiled water glass eggs?

Yes. It was only partially successful. The egg shell and contents softens slightly. In my one attempt at hard boiled, only 2/5 were really successful. 2 cracked slightly and let in some water. The result on those were edible, but slightly watery HB eggs. One had a major crack and ejected a good part of it's contents making it more like a poached egg.

Likewise, sunny side up/over easy eggs are only partially successful. The yolk would frequently break.

The lesson that I've taken away from those experiences is that water glassing is far better for scrambled eggs, omelets and baked goods.

 

[Sally PB]

Likewise, sunny side up/over easy eggs are only partially successful. The yolk would frequently break.

The lesson that I've taken away from those experiences is that water glassing is far better for scrambled eggs, omelets and baked goods.

Last winter was my foray into waterglassing. DH didn't care for them, but he likes his eggs over easy, and the yolks broke all. the. time. after they'd been in the solution for a few months. They were fine for scrambled and baking, which is how I used them. DH got store bought eggs.

I'll be collecting eggs for waterglassing again. I have about 15 in the solution already. I hope to have my pullets laying before "the dearth" sets in.

 

[TooCheep]

Last winter was my foray into waterglassing. DH didn't care for them, but he likes his eggs over easy, and the yolks broke all. the. time. after they'd been in the solution for a few months. They were fine for scrambled and baking, which is how I used them. DH got store bought eggs.

I'll be collecting eggs for waterglassing again. I have about 15 in the solution already. I hope to have my pullets laying before "the dearth" sets in.

It felt really odd to me to be buying less nutritious eggs from the store after my first year of raising chickens. That's when I researched preservation techniques and first tried water glassing.

Sorry about DH, but most all preservation techniques involve changes in the taste/texture/etc of the food. The only other techniques I would trust for eggs are freeze drying and freezing, but both of those involve scrambling the eggs.

 

[akroberts1085]

Water glassing is an old way of preserving fresh eggs for future use without using electricity or other ways to keep them cool. You use pickling lime and water, mix it together, and put clean(but not washed) eggs in the mixture. They keep for months and months. I have some that are a year old and they work wonders in baked goods and as scrambled eggs. If you are interested in more details, I can provide a quality video for you to watch

Absolutely! Sign me up. That's a different, unique way to preserve eggs. Thank you for letting me know.

 

[tripletfeb]

Absolutely! Sign me up. That's a different, unique way to preserve eggs. Thank you for letting me know.

Here is a great video on how to do it. I don't have a kitchen scale so I Googled the amount of lime to water ratio and this is my note: Water glassing eggs: 4 level TBSP pickling lime to 1 quart water. The 4 TBSP pickling lime equals the 1oz needed. I use a 2 gallon glass jar with lid that I bought at Walmart. I actually had to buy another jar because the first one filled up so fast. And it's normal and ok for the lime to separate from the water even after you mix it. And if you don't use the eggs for a little bit, there will be a crust that appears on the water, that's ok too. Good luck and enjoy your water glassed eggs!