Stupid Question - Do you need to do anything to eggs before cooking?

nope

 

i mainly just wash the poo off. but i'm sure you'd have figured that one out on your own.

 

Hi and welcome.
There is nothing different you have to do to homegrown eggs, unless you want easy peel hard boiled eggs. Fresh eggs haven't evaporated like older eggs, and this makes them harder to peel once hard boiled. There are a bunch of tricks to compensate for this, but the most consistently successful seems to be to age the eggs in your fridge.

 

You might also want to candle fresh eggs as there may be something undesirable in the egg on occasion. This can include a blood spot. I break them into a bowl before they hit the frying pan.

You should also store them egg cell up as they last longer that way.

 

Personally,,,, before I cook them,,,, I beat the heck out of them, add some fresh Basil, Cilantro, and Spinach to the,,,, grate a little cheese,,,,, thennnnn I cook them!

 

Yes!, If they are factory eggs, deposit directly into trash, get rid of the middleman.

 

If the eggs are clean in the nest, don't wash them, just put them in your egg carton and use as you would any egg from the store. They last a lot longer (2 months plus in the fridge) because the "bloom" on the outside is not washed off. If there is any poop or dirt on the outside, I wash it off gently with a wet cloth (some people suggest sandpaper) just in that spot, again to preserve the natural bloom on the outside of the shell. If it's very dirty, you can wash them under water.

My grandparents raised hens for 50 years. They had too many to attend each one by hand, so they collected the eggs and dipped a large wire basket full of eggs 3 times into a small spring, swirled the basket for a certain number of seconds (10 I think) and by the third time, wa-laa, they were clean and ready to sell to customers. She had never heard of the "bloom" I described above.

Storebought eggs are sometimes dipped in a "chemical wash" that a lot of organic folks view as potentially harmful to the person who eats them. Your eggs will be sooo much better. Congratulations.

 

Keep a clean coop and nest and the dirty poo wont be too big an issue.