Water Glassing: Egg Preservation Experiment!

[TooCheep]

Second, I put a mildly cracked egg in calcium hydroxide. I'll let it sit for a few days and then cook it into something and report back here. Man, the things I do for science.

If possible, remove some of the shell and leave the membrane in place. That will allow greater exposure to the lime water and simulate a longer period of being exposed to the water from a crack.

 

[fat brown hen]

Second, I put a mildly cracked egg in calcium hydroxide. I'll let it sit for a few days and then cook it into something and report back here. Man, the things I do for science.

Well, a few days turned into a few weeks. I'm not sure if I was overzealous with the crack or if the egg exploded in the container. But, somehow, the egg innards were outside of the egg.

It smelled rotten to me, so I took it to the far end of the yard and dumped it out. A chicken promptly ran over and ate it. That made me wonder if the egg was truly rotten, or if I imagined it...? I have opened rotten eggs before, and they were always black on the inside. This one had no black. Also the chicken did not die.

I guess if it's any consolation, eggs that are damaged during waterglassing are still okay to feed to chickens.

 

[TooCheep]

Thanks for the info @fat brown hen

 

[WingItRanch]

I finally ate some eggs that I water glassed a year ago so I thought I'd share my experience.

I decided to make egg salad since a common issue appears to be runny yolks. I use a hack for making a ton of boiled eggs that doesn't require peeling hard boiled eggs. Basically you just crack all the eggs into a round cake pan that will fit in an Instant Pot and pressure cook it (with water in the bottom) for 7 minutes. It turns out perfectly.

I washed and did the sniff test for every egg. I had a small bowl and cracked each egg and smelled it before I put it in the main cake pan. Not a single one was bad. No cracks at all. None of the yolks kept shape, though.

The taste was no different than fresh eggs.

The only issue I had was convincing my partner into eating year old eggs.

 

[TooCheep]

Yup. The whites are a little runnier and the yolks break pretty easily. That's why we usually recommend scrambled, omelets and baking with them. Hard boiled, easy over, etc. generally don't work well. Looks like you are an eggspert now.

And when you don't die in a day or two, your partner will likely be more willing to try it.

 

[Mrs. K]

Generally I will get a few eggs through the winter, those are carefully hoarded. The water glass ones are used for baking of scrambled eggs.

 

[fat brown hen]

I'm already working my way through my third gallon of waterglassed eggs. At this rate, I'll be out by midwinter. These were glassed 6 months ago. So far zero rotten eggs, but maybe 5% have been bloody on the inside. Interesting. I wonder if they started developing during the warmest days of summer.