How To Store Fresh Eggs Long Term

The practice of storing eggs in lime water goes back centuries, and it'south still one of the all-time means to preserve eggs without refrigeration.

Preserving Eggs in a Lime Solution

Anyone whose kept chickens knows that egg product doesn't always line upward with demand.

In the spring months, you'll be buried in fresh eggs, right when yous're excited to exist outdoors planting the garden and couldn't care less near baking. Production stays strong all summer when it's too hot to run the oven and you're besides worn out in the evenings to bother anyway.

Then in the fall, correct as cozy weather starts, product starts to slip. By winter, when the days are short and you're set for some condolement nutrient baking, they may have stopped laying altogether.

These days, industrial craven operations turn on banks of lights to continue the ladies cranking out eggs yr-round (and just supercede the chickens at 2 years erstwhile as they wear out from laying nonstop). That's a relatively new thing though, and the pick of a steady year-round egg supply has only actually existed for the past few decades.

Historically, how did people preserve eggs to ensure a steady winter supply?

The reply is, they had literally dozens of methods to preserve eggs. They stored them in wood ash, wheat bran, and straw, or coated them with butter or lard, or kneaded them into homemade pasta that was hung to dry.

Most of the methods rely on a few simple principles:

Starting time with clean, fresh eggs.
Don't wash the eggs at all. That removes their natural "bloom" that prevents bacteria from inbound through pores in the shell. (Grocery shop eggs are done, and will not keep outside the refrigerator. Do not attempt this, or whatever other egg preservation technique with grocery store eggs.)
Keep the eggs cool, merely non too common cold. An egg is a living thing, and it'll stay fresh best unwashed and at effectually 50 degrees (root cellar cool).
If possible, seal the pores off further to prevent contamination within the egg. Oil, ash, and lime are the nigh popular choices.

Merely storing fresh, unwashed eggs in a cool surroundings (around 50 degrees) will buy yous a lot of fourth dimension. We've taken our fresh eggs and stored them in the basement dependably for up to 4 months, and occasionally as long as six months, no handling required (so long as they're not done).

If you'd like to dependably store eggs for longer than 4 months, like if you're trying to store an glut of jump eggs for the next wintertime's baking, you'll need a flake of assistance to go them to proceed that long.

While many different methods piece of work, most have drawbacks. Storing in ash, for instance, makes the eggs taste a bit musty and smokey. Storing in salt draws h2o out of the egg, and makes them sense of taste a chip salty.

Storing eggs in sodium silicate, known as "Waterglassing" was really pop for a fourth dimension. Incredibly dependable, the eggs didn't spoil for years…just they changed.

Sodium silicate is used for sealing tile these days, and it softened the shells and penetrated the eggs…changing their flavor, and even their structure. Waterglassed eggs whites won't whip, and at that place'due south never really been any testing on the impacts of eating a boatload of sodium silicate for breakfast.

So what does work? Storing eggs in a nutrient-safe lime solution fabricated with pickling lime (calcium hydroxide).

Preserving Eggs in Lime Water

The calcium solution seals the eggshells and effectively preserves the eggs for a twelvemonth or more.

Though it'due south called "pickling lime" it doesn't make pickled eggs. The process keeps the eggs in their aforementioned state, and once you pull them out of the solution they can be used just like a fresh egg. They fry up beautifully, and the white nevertheless whip to potent peaks.

Information technology's chosen "pickling lime" because it's used to business firm up veggies before pickling, namely dill pickles, and old fashioned watermelon rind pickles. It works the same way to firm up the eggshells and seal them at the same fourth dimension.

Don't believe me? Here'due south someone cooking with eggs after a total twelvemonth in lime water:

How to Preserve Eggs in Lime Water

Preserving eggs in lime water starts with making a lime/water solution. The ratio is one ounce of lime powder (past weight) to one quart of water.

(That'southward about 28 grams per quart of h2o or about 2 heaping tablespoons.)

Lime for Preserving Eggs

I'll measure the solution in a quart mason jar, and i quart of the solution is but most right for filling a one-half-gallon mason jar once the eggs have been added.

Requite the jar a shake, and you'll have a milky white liquid. Much of the lime will settle out to the lesser over time (that'southward normal), merely what y'all're doing hither is making a saturated lime solution.

Some sources say that every bit niggling as 1 part lime to 700 parts water creates a saturated solution, but other sources say that the lime may non exist completely pure and yous need to use a bit more to be sure. Even so, others recommend equally much every bit ane part lime to 2 parts water.

At a charge per unit of ane ounce to a quart, at that place'south a lot that settles out of solution, and information technology's a practiced middle basis that ensures that the solution is saturated (without wasting a boatload of lime in the process).

lime water solution

Carefully select eggs that are super fresh and make clean, without cracks or issues, pulled from clean nesting boxes that day.

Fill a clean jar with the eggs, and and so pour the lime-water solution over the eggs. Be sure that the eggs are completely submerged and then cap up the jar.

Pouring lime solution over fresh eggs

Cap up the jar, and store in a cool place, like a basement, pantry, or cool closet on the north side of the house.

A half-gallon mason jar will hold roughly 14 to xviii eggs, depending on size. You can also employ something like these 1-gallon glass jars, which will hold about 3 dozen eggs.

Historically, they would have been stored in wooden barrels or ceramic crocks (like this 1 that I use to make sauerkraut a gallon at a time). Alternately, a nutrient-safe plastic bucket will work if yous want to shop them in bulk.

We go along our jars of eggs in the basement, correct next to my home-canned goods and root cellared apples.

Preserving Eggs in Lime

In one case you're ready to use the eggs, just remove them from the solution and give them a rinse before groovy. Rinsing ensures that the lime solution doesn't go into the egg as it'southward cracked, which volition impact the flavor.

Then, only cook with the eggs equally you otherwise would.

Other Lime Based Egg Preservation Methods

I constitute a reference to preserving eggs in lime h2o in the volume from the 1950s called "Stocking Upwardly." It contains all style of historical food preservation information and has a whole chapter on eggs.

It notes that well-nigh people "constitute some way to clog upwardly the pores of the eggshells then that moisture would non escape and air could not enter. Eggs were rubbed with grease, zinc, or boric ointment, or submerged in a solution of lime, table salt, foam of tartar, and water."

While stocking upwardly does not give proportions, I plant a reference on a historical nutrient and cookery site that suggest this method:

"To ane pint of slacked lime, add 1 pint of salt, two ounces of cream of tartar, and iv gallons of water. Boil all together for ten minutes. Skim and when common cold, pour information technology over the eggs. Lay a calorie-free saucer upon the acme to go along them underwater, and go along in a cool identify. Renew the lime-water every iii weeks."

The downside of this mixed solution is that the common salt permeates the shells and will flavour the eggs, so I'd suggest going with a simple lime solution.

Fresh Eggs Just (Not Grocery Store Eggs)

Please note, this won't work with store-bought eggs , at least in the The states where they're always washed before getting to the shop. (In other countries, they actually often intentionally don't launder the eggs earlier market so they keep longer.)

In the U.s.a., they're done earlier they're packed, which means their pores are open and bacteria is getting inside the egg from the moment information technology leaves the subcontract. That'south why they must exist refrigerated, to forestall the bacteria that have already gotten in from proliferating.

Subcontract fresh egg that are unwashed, on the other hand, tin can be stored at room temperature for extended periods without effect, and this is what they practise in Europe and nigh of the rest of the world.

If you're lucky and notice a good local farmer you trust, yous tin can buy fresh unwashed eggs from them in majority to store, merely y'all can't employ annihilation from a grocery store refrigerator case.

However, raising your own chickens is the best choice, then you get the freshest eggs and you lot know for certain how they were handled.