11/30/2023
You can’t go by the dates on the egg cartons. Eggs can go past the date of the carton and still be used, or they can already be bad in the carton. You have no way of knowing how old the eggs are by the time you get them home from the store. There is a tiny air cell in a fresh egg, so it has little or no buoyancy. The older the egg gets, the larger the air cell becomes. The egg will float when the air cell gets to a certain size. So Here Is How to tell if an Egg is bad….I also have a video out demonstrating this with eggs. In addition to the float test, there are a few other methods that you can try to test an egg’s freshness. Science says that egg’s contents shrink over time leaving a larger pocket of air and that there is more mobility for the content of the egg to move around inside when shaken. As an egg ages, the contents degrade and mix together also. If you are in doubt, sniff the egg. There is no denying the stench of a rotten egg. There is also a plate test. A very fresh egg will have a very vibrant yellow/orange yolk that sits upright. The white will be firm and tight. An older egg will have a yolk that will be flatter, and the white will spread out across the plate. Just because it spreads out doesn’t mean it isn’t good to eat, it just means it’s just not as fresh. There are 3 pieces of important information on a carton of eggs. One identifies the packing source of where the eggs came from (the top left), the top right numbers, tells you the day of the year the eggs were packed. This information will be above or below the best by date depending on the manufacturer. For instance, if it says 023, they were packed on January 23rd, if it said 223, then they were packed on the 223rd day of the year. It will never go beyond 365, because there are only 365 days in a year. The bottom date that says best by, simply means that they need to be pulled from the shelves by the stores, but not that you still can’t eat them. If you are confused and ever in doubt, don’t eat an egg that has a crack in it, unless you just cracked it, and sniff it to smell. When using eggs in baking, you want your eggs to be as fresh as possible for rising purposes, especially in baking pound cakes that depends on eggs and the beating of the cake to rise. So try to use the freshest eggs possible when baking. I hope this has helped you some.
**Please see the post about the numbers on the sides of the egg cartons also. That posted was posted on 11/29/23. Tami’s Home & Pantry
