Friday, September 18, 2009

Greased Eggs

Randomly wandering the net a few nights ago, I came across this interesting tidbit of information. Admitted... it's not very practical to my life but it was interesting all the same. Apparently you can grease eggs as a way to preserve them, as fresh eggs, for up to a year.

I know, I know... wow! Life just wasn't complete without that little factoid tucked away in your brain right?

As I understood it, you generously rub lard all over the surface of very freshly gathered eggs - it said within 2-3 hours of when they were laid - and then store them in the bottom of the refrigerator for as a long as a year. The author said she'd tried it as an unbeliever mostly to prove her husband wrong when he brought this information home. (By the way, this family lives on a homestead-type farm where they are trying to be totally self-sufficient in what they can do to provide for themselves so they have several chickens. Chickens, who - and I have no experience to confirm or deny if this happens - lay loads of eggs in the summer months and next to nothing in the wintertime.)

What you do is take your very fresh eggs, slather them with lard and stash away in a carton in the bottom of your fridge until needed. She said some of them will get a little mold on the outside that is easily washed away with running water. The lard coating seals up the pores of the eggshell so that oxygen cannot get in and start to dry up and decay the inside edible part of the egg. In this lady's experiment, she broke a greased egg in one bowl and a freshly laid one in another at about 6 months. Her family couldn't tell the difference. The color, texture and smell were identical. Sounds pretty incredible, huh?

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