
Why Eggs Could Be Getting Harder to Peel - Shamiq
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/eggs-hard-to-peel/
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butterfi
This is a great example of how we're losing track of information. Using older
eggs is a trick well-known to my wife, who learned it from her mother. It
seems more and more lately that we're re-discovering the wheel. Just a few
weeks ago I was reading somewhere how a weaver had un-earthed a forgotten
weaving technique through Google's book project.

~~~
RevRal
I didn't figure this all out until we got our own chickens.

I even threw out an egg because it had been sitting outside for over a day. I
didn't know at the time that a farmer has 30 days to sell his eggs. That the
grocery store has another 30 days to sell the egg. And on top of that, you
still have another 3 months before the egg actually goes bad.

Incredible! Even more incredible -- and this only applies to farm fresh eggs
-- there is an anti-bacterial layer around the egg.

I am pretty impressed with eggs.

~~~
tomjen2
My parents have had eggs for decades and we always threw then away at the end
of 3 weeks after they had been collected.

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RevRal
I might find myself doing the same soon, we're getting a little sick of
eggs....

But I hope they didn't throw them out because they thought they went bad.

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mhb
The Science of Making Perfect Boiled Eggs:

[http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/the-food-lab-science-
of-h...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/the-food-lab-science-of-how-to-
cook-perfect-boiled-eggs.html)

~~~
furyg3
This is an amazing article :)

I can never get my eggs that way (to be fair to myself, I don't cook too
often).

Sunday morning is going to rock this weekend, though!

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willwagner
The article mentions Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore
of the Kitchen" which is an awesome book for learning the science behind
cooking. I'd totally recommend that book in the tradition of food/cooking
hacking.

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giardini
Dumb! The trick is:

\- if the eggs are cold, then place them in hot water for a few minutes.

\- If the eggs are hot, place them in cold water for a few minutes.

Once that's done, all eggs peel easily.

~~~
evgen
This really only works with old eggs, where the temperature differential can
help separate the albumen from the inner shell. To quote the master:

"...the best guarantee of an easy peeling is to use old eggs! Difficult
peeling is characteristic of fresh eggs with a relatively low albumen pH,
which somehow causes the albumen to adhere to the inner shell membrane more
strongly than it adheres to itself. At the pH typical of several days of
refrigeration, around 9.2, the shell peels easily. If you end up with a carton
of very fresh eggs and need to cook them right away, you can add a half
teaspoon of baking soda to a quart of water to make the cooking water alkaline
(though this intensifies the sulfury flavor)." (On Food and Cooking (2nd Ed.),
p. 88)

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hristov
I remember some time ago I saw an infomercial advertising an egg peeler. Most
things you see on infomercials are crap but this one seemed brilliant. It
punctured a hole in the bottom of the egg and sent a bunch of slightly
compressed air into it which exploded the eggshell outwards and completely
peeled the egg. I would have totally gotten it if I cooked eggs (or anything
else) at home. I wonder if that works on fresh eggs.

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ido
That "Eggstractor" website is straight out of 1997.

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dandelany
Unimpressed. By the title, I assumed they would make the case for some
difference in the chicken's environment or the way the egg is processed before
it's sold.

"'As the contents of the egg contracts and the air cell enlarges, the shell
becomes easier to peel,' the USDA Shell Eggs from Farm to Table fact sheet
states. 'For this reason, older eggs make better candidates for hard
cooking,'"

...

"Statistics on the time it takes for an egg to go from hen to supermarket have
not been calculated, a USDA representative told Wired.com, but there’s some
reason to believe that new production techniques could be delivering eggs to
markets faster."

So this article is just saying that eggs sold today are more fresh? Not even
that - they "could be" more fresh? This hardly seems newsworthy.

~~~
robg
I'm completely impressed even as it fits my mental model of possible causes.
I've been an ardent egg boiler for years to make whites easy to eat. And only
recently have I run into the pockmarked egg after boiling. It's horribly
frustrating! But it makes sense. Only recently have I had really fresh eggs.

Now, knowing this, I'll just boil older eggs. It's a small victory, but a
victory nonetheless!

