Have you purchased farm-fresh eggs and need to know how fresh they are? Or do you have grocery store eggs that are near the expiration date, and need to double-check that they are still safe to use in your cake or cookies?
We are here to show you a few tricks that will tell you if your eggs are still fresh enough to eat.
We went to find the answers and got them from wikiHow, which says that before you cook eggs, it's important to know whether they are fresh or not as rotten eggs can lead to food poisoning; and to test your eggs for freshness, you can use the float test or smell and examine a cracked egg.
Using the float test
Fill a large glass or bowl with room temperature water.
Fill the container ¾ of the way, or enough so that the entire egg will be submerged .
Place the egg in the water.
Carefully lower the egg in the water so that it doesn’t crack if it hits the bottom of the container. If you're testing more than one egg, test each egg individually.
Eat the egg if it sinks to the bottom.
If the egg sinks to the bottom, it’s still fresh and can be used for whatever cooking purposes that you had in mind. If the egg sinks but stands upright on the bottom of the container, it’s still fresh but should be eaten or hard-boiled as soon as possible because it’s near its expiration time.
Throw the egg away if it floats.
If the egg floats, it means air is trapped inside it and it’s rotten. Eating rotten eggs can lead to food poisoning.
Other techniques
Read the sell-by date on the carton.
Eggs can usually last up to three weeks if stored in the refrigerator. The sell-by date on the carton is usually a good indication freshness.
Crack open the egg and examine it.
If you crack the egg open and a white ooze comes out, there’s a good chance it’s rotten. Fresh eggs will have milky or clear whites and a perky bright yellow or orange yolk. If the egg is rotten, the whites will be thin and watery or may look pink, and the yolk will flatten out
Smell the egg.
Uncooked fresh eggs should have a neutral scent and should not smell sulfuric or sour. If the egg smells bad before or after you crack it, there’s a high likelihood that it’s rotten.
Hold the egg next to your ear and shake it.
If you hear the inside of the egg sloshing around, it means the egg is rotten. If you can’t hear or feel the contents of the egg move, it means it’s fresh and you can eat it.