Storing & Preserving Eggs (Farm Fresh Eggs Primer)

Melissa Norris: Hey, pioneers. Welcome to episode number 310. Today, we are talking about how to preserve eggs at home. Now, if your chickens are anything like mine, they lay crazy through the spring and actually through most of the summer, and you are in an egg glut. So, you know what this means if you've been there. It means you have so many eggs that you're looking for all of the egg recipes, you're trying to figure out ways to use up all of these eggs. But if you've had chickens for any amount of time, you also know that once molting happens in the fall, and we have those shorter cold days, that you go into an egg famine.

Melissa Norris: And this usually happens right around the holidays. So, Thanksgiving and Christmas, November, December, especially when we're doing a lot of holiday baking, and a lot of our baking requires eggs. And it just about kills me if I have to purchase eggs from the store. It is one of my goals in life to not ever have to purchase eggs from the store. But if you've listened to any of my episodes that you know I'm really big on using safe and effective methods to preserve food at home, meaning, one, that, yes, we're focused on safety, I don't want you to get sick and I don't want to get sick myself and I don't want my family to get sick from using methods that are not safe. But I also want to use methods that we actually enjoy the food in the way that it's been preserved, and then I can use it in things that my family enjoys. So the end product needs to be good as well.

Melissa Norris: So today, that's exactly what we're diving into. We're diving into ways to preserve eggs at home, ways that have been successful for us and some tips for you to avoid, and not only my tips in success but also those with Lisa Steele. So Lisa, you've heard her on the podcast before. She is a wonderful resource on raising backyard hens for eggs and she's Lisa Steele from Fresh Eggs Daily, so that should give you a little bit of a clue there. So we dive into it. It's a fabulous episode. And today's episode is sponsored by the Abundant Pantry: Preserving Eggs course from Homesteading Family.

Melissa Norris: So, this course is amazing. Carolyn from Homesteading Family, Carolyn Thomas, she's been on the podcast before with me. And Carolyn in real life is actually one of my very best friends. So, it's really great having another homesteader as your best friends because we will often chat about different methods and safety and research, and just all of those things as you can imagine being homesteaders. And so, Carolyn is actually not one of the only, it is the only preserving eggs course that not only am I aware of but it's one of the only ones that I would actually recommend to you, because I trust Carolyn's methods and her research and have went through her course myself.

Melissa Norris: So, it's the Abundant Pantry: Preserving Eggs. And you can learn how to preserve your farm fresh eggs using easy and practical at-home methods. What's fabulous is you get 10 methods for preserving eggs at home along with their favorite egg recipe's e-book. And it includes 10 step by step video lessons, and you are going to love it. Some of these are really old-fashioned methods that are really cool where others are a little bit more modern, but Carolyn has walked you through all of them. So, if you have got a glut of eggs, you don't want to buy eggs in the wintertime and you want to make sure that those eggs are preserved, go to melissaknorris.com/eggs, melissaknorris.com/eggs and snag that resource. Okay. Now back to my interview and chat with Lisa. Well, Lisa, welcome back to the Pioneering Today podcast.

Lisa Steele: Hey, Melissa, I'm happy to be back again.

Melissa Norris: Yeah, I am really happy to have you back. And for those who are familiar with Lisa, if you listened to her on our previous episode of the podcast, which we'll have link to in the show notes because you'll definitely want to check those out, but Lisa is very, very well known. You are one of my chicken ladies. So, if I have got a question or something's going on with my flock that I don't know to, Lisa is always one of the first places that I go and check some of her resources to see if she has have it covered, and more likely than not you have.

Lisa Steele: Thank you.

Melissa Norris: Yeah, thank you for being a great resource. But one of the things that I'm excited for us to do today is actually one of the benefits that we get from our chickens, and that's going to be our eggs. And right now, this time of year, my hens, at the time that we're recording this is in the springtime, and the hens are back full on egg production after their downtime in the winter because I don't use a heat lamp, so I don't force them to lay during the winter, they have the winter off. But I have got eggs coming out of my ears, but you're not quite sure where that term comes from that saying. But I have got a lot of eggs.

Melissa Norris: So, talking about ways to preserve our eggs for longer storage, because for those of us who don't use a heat lamp or don't try to force our chickens to lay all the way throughout the year, we have that time period where we don't have fresh eggs and it almost kills me if I have to ever buy eggs from the grocery store. It's my goal in life to not buy eggs from the store. So, I know that I need to come up with some ways that I do have eggs during that offseason when it comes into the fall. So, I'm really excited to talk to you about preserving our eggs, like head to getting into some of the questions like how long do eggs last without doing anything, when we just get them from the chicken like how long really are they good for. So, let's start with that. How long do eggs actually last?

Lisa Steele: Yeah, this is a great topic. I'm excited. It's actually the first time that I talked about it, specifically. I should have written about it roundabout but not specifically just talking about preserving eggs. But it's a great topic because I think a lot of people when they get into chicken keeping, they don't realize that their chickens are not going to lay distantly throughout the year. So they don't realize that you're going to have the egg drought probably starting in the fall and then lasting through the winter because I also do not keep my coop, I don't like my coop so my chickens slow down or stop every winter.

Lisa Steele: And then come spring, we have so many eggs, you said, are coming out of your ears. I mean, there have been times when I've just thrown them into the compost pile by the dozens, because we just can't keep up. And that kills me as well. It's hard. I don't want to buy at store eggs. I have too many sometimes during the year and I don't have enough. So you want to do something to sort of even that out so it's a more even flow, I guess, throughout the year.

Lisa Steele: I'd say that the easiest way to do that, like you said, is they're fresh eggs, if you don't wash them, they're going to last longer than if you do wash them. And they shouldn't be super dirty. So if you can go without washing those eggs back when you collect them, they're going to last for two or three weeks, just out on your counter at room temperature. And if you refrigerate them, they're going to last seven times longer. So you're talking three, four or five months, something like that, for a fresh unwashed egg in the refrigerator.

Melissa Norris: Oh, wow. I don't think I've ever kept mine in the fridge that long, just because we usually have gone through them before then. So I knew that they would last on the counter for a few weeks. I don't think I realized they would be good for quite that long in the fridge. That's actually a really long time. So if you were to save the eggs that you get right at the beginning of fall... Usually mine, they really start to slow down in October but I'll still usually get some fresh eggs through November and then it's usually mid-November that it's a hard cut off.

Melissa Norris: And about the end of February, they'll start to begin to lay egg again. So it's like right at the baking time, like right around the holidays. But if you are keeping an eye on that and thinking about that, so then all of the eggs that you're collecting, say in September, when they're still laying pretty good, at least mine are, and you're not washing them and you're putting them in the fridge, I mean, those would take you through almost if you could get enough, almost through until they would start laying again.

Lisa Steele: They really well. And if you put them in cartons and mark the date on them, just so you have some idea of how old they are, I'm really glad that I always tend to use the ones I just collected that day instead of putting those away and going back to the older ones. But especially if you're just baking with them, when you're not doing something like poaching or frying them where you really want them to be nice and fresh, yeah, they'll last a lot longer, I think, than people realize.

Lisa Steele: And it's pretty clear when they've gone bad, too. So for the older egg, I would always say crack it into a small bowl. Don't crack it right into your cake batter. As soon as you crack that egg, you're going to be able to see and smell that have gone bad. So there's no question about it. So as long as it still looks fine and smells fine, they're probably going to be good, especially if you're cooking them fully. I might not use older eggs for eggnog or mayonnaise or something like that. That you'd probably want to use your freshest because you're not cooking the eggs. So the older eggs have more chance of having salmonella or bacteria that's grown in them for that four or five months that they are in the fridge.

Melissa Norris: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it's funny as I was thinking back, I think I've only ever had actually one egg that I have cracked open that has been rotten. And I can't even remember how long we've had chicken. It's been close to at least a decade. So it is very infrequent. One of the things, though, so this is what I've been doing and I'm just curious on your practice. So, when I do have some of the eggs that get a little bit dirtier either one of the hens decided to lay it outside and it got muddy or dirty, rather than in the nesting box, or quite honestly, if I am not being diligent and keeping the nesting box clean.

Melissa Norris: Because I'll be honest, I don't always stay on top of it as much as I should. So sometimes I will get some eggs that are dirty. And it's either [inaudible 00:10:32] it's a mixture of chicken poop. So what I usually will do is I will not wash them when they first come in, unless, I mean, they're so gross that you're like, there's just no way I can even have this in my kitchen without touching it.

Lisa Steele: Right.

Melissa Norris: So kind of moderate dirty, let's say. What I do is I still will put those in a carton and in the fridge, but then I wash them just right before I use them, rather than wash them and remove the bloom and then store them in the fridge. And I don't know if that's a personal preference, or do you have any thoughts on that as far as best practice?

Lisa Steele: I mean, that's the smartest thing to do as far as preserving the integrity of the freshness of the egg. I guess everyone has a different comfort level of what they'll put in their fridge.

Melissa Norris: Yeah.

Lisa Steele: During mud season, there's a lot of mud at the eggs, I use the wood ash from our wood stove in their desk baffle for winter, so there's a lot of charcoal that ends up on [inaudible 00:11:28] and then into the egg boxes and that. So, it's not always poop that's on the egg. It can be a bunch of different things. But yeah, I mean, if you don't even want to put them in your fridge, you could put those into either egg cartons or a box or something and leave them in your mudroom or a garage or somewhere where it's cooler where they're not going to freeze but it's like refrigerating them.

Lisa Steele: And yeah, and some of them like our duck eggs, I just have to wash right away because I think the ducks play soccer with their eggs after they lay them. So, those are not going in the fridge. But those I do rinse in warm water and then I refrigerated them. And then you do want to use those sooner than the eggs that haven't been washed. But yeah, the longer you can put out washing that egg, the better. Even if you sell the eggs, as long as you're letting the people know that you're selling to, that they have to rinse them off before they use them, and then if you haven't refrigerated them and let them know they don't even have to refrigerate them if they don't want to.

Melissa Norris: Okay. Now, we've been talking about farm fresh eggs. But if someone's like, we don't have access to farm fresh eggs, I don't have chickens yet, and they're like, maybe there's a really good deal on eggs at the supermarket, I'm buying my eggs but maybe they're having a really good sale. And so, they're like, "Oh," or they're trying to avoid maybe going to the store as often so they're like, "I'm just going to stock up on eggs and, and try and preserve some of these eggs," but they're using eggs that do have the bloom removed. So they have been washed or it may even be their farm fresh ones, like we've discussed and they're not comfortable leaving them dirty so they want to wash them. That does shorten the shelf life some, doesn't it? I mean, that's always been my understanding.

Lisa Steele: It does. Yeah, it does. And I don't know, I'm sure somewhere, there's studies exactly how long it shortens it. But by removing that bloom, which commercial eggs have to, they have to be washed in order to be sold commercially, you're removing that bloom which is letting both air and bacteria into the egg. So not only is the egg not going to be as fresh but there's more chance that it will be contaminated with something. The other thing is when you buy at grocery store, they're not just hours old. They could already be a couple weeks old by the time you went and buy them. So, you're already starting at like three or four weeks old. So that's another thing to keep in mind as well that fresh eggs are definitely different than store-bought eggs. I would not recommend really stockpiling store-bought eggs.

Melissa Norris: Okay. I wouldn't either, but I was curious what your thought was, too. And then, especially with when we did use to buy store-bought eggs, like I said it's been a number of years now since we've had to do that, which I'm very grateful to my hens for. And also we're talking about as you get towards the end of that shelf life of storing our own eggs in the fridge, et cetera, and we talked about putting it into a bowl just to make sure, I use the float test where I'll put water in a bowl and put the eggs. And if they float, then I know that it's bad. Is there any other test other than that, that you can tell before actually cracking open the egg?

Lisa Steele: Yeah, there actually is. And actually, to clarify, when an egg floats, it's not necessarily bad. I mean, it probably is still edible but it's really, really, really old. So I err on the side of caution, I toss the floaters just because I feel like they've been around for way, way too long. And I've tested eggs and let them sit and then whatever. And by the time they are floating, they're going to be really, really old. And then after about a month, that egg is still going to be probably sitting on the bottom but standing straight up, it won't lying on the bottom but it'll be still touching the bottom of the glass.

Lisa Steele: So when it does start to float, you're talking probably months old. So it is best to toss those. But if you're desperate, there's a chance that could be good. But yeah, also, if you don't want to do that, you can actually just hold an egg up to your ear and shake it. And if you can hear things sloshing around inside, that means that air has gotten into the egg because as the egg ages, air gets into the pores, and enough air has gotten in that the moisture from the egg had gotten out. So if you can hear sloshing, that means that the egg is pretty old.

Melissa Norris: Oh, I have not ever heard of that method, but I like that. Because sometimes I don't want to fill up the whole thing with water and then once I know why I put the egg in the water, then I have removed the bloom. So that's one of the things I usually don't test until I'm really like, oh man, these are getting to the point where I better test them, because I know they've been in here a while. So okay, I really like the shake test one.

Lisa Steele: And of course the more sloshing, the older. Look, if you shake the egg and nothing moves around, it's really fresh. And if you just barely get a little movement, it's a little bit old. But if you really hear stuff sloshing around, I would definitely consider that to be used right away or to be tossed. But yeah, that's a clever little trick that you can use without actually putting the egg in the water. Because you're right, I hate doing that, too, because once you floated it, now your bloom is gone and you're like, "Oh, I just wasted a perfectly good egg on a float test."

Melissa Norris: Yeah, definitely. Okay. Well, that's a great way to have in our pocket then for testing. And then what it does come to, because sometimes for us, with the preserving the eggs to take us through those winter months when they're not laying, I honestly only have so much room in my refrigerator to store the eggs even if they will store for those months. And so, really, as far as the preserving methods go that I have personally used is I have only froze my eggs.

Melissa Norris: And I learned the hard way the first year that I did it. And of course I did it for scrambled eggs and/or for baking but not for frying. But the first year I did it, I did not incorporate the yolk into the white. I literally just cracked the egg into a silicone muffin or lined tin and flash frozen that way solid and then pop them out and put them in bags. And then later, well, I learned the hard way that once it had thawed and I tried to incorporate it into a cake that the yolks would never incorporate, even though I was beating it with my KitchenAid mixer. And they left these little rubbery weird texture pieces.

Melissa Norris: And so, I was really disappointed because I had frozen quite a few. So the next time I did it, I whipped and that's what I do now, but I'm curious to see if you have any other tricks for the freezing part. And so I whip it together so that the yolk when I'm cracking it into my little silicone-lined tins is incorporated with the weight and then I freeze it. And then once it's thawed, because it was whipped to begin with, I don't get that rubbery weird, like it was almost like it was uncooked but it was like a rubber ball. It was very odd, I was very irritated. But that seems to have solved that for me. So when it comes to freezing eggs, do you have any other tips or things that you've noticed along those lines to share with people?

Lisa Steele: I do. And I also whisk them. Just whisk them to combine them. And if you add a tiny bit of salt, that also helps with the texture when you ultimately defrost it. And whether you're good at baking or cooking, most baking recipes do include salt as well. So adding a little bit of salt is not going to change your recipe, but just a touch of salt into the whisked eggs. You can also freeze just the white, which is really great if you're going to be making meringues or something like that. You don't need to put the salt into the white, obviously, because they were not the problem, it was the yolks. And you also can just freeze just yolks. But again, I would whisk all the yolks together, put a little salt and then freeze them. And that should really help with the texture.

Melissa Norris: Okay. I'm going to try the salt trick. I hadn't tried the salt. And so that is a really great tip. So you're just sprinkling a little bit per egg. It's not like a certain ratio that-

Lisa Steele: No, you're not putting in tablespoons. I would just sprinkle, whisk up 8, 10, 12, a dozen eggs or whatever the initial is. So for them, it should be enough. But you're right, whisking them, because I, too, had tried just plopping an egg into the silicone thing and freezing them like that. And once they defrost, I don't know what to do with this thing, it's just not working.

Melissa Norris: I was stubborn and so I'm like, I'm going to beat like I tried it again. Yes, sometimes my stubbornness is not to a benefit, other times it is. And so I'm like, okay, I just didn't beat it long enough. So I'm going to put the whisk attachment on the KitchenAid and I'm going to beat these eggs into submission before I add them into the dry goods. Yeah, it still didn't work once they had been frozen and thawed without the prior.

Lisa Steele: Right. Your whisking definitely works. And an egg is about three tablespoons. So if you do defrost a few cubes and you're not sure exactly, just measure it out by tablespoon for however many eggs the recipe calls for. And the whites alone will last frozen probably for a year. The yolks or the entire egg whisk probably good for six months, at least, frozen. So that should definitely take you through the fall winter period of no egg production.

Melissa Norris: Okay, perfect. And so, three tablespoons will equal out to be one egg in a cooking recipe then if you've frozen them. Okay.

Lisa Steele: Right.

Melissa Norris: I've always just frozen mine individually, so that I knew like when it popping it out. Yeah. But that's really good in case you are doing them in more a bulk container and not the individual to know that ratio.

Lisa Steele: Or I know people doing in cupcake, like I do them in the ice cube trays, which is just about three tablespoons, just a little shy. But I've seen people freeze them in cupcake tins and I'm thinking when you defrost that cupcake tin full of egg, that's probably, I don't know, two eggs, three eggs. I don't know.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. If it's all the way full, it's going to be more than one egg. Because I do use silicone liner but I just do one egg and then I whip it forth. And I think it's probably around half. So I would say if they're filling it to the brim, it's probably about two eggs worth.

Lisa Steele: Right. Yeah.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. Now, of course, so that's obviously we're talking about freezing. And I've had people ask me this before, "Can you freeze the egg whole just like raw?" And I'm like, "No, it's not going to work well." But there are some other methods where I have seen people using to prolong and preserve their eggs. Now we talked about using salt within freezing to help with [inaudible 00:21:54]. But can you actually salt your eggs themselves just using salt as the preservation method, or that would be salty?

Lisa Steele: Yeah, I tried that. Not a huge fan of it. So, it's salt-cured egg yolks. And what you do is take a ton of salt. You put salt in a baking pan, basically. And then you take your yolks, and you separate your yolks, and you fill them into the salt, cover them up, and you let them sit and dry for like days and days and days and then you could put them in a low oven and then you brush all the salt afterwards and dry even more. And they come out to be this weird texture that you can then grate, and people claim that it tastes like cheddar cheese or Parmesan cheese. I find it way too salty for me. Plus, it was a ton of work and a ton of salt. And I did not find that to be super economical or efficient. And I couldn't really understand the whole purpose of that. So that's like a fail in my book.

Melissa Norris: Okay, very interesting. I think, too, sometimes some of those older ways of preserving when we didn't have some of the options that we have now. And so sometimes I think it's the taste, it was something if you had it as a child and you were very used to it, then you enjoyed it or whatnot. But now if we haven't had it until much later in life, it's not something that we really find palatable.

Lisa Steele: Right. And why am I going to turn eggs into fake cheese when I can just go buy a block of cheddar cheese? The whole thing just didn't even make sense to me. I'm trying to preserve the eggs so I have eggs for baking or whatever, not so I can turn my eggs into fake cheese. That was weird. That's very weird.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. Well, you're right, there would be no way that you would be able to use that for baking because the texture and the salt, I mean, it would be too salty to even incorporate in with sugar and other things you were using it for baking.

Lisa Steele: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it was bad. There's another method. It's a French preserving method that I did actually try a couple years ago where you take your eggs unwashed, fresh, and you melt beeswax and you dip them into beeswax until they're completely covered. Once that dries, you then bury them in a big bucket of salt, so the eggs aren't touching and you put them in layers. But again, a ton of salt, like tons and tons of salt. They're supposed to last for up to two years that way.

Lisa Steele: We ended up moving in that period and I didn't feel like bringing my huge five-pound barrel of cured eggs, I actually tossed them when we moved. So I did not wait the two years to see if they actually were good after that. But that was kind of an interesting because you're preserving them just raw as is. And theoretically, you should be able to dig them out of the salt and crack them open and have an egg. So, that one I probably would try again maybe.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. So that's fascinating. Okay. So you're dipping them in beeswax which I get it's an additional coating on top of the bloom so it's going to seal a bacteria out like at that part. And then the salt is like an added measure, I'm assuming, because the salt is going to inhibit bacteria from being able to live in that environment, if there were any bacteria present. I'm assuming that's the general purpose of how that's working.

Lisa Steele: I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. Now that I mentioned that, I probably should try that again. Maybe just do like two in a mason jar. I don't need to do 14 dozen eggs in a five-gallon container. There's a similar methods that uses like mineral oil, where you just put mineral oil on the outside of the egg. And again, you're making an additional layer on top of the bloom. But, I don't know, I didn't really want mineral oil on my food, I mean, because egg shells are porous. So anything you put on them is going to be right next to the egg that you're going to be eating. But that's something that I've heard of people do.

Melissa Norris: People do, yeah. I'm with you. I don't use mineral oil or petroleum-based products in the kitchen. I don't use it on my butcher block. I don't use it on any of our wood stuff.

Lisa Steele: On your body. I don't use Vaseline, none of that. Yeah.

Melissa Norris: No, same here. Yeah, I mean, it's a byproduct of oil. I don't care how many times you process it, you can't change what it is, in my opinion. But that's a whole other soapbox. That's a whole another episode. So I'm with you on that. I have heard of that method too, but I was with you when it was with mineral oil and I'm like, I don't think, so there's too many other ways that we can go about doing this to have eggs.

Lisa Steele: Exactly.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. And then I think I'm going to test, though, the beeswax one, like you said, just doing it on a small part, it's just the geek in me that wants to see does it work and can it really last for two years just doing this. And then at the end of the two years, if you break it open and it's obviously not bad, like what is the flavor like? Yeah, we'll have to do this and we can compare notes. This would be really fun and come back in a couple of years and be like, "We did it."

Lisa Steele: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:26:51]. I mean, part of what were' saying, though, is like why would you ever need to preserve an egg for two years, because my chickens are going to start laying again in two months? I don't understand that either. There's another where you do it in like pickling lime, I guess, and water. Is that the water glass method?

Melissa Norris: Yeah, it's called water glassing, and I have not done it. And I do know Carolyn Thomas from Homesteading Family, who is a good friend of mine, she uses it. They have a really large family. And so she does and preserves their eggs that way. I think she's tested it up to a year is how long they've done it. And she really likes it and has had really good success with it. What's interesting is from a food preserving standpoint, because with canning and all of my home food preservation, I want to know the science behind it and to make sure that we're using practices that they're safe, nobody wants to make their family sick.

Lisa Steele: Right, or kill them, that would be horrible.

Melissa Norris: Yes. Right, yeah, with canning in a fear of botulism. But what's interesting is with some of these really old tiny almost folk method ways of home food preservation and especially with using the water glass and the lime and that with preserving the eggs, there's just really not been any research done on it to say that we do have that research with science with canning, like we know that this is the reason that we're going to be doing this with canning.

Melissa Norris: When I looked into it from the research, just because I was curious what I could find, I haven't been able to find anything that says, "Oh, this is unsafe." But they haven't done any studies that are like, "Oh yes, this is absolutely fine." So you kind of just have using your own research and common sense, which homesteaders have common sense, I'm so grateful for that, and then moving forth with it. But yeah, Carolyn's had really good luck with it and kept some up to a year with that method. And so, I don't personally use that method.

Melissa Norris: I don't really have anywhere to store it is part of my problem. We don't have any guestrooms and I don't have a garage, I don't have a basement. I really have nowhere to store the eggs even in a large bucket or container that they would be safe, that they wouldn't get knocked over. I just don't have the room. So I haven't tried it and plus using the freezing and then the fridge with my family size has carried us through until they start laying again. So I haven't really had the need to do that. But if someone is interested in that, we'll have some resources and whatnot in the show notes on that.

Lisa Steele: Okay. Yeah, I think it's pretty common among the homesteaders. But like you, I kind of worry about eggs where we know where they come from. So they're coming from a fairly bacteria-laden place, let's put it that way. And first of all, you're not supposed to wash them. So you're not really washing off any bacteria, and salmonella always can be an issue, too. And I'm just wondering, does that environment, I guess, it would kill any bacteria because it is the pickling line. But yeah, I don't know, I don't really want to die from eating an egg that I shouldn't have. That would be so ironic and awful.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. And again, with using any of those, if it was as a worry of salmonella or E. coli or something like that, like you said, and even with throwing the eggs as they get older, it's where you're going to be making sure they're in a recipe where they're fully cooked, they're reaching the temperatures that will kill [inaudible 00:30:30] where I would do fried egg or egg over easy or sunny-side up or raw and different recipes like that. I think at some instances that some families really do find it very useful. I think it's just going to depend on each individual family, but it is an option.

Lisa Steele: Right.

Melissa Norris: Which we were talking about using the lime and talking about pickled, but it's a way of preserving it but it's not really truly a pickled egg. But you can technically actually pickle eggs as well and that's a condiment, like I'm sure pickled eggs in certain cultures are like a favorite food.

Lisa Steele: Yeah, that's fine. I've done that. You'll see the recipes like pickled in beet juice. It's just basically a vinegar base, pickling brine with whatever you want, salt, sugar, cinnamon sticks or black pepper. I suppose you could just save your pickled beet juice and throw the eggs in the jar once the beets are gone. But I've always done like they're not true cans. I mean, I keep them in the refrigerator.

Melissa Norris: Yes.

Lisa Steele: So, whenever I'm going to use my pickle juice, make sure they're submerged, they are hard-boiled egg, and then I would feel safe probably in the fridge, maybe, like three or four a month, I guess. I don't know. I don't can so I'm not really up on like how long this stuff last.

Melissa Norris: Right. And with pickling eggs, specifically, you cannot can them. They actually have done scientific tests when people have tried to can pickled egg-

Lisa Steele: Like water bath?

Melissa Norris: Yeah.

Lisa Steele: Okay.

Melissa Norris: Correct. Yeah, where they've tried to can them doing a water bath method and then trying to store them on a shelf, right, not in a refrigerated environment. And they did test positive for botulism.

Lisa Steele: Right.

Melissa Norris: Right. So pickling eggs, like you said, it's fine to pickle them in a vinegar mixture. But because the egg is so dense, the pickling brine can't get all the way through the egg into the center in order to make the egg acidic enough to inhibit botulism growth, because it needs to be 4.6 pH or lower, meaning more acidic, right?

Lisa Steele: Right.

Melissa Norris: The lower the number the more acidic it is. And because of the density of the egg, the vinegar can't penetrate all the way through in order to get that acidity level down then to make it a shelf stable product. So putting it in the fridge, however, is exactly how you should be storing when you are doing your pickled eggs. And that is very safe, but it definitely is something that needs to go into the refrigerator, not sitting out on just the shelf or the counter.

Lisa Steele: Right. Yeah. Again, I mean, that's not bathing eggs for baking or whatever. They're hard boiled and now they're pickled. But at least it's another way to use up some of these eggs and then you can turn them into deviled egg. Pickled eggs make really delicious deviled eggs. But that's about all you can do with them straight from the jar.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. And I think they'd be really good. Actually, I love pickled beets on a green salad. So, I think they would be fabulous like in a green salad sliced or diced up and throw it on there. So, yeah. Now, I have not done any type of dehydrating with eggs yet. I actually have a freeze dryer coming but I don't have it set up yet. So have you done any type of dehydrating work with eggs at all?

Lisa Steele: I haven't. No, I don't have a dehydrator or anything. Because again, I feel like when I want to save my eggs, I'm specifically usually saving them for holiday baking. So I need to be saving those eggs in a form that I can then bake with them which, like you, it's basically freezing them. And I'm not washing them and refrigerating them and just trying to save them as is. All the preserving methods seem to like changed the egg a little bit. So you can still eat them in a certain way but you're not baking cookies with them, which is basically when I'm cursing my chicken for not laying eggs at Christmas.

Melissa Norris: Yes. Yeah, Christmas is the time when I'm eating... Yes, that's when I go through the absolute most eggs is at Christmas time. And so I always feel like if I can get through past the Christmas baking and still have some of my own eggs left in the fridge, I feel like it is a major victory. In fact, that's been my goal. Last year I did it. Part of it was because I had frozen enough eggs the correct way to be able to use that. But it was the first baking season that I made it through without having to buy any eggs from the store. And it felt like such a major one. I was so proud of myself. Yeah.

Lisa Steele: Yeah, I refuse to buy eggs. I mean, I have to resort to stones and shortbreads. When I run out of eggs, I'm like, "Okay, everyone's getting shortbread," because that's the only recipe I have that doesn't use eggs, which is good. And it's good to have some, and then pies. You can always bake like berry pies without eggs. So you have to have your non-egg dessert round up as well. And then we just eat oatmeal for the rest of the winter until the chickens start laying again. So, I treat then like a seasonal crop. When we have tomatoes in the summer, I just eat tomato sandwiches every day for lunch. When we have a lot of eggs, we eat a lot of eggs. When we don't have a lot of eggs, we eat oatmeal.

Melissa Norris: Yes. And I love that thinking of them as a seasonal crop and trying to use them in that manner. And I've noticed, too, with a lot of foods that when I do treat them as very seasonal that it feels like they're that much more special. And that when I actually get to have that dish, because I can't just have it any time of the year, that it just tastes that much better.

Lisa Steele: Yeah. Maybe it's just me but I feel like the seasonal foods like new potatoes and asparagus and lemon, like things that come due at the same time sort of seem to go together, too. So you got your crop and you look at it like and you got your green salad season where you've got your tomatoes and all your leafy greens and this and that. And in the fall, you've got the other things that you leave on the ground but a little bit longer like your parsnips or your Brussels sprouts and kale and all that, and that's what you feel like eating at that time of year. I don't really feel like eating, whatever, in the different... I love the season, let's put it that way. I love knowing that, because the seasons match up to the food of the season and the holidays and what's coming being ripe or abundant at that time. I don't know. It just feels right, like you said, to eat what you shouldn't be eating during the right season.

Melissa Norris: Yes. And I think, too, as a gardener and a homesteader, I think that we're more attuned to that. And it's actually a really special way in comparison to if you are just going and buying stuff at the grocery store where you really do have the ability. I mean, most of us live in a day and time where we can almost get any ingredient that we want from the grocery store any time of year. It might not be the best flavor, best as it is when it's grown locally, but you can technically almost get anything that you want all year round.

Lisa Steele: It does make a difference, because if you're trying to make strawberry shortcake and it's not really strawberry season, they're not going [inaudible 00:37:48]. Actually, we grow rhubarb and I love making strawberry rhubarb pies. And I always freeze some rhubarb because we just get so much that like by the end I'm just harvesting it like crazy. And that rhubarb just sits in the freezer because I have no desire to make a strawberry rhubarb pie in the middle of winter. It's like I only want to make it when it's rhubarb season. And so now, everything that's in the freezer, it'll probably just end up compost because our rhubarb is coming up again, now I want to think about making pies with my fresh rhubarb. So preserving and all that, great, obviously, but I prefer more to just eat in the season. So we eat a lot of squash, we eat a lot of that kind of stuff in the winter when we don't have the fresh stuff out of the garden.

Melissa Norris: Yeah, I got to do a mixture. Definitely, I preserve and put up like the rhubarb and I do different pie fillings and stuff. But there is something special about eating what is in season at that time. And I tend to eat more of it at that time than I do other times, but I will make a strawberry rhubarb. Especially around the holidays, I love to pull out and to do some of those things then. But you're right, on the strawberries, for years, I would... And even when it's supposedly in season, like you'd see the very first strawberries would come up. We live in Washington State and so you'd see the very first strawberries start to come out on the store shelves and they would be from California.

Melissa Norris: And they would be sending them up and they would look gorgeously beautiful strawberries. And so every spring I would do this, I would buy them because then the local berries were on yet and I'm like, "Oh, I want strawberries." And every single year, I don't care how much sugar I will put on them, they're just flavorless. And so I finally learned my lesson. It took me, again, that stubborn feature. It took me a little bit. But, I mean, now I have my own strawberries so I don't even bother. But yeah, it's such a disappointment oftentimes on the flavor when you're not getting it in season, honestly. Yeah.

Lisa Steele: Yeah. Yeah, and local, I mean local makes such a big difference. Our grocery store actually put signs on the different produce to let us know if it's been grown by a local farm, which I absolutely love because I want to eat a cucumber that was grown in Maine, not like some foreign country and shipped here on a boat, because I know it's going to be fresher and all that.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. Yeah, so much more flavor. But we've been talking a lot about obviously preserving the eggs in different methods so that we have them available to actually bake and cook with. And I know that you do a lot of that because I have seen on Instagram where you have been sharing a lot of your recipes and whatnot that you've been working on, because you are working on an actual egg cookbook. Am I right?

Lisa Steele: You are right. I am. Yes. Like you, I'm a type A and I get bored really quickly. And I don't know if I would have survived COVID if I hadn't been working on his book. Because being stuck at home with nowhere to go, it gave me something to focus on something positive. And I have just had a blast, recipe testing and narrowing down and coming up with 100 or so egg recipes to be included in the book. I'm just so excited about it.

Melissa Norris: Yeah, which is really great because I have to say, too, at the springtime at the time that we're recording this, when I do have this egg glut, I am looking at some ways like, okay, so how can I preserve some of these to take me through into fall? But on the other hand, I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got so many eggs and I have like my standby recipes, but I'm like, I need some new recipes that feature using eggs because I need to use these babies up. So, I think it's really cool that you're going to have an entire cookbook and egg is a feature in all of the recipes.

Lisa Steele: It's funny because when I was pitching the book, I hired an agent and pitched to him and he loved the idea. And then he started pitching to the publishing houses and a few of them said, "Well, can you come up with 100-egg recipes?" I was like, "Are you kidding me?" I have folders and folders of my mom. Because we have the chickens, she, I swear, saved every recipe she sees in a magazine that uses eggs. And she mails them to me periodically.

Melissa Norris: Oh, how sweet.

Lisa Steele: So, I have so many recipes. And she'll put a little note on it like, this looks interesting, or whatever. Oh yeah, I had no problem. In fact, I had to cut down on the number of recipes. It's sweet and savory, which I love because eggs are one of the few ingredients that really do lend themselves to both sweet and savory. And eggs are almost even like two different ingredients, because a yolk is going to be used completely different than a white. Sometimes you use the whole egg, sometimes you just use the yolk, sometimes you just use the white for different reasons because of their different properties and what they do in a recipe, which I think is so cool. And you being geeky like that, like all these little egg facts and things that I find so fascinating, just the science of the egg and what's inside the egg and all the different things, I find it fascinating and I hope other people do, too.

Melissa Norris: Yeah, I think if you're a homesteader or chicken keeper that you do. In fact, I think homesteading in general, I think that you have a quest for knowledge and learning things that is never satisfied. Because that's one of the reasons that you start looking like if you want to do things yourself, I think you have to have a love of learning or you're not going to last very long, I should say, if you don't. So yeah, I'm really excited. So the book doesn't cut out for a little bit yet, though, right? When does it actually release?

Lisa Steele: Yes, it's kind of February 15th, 2022, which sounds like forever but it's less than a year now, which is very exciting. We're getting there.

Melissa Norris: Yes, it is less than a year. And it's so funny, I love that you have the exact date, too, that it's not February 2020. It's February 15. Yeah, we're very much alike.

Lisa Steele: Well, book release days are always on Tuesdays. So, a book can only come out on a Tuesday. So it's going to be the day after Valentine's Day. And I think it's perfect timing, because it'll be spring when everybody just starts getting lots of eggs and starts wondering and all the new chicken keepers from last year from this year, probably the first time in their lives they've had too many eggs than they know what to do with. So, it's been such a different experience I'm writing my chicken books. I just really enjoyed it, let's put it that way.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. Well, I'm really excited. I can't wait till it comes out. Because like I said, I'm always on the look for... I never have enough egg recipes, it feels like. Especially good egg recipes, because that's one of the things that the internet is a wonderful in the aspect that we have everything at our fingertips, but it is the discerning part and being able to find reliable things is where it can get a little bit hard. So yeah, I'm very much looking forward to the book coming out.

Lisa Steele: Yeah, I agree with you. I've been disappointed with so many recipes. I've just grabbed random sources on the internet. And it's discouraging because ingredients cost money, and then you don't have dinner or your dessert or whatever. So, I mean, the amount of testing and editing and now we're in the photo process. And I was in Connecticut last week. I'm going back again next week and they're taking all the photos for the book and just to see someone else make my recipe and then have them just like played it beautifully and garnish it, and I'm like, "Is that really my recipe?" I mean, they just look so beautiful and so delicious, and I'm getting excited about them. And I've made them a million times.

Melissa Norris: Yes. Food photography is an art all on its own. And it is really amazing on what they can do just knowing how, like you said, the presentation like how to play it like you know it's good. But especially when it's in like a cookbook format where someone's not walking into your home and they don't get the benefit of getting to smell it, all they're able to do is use their eyes as the sense and having that photographed by someone who really knows what they're doing. And I like to think that I'm an okay food photographer. But then when I see someone who that is like their real profession do it, I'm I like, "Oh yeah, they're way better than me."

Lisa Steele: All right. It's kind of embarrassing. Because just to organize myself, I have folders on my computer and when I finish each recipe, I put it in there and I'd snap a picture just for myself so I could see how the chapters were laying out or how things looked, and remind myself of what each recipe actually was. And they printed them out and they put them up. At the start of each day, they would put up the 8 or 10 recipes that we were going to be making that day, my photos of them like big on the fridge.

Melissa Norris: Oh gosh.

Lisa Steele: And then they would do their version and I would compare and be like, oh my goodness. Like you, I thought I was a fairly decent photographer, like I wasn't just snapping the gross picture, like I had a background, my pretty towel, like I tried to pretend I was a good photographer, good stylist.

Melissa Norris: Yes, yes.

Lisa Steele: No, no, no, no. And this team has worked with Ina Garten. They've worked with Giada, Rachael Ray, Oprah, Mario Batali. They've done cookbooks for all of them. So I was really intimidated, because, like they're taking my recipes and making them and I had nightmares like leading up to the photoshoot that none of the recipes worked. I'm like, what the heck was I going to do if they just made recipe of the recipe and none of them were working and it was just awful? But so far, we've gone through 38 recipes and every single one has been great. So I'm like, that's a relief.

Melissa Norris: Oh, yeah. When you've done a cookbook and neither of us are trained professional chefs or bakers or nothing, I mean, we're just-

Lisa Steele: People who have a lot of eggs.

Melissa Norris: Yeah, we have a lot of eggs and we like to cook from scratch. And I like to eat good, I like to eat food that tastes good. I'll be real, I love the health benefits of home grown and home raised and, yeah, and all of that, but I'm a foodie at heart. I just want to eat food that tastes good and it's also good for me. But it is when you have a cookbook and it comes out, I totally understand what you're saying, because even when my book, The Made-from-Scratch-Life, and Hand Made came out, even though I had tested the recipes multiple times in different ways and all these things, knowing that other people are making them you do, you have this fear, like, "What if they don't turn out well for them?"

Melissa Norris: And so I totally understand where you're coming from. And it's such a relief when you start getting feedback, like you're visibly getting to see it by these people who have done recipes by all of these famous chefs and whatnot, and then readers start to be like, "Oh, I made it. Look at this. I love this. It's our new family favorite," like, yeah, it's an odd feeling but it's such a good one. But there is that fear in the beginning.

Lisa Steele: Nerve-racking. I was really, really terrified. And a lot of things are made in advanced. So like I have whoopie pies in there, they had made whoopie pies like four days before they made the fillings. So by the time they actually made them and took the photo, it was all stale and we couldn't eat them. But a lot of things were made on the spot and photographed and people were standing around waiting wanting a bite of whatever it was that looked so good. And I was just like, "Oh my god, this is amazing." I mean, it's just such a great, great feeling. And I mean, I'm sure, as we all know, there's going to be the people who were like subbed in brown rice for white and I didn't cook it as long and I didn't have cilantro so I use parsley, and I only made two servings instead of four and the recipe was awful and didn't work. And I'll be like, well, okay.

Melissa Norris: Yeah.

Lisa Steele: But hopefully, those will be few and far between and people will start making them and taking pictures, and then it'll just be kind of surreal.

Melissa Norris: Yeah. It was very exciting. Recipes and cooking when you make things from scratch, I feel like food connects us in a way as a culture and just with friends and family and just even people that you don't even meet or know beforehand. But when you share food together or prepare food together, there's a connection that just crosses all boundaries that's really special. So yeah, so anyways, we've geeked out quite a bit on a lot of things all around eggs today and recipes.

Melissa Norris: But, yeah, I'm really excited for your book to come out. And I think that's great. So thank you so much for coming on today, Lisa. Where is the best place, because we are waiting for the book to come out obviously, but for now if people are interested in checking out where's the best place for them to connect and follow up with you.

Lisa Steele: Sure. Yeah, my blog fresheggsdaily.com, and then I'm on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Fresh Egg Daily. My book isn't even available for preorder yet. It obviously will be eventually. But there is a tab on the top of my blog where you can sign up for updates. I will actually be sharing some behind-the-scene photos and videos and stuff that I took, because I think that's fun for people to see how something all comes together. But as far as all the chicken content and all the egg information and all that, fresheggsdaily.com.

Melissa Norris: Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And I can't wait to see how the rest of the cookbook story evolves and to have it in my hand. So thank you.

Lisa Steele: Thank you, Melissa. You will definitely get a copy. You're on my list.

Melissa Norris: Okay, I was hoping. I'm like, if I lay it out then maybe she'll say that. It works.

Lisa Steele: Of course. Maybe we could even do like some kind of live cooking together or something when it comes out. That would be fun.

Melissa Norris: Oh, that would be really fun. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay. Well, thank you so much.

Lisa Steele: Thanks, Melissa.

Melissa Norris: Well, I really hope that you enjoyed that interview with Lisa. And for the verse of the week, I thought this one was very appropriate. So I always mispronounce this one, too. Hopefully, I'm not the only one who must pronounce these words in the Bible. Ecclesiastes 11:2, the verse say invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight, you do not know what disaster may come up on the land. Now, that's the NIV translation. What's really interesting is there is another translation that actually says, do not put all of your eggs in one basket, which I thought was very appropriate when I was looking at some of the different translations and wanted to share that with you.

Melissa Norris: But not only as far as our egg preservation goes, right, having multiple ways to preserve that, that is something that I tried to do with not only our food, so in all the different methods for Home Food Preservation not relying on just one but also as far as our finances go and with my business and looking at what we're doing and different ways that we can bring in income, diversification I think is a very good thing in many, many instances. And so, I felt that that was a really inappropriate verse. And it's something that I am continuing to look in ways that we can continue to do that on our homestead.

Melissa Norris: We originally were just raising our grass-fed organic beef. And about every other year, we do pork. So we have our laying hens, of course for eggs, and then we raised meat birds for ourselves. But meat birds were never something that we had raised for sale for anybody else in our community. And so, that is something that we are now doing and it's even made me look at other things in areas of our homestead that we can do this with and apply it to, not just income based but also just the food that we're producing for ourselves and as well as for others.

Melissa Norris: So, that was my verse for the week. I hope it gives you some food for thought and some ideas to look at that and apply it to your own life. And if you did not head on over and check out the preserving eggs class from our sponsor, which is at melissaknorris.com/eggs. And then for any of this stuff that Lisa and I mentioned for the written blog post, you can grab that at melissaknorris.com/301 and that's the number 310 because this is episode number 310.

Melissa Norris: Well, I want to thank you guys so much for joining me on this episode. And I can't wait to be here back here with you next week because we've got another really amazing episode coming your way. And it gets us growing more food in the garden in a unique way that I have not actually used before. So I'm really excited to break that down. How's that for a teaser? I'll meet you back here next week. Blessings and mason jars for now, my friend.