Guess the riddle: “White barrel, not a knot in it.” Of course it's an egg. It can be much more difficult to guess what is in that chicken “barrel” - a fragrant yolk with white or something foul-smelling. How can you determine for sure the freshness of a chicken egg? We will not only tell you how to check the suitability of products, but also reveal the secrets of determining their age.

Since most often, especially in the city, chicken eggs“hanging out” in the store, we go there. We go to specialized display cases and take a closer look at the labeling. It shows the “life span after birth” intended for the product and its weight.

The shortest shelf life for eggs marked with the letter “D” is a maximum of 7 days. You can, hoping that the birds at the poultry farm are healthy, even eat them raw. The well-known letter “C” on the shell or packaging means that such specimens can “live” for no more than 25 days from the date of production. By the way, the day such a product is born is not included in its shelf life.

Returning from shopping trips, a modern person, of course, goes straight to the refrigerator. That's right, where else to store chicken eggs! You can store fragile purchases not only in special compartments located on the doors. Other secluded places, such as vegetable drawers, are also suitable for storage.

But the most the best option for a long stay this irreplaceable product– first from freezer shelf. Here, in store packaging or plastic containers, the dietary gifts of laying hens can last up to three to four months. But the temperature should not exceed 1-2 degrees Celsius.

Our traditional advice for dear pedants is that you don’t need to put the tray in the freezer. Eggs don't like frost! You should also not wash them, so as not to damage their protective shell.

But usually there is no need for such a long stay of a product beloved by many - two to three weeks is enough. In this case, the temperature may be higher, up to 10 degrees Celsius. That is, a refrigerator door will also do.

Just make sure that the eggs are kept away from foods that emit a strong odor. The shell seems to be a reliable barrier to their contents only at first glance. In fact, it has a porous structure and allows aromas to pass through perfectly. You don't want to feed your guests scrambled eggs that smell like... smoked fish or raw meat!

If you have your own poultry house, and the product count amounts to tens, or even hundreds, then they can easily spend 4-5 months in a cool room. But the temperature must be kept strictly within 10 degrees Celsius. Air humidity also plays a significant role. It is believed that to comply with the specified shelf life, humidity should be in the range of 60-80%.

Folk tricks

Over the centuries of chicken breeding, people have accumulated many tricks with which the shelf life of freshly laid eggs can be increased. They are available to everyone and involve a kind of conservation of this strategic reserve. Then the shelf life of the product increases to 6 months.

So, it will help to increase shelf life:

• lubricating the shell with fat, such as pork, petroleum jelly or vegetable oil;
• wrapping in paper, placing in a box with sharp ends down, covered with burlap;
• generously, over large distances, pouring dry and clean sand, salt, ash, oats, millet into the box.

Important! In all of the above cases, the product must be in a dry and very cool (remember the maximum is +10 degrees) room.

How can you tell if an egg is fresh?

After you put your purchase in the refrigerator, doubts began to overcome you - is the laying hen food fresh? A couple of them are so unsightly... Don't worry! You can check the suitability of chicken eggs at home. We will tell you about them now.

We put it in the water

The first and perhaps most famous way to check the suitability is by immersing eggs in water.

1. Prepare the floor liter jar with water, in which, for the accuracy of the experiment, you can dissolve a tablespoon of kitchen salt.
2. Remove the tray from the refrigerator and place one whole egg in its shell into the jar one at a time.
3. If they immediately fall to the bottom and don’t try to rise, calm down: you really got fresh ones. Such products are no more than a week old.

How to do this correctly, watch the video from the ShowSteps channel.

Everything is fine with freshness, too, if some strive to slightly lift up their blunt end - the one with an air cushion. This means that the hen laid them 7-10 days ago. However, if some manage to float to the surface of the water, you have a reason to worry about their freshness. These, indeed, have an expiration date, and they are already 13-17 days old.

But when one of the eggs pops out of the water blunt end, know: it has been in this world for three or four weeks already. If in doubt, we’ll open another one for you. secret way additionally check the suitability of eggs that like to float on the surface of the water by lifting the blunt end. Pour water, without salt, into a jar and place the questionable eggs in it. Do they still float? Then, gritting your teeth, throw them into the trash bin: their days of freshness are long gone.

Inspection and smell check

In order not to be upset at home after checking the eggs, you can determine their freshness in the store. To do this, you need to take a good look at the shell of the batch you like. If it is matte and seems a little rough in appearance, the eggs are very fresh. Options with shiny and smooth shells - more than a week. Be careful! Sellers sometimes mix fresh specimens with “older” ones, and then it is difficult to determine their age by eye!

There, in the store, you can smell the goods. With fresh ones you will hear a pleasant “chicken” aroma, with old ones you will smell rotten, musty or even stinky. We hope you won't buy these.

Shaking

In such cases, take the suspicious specimen tightly in your hand and shake it! If something dangles inside, it means its freshness is only on paper. Better look for another tray! U fresh product There should be homogeneous contents inside.

Checking Contents

The next method to check the suitability of eggs is homemade. We put a couple of plates on the table and break suspicious specimens into them. If the yolk immediately bursts, large bloody lumps are noticeable in it, or the white spreads along the bottom in a thin, uniform puddle, you have a good reason to suspect this.

The freshness of the product will be indicated by a dense, elastic yolk that remains intact on the plate. The protein of such a product has two layers - denser and thinner. And, of course, he publishes nice smell, which an experienced housewife will not confuse with anything. The white of a fresh egg should be transparent without any inclusions.

Checking for clearance

The fifth way to determine freshness is to hold the egg up to the light. If it is fresh, you will not see dark inclusions in it, it is transparent. The bad has darkening. We recommend that our respected pedants carry out a test using an ultraviolet lamp. Fresh eggs will delight you with a bright red color, the “sufferers” will turn out to be purple.

Cooking

This method is well known for experienced housewives. Boil the eggs and start peeling them. Fresh ones are difficult to clean, but it’s very easy to remove the shells from stale ones, or you have to remove them in small pieces.

After checking the freshness of the eggs brought from the store, feel free to prepare your favorite dishes from them. Just remember that you can store them in the refrigerator for no more than a month. Bon appetit!

All housewives strive to choose only best products for your family. They carefully examine the vegetables so that there are no “hints” of rotting or nitrates on them, they very carefully select meat for any dish and thoroughly study the composition of a particular product.

Unfortunately, many people do not pay attention to the freshness and shelf life of eggs. Some have never thought about it, some trust the manufacturer too much, and others want to check, but don’t know how. So how do you know if eggs are fresh?

The shelf life of a chicken egg is twenty five days. They store equally well in the refrigerator or in room temperature. An excellent remedy for storage is a solution of ordinary table salt. The thing is that salt can act as a preservative. Thus, food products in a salt solution can be stored for up to four weeks. Not a bad time, isn't it? Few people know, but storing this product in the refrigerator on the door shelf is not the best option. Constant movement, temperature changes - no good conditions. So, it is better to store them in the vegetable compartment.

How to check the freshness of eggs at home

There are several ways to check the freshness of chicken eggs at home. The most famous and one of the simplest is the water test.

How to check an egg for freshness in water

This method based on structure eggshells: it is riddled with millions of tiny pores. Air passes through these pores. And it creates the effect of an inflatable ring that prevents you from drowning.

The way to check for freshness is as follows. You need to pour water into any container (preferably transparent) and lower the “object” into it. If, when diving, it touches the bottom sideways, then it is “ideally” fresh, but if it does not touch the bottom, but is close to it, then the product can still be consumed, but it can no longer boast of particular freshness, but when the “object” being tested floats to the surface, then it is better to throw it away. This speaks of depravity.

Checking eggs for freshness by ear

This is another way to test a chicken egg without breaking it. Sometimes sounds can say a lot more about an object than it seems at first glance. To determine freshness, you need to bring it to your ear and shake slightly. If there are no sounds, then the product is fresh.

This unusual method is based on the laws of chemistry and physics. Over time, more and more oxygen passes through the shell, which causes squeezing the white and yolk. Therefore, in a spoiled product they will float freely, making sounds when shaken.

How to check the freshness of a broken egg

It is already known how to check the freshness of eggs in water and by ear. Now it's time to talk about how you can determine the quality of this product by its internal contents.

If the room is well lit and the sun's rays (or a bright lamp) fall into it, then it is enough to look at the whole “object”, turning it towards the light source. If it's clear through the shell the yolk is visible, located approximately in the middle, then such a product is safe for consumption.

One more in a simple way determining the freshness of eggs is smell check. A spoiled product emits an unpleasant and rather pungent odor of sulfur. Sometimes you can feel it without even breaking it.

Boiled eggs

Determining freshness in this case can be a little more difficult. There are several ways here too.

This makes it very easy to determine how fresh the product is. There are a huge variety of ways to suit “every taste”. The simplest and most reliable method checking eggs for freshness in water is considered. It all depends on the position of the product being tested. The closer it is to the bottom, the fresher it is. Another very simple way is to check in the light. If the yolk is clearly visible and located in the middle, then the quality is good. Determining the freshness of a cooked product may cause some difficulties. The easiest way here is to determine freshness by smell. The spoiled product has a sharp unpleasant smell sulfur. Shelf life of a regular chicken egg normal conditions— 25 days.

You can be confident in the freshness of chicken eggs only when you have your own chicken coop with laying hens. Otherwise, we can only take the word of a conscientious seller or check the freshness of the eggs ourselves.

How to determine the freshness of eggs is a question we often ask ourselves when buying chicken eggs in stores or at the market. After all, we cannot always see or find out the exact date of freshness of a given product. Of course, before purchasing, you should always carefully inspect each egg so that it is not damaged or dirty. The egg should have a matte surface. You can also determine freshness by sound, so to speak, if you shake a chicken egg a little, bring it closer to your ear, and in your hand you will hear as if something is turning over inside it, dangling, and so, a good chicken egg will not create such sounds.

You bought chicken eggs, brought them home, but doubts about their freshness remain. There is another way to check eggs for freshness at home using cold water.

To do this, we need a large glass or other container in which it will be convenient to carry out this check. Cold water. You also need salt, just a heaping teaspoon and, of course, the chicken eggs themselves.

Pour into a wide glass cold water about 3⁄4 high, add salt

Stir well until the salt is completely dissolved.

Place a tablespoon into a glass of water, slowly and carefully so as not to break the egg.

Now let's look carefully at the result. good, really fresh the freshest egg will remain at the bottom. This egg can be safely used in food, creams, salads, etc.

If the egg floats to the top, then only one thing can be said - it is very, very stale and its place is in the trash.

There is also an intermediate option, this is when the egg has sunk to the bottom, but has slightly risen at an obtuse angle upward; this will mean that the egg is of medium freshness and can be eaten, but only it must undergo heat treatment.

That's the whole experiment. Now you know how to check the freshness of eggs and I hope that you will always come across only fresh and high-quality chicken eggs.

Before you buy eggs, you need to inspect the product - its good quality can be determined by appearance. Fresh chicken eggs have a matte surface, but over time they become glossy. The higher the shine, the older the product. It is useful to pay attention to the uniformity of color of just a dozen in cells - one batch should look the same if no extraneous (stale) units are inserted into it. You can also make sure that the eggs are of good quality by shaking them. long-term storage the contents dry out and begin to vibrate inside.

But in a hurry, it is not always possible to check the quality. At home, you can check eggs for freshness without breaking them. This will allow you to return an unusable product to an unscrupulous seller.

Methods for determining freshness

All methods for checking eggs for freshness can be divided into the following categories:

• visual - by markings on the product, the condition of the shell and the smell;
• technical - using devices or meters;
• test - placing the egg in a certain environment and observing.

All of these methods allow you to determine the quality of a product without opening its shell, that is, they are non-destructive. They are quite simple to implement and available for use at home.

Folk recipes

First you need to look at the manufacturing date, as well as the expiration date on the packaging. To determine the quality of the product visually, you need to examine the shells of raw eggs. The surface of fresh ones will be matte and rough, while stale ones will be smooth with a glossy sheen, as well as a bluish tint if they are white. Next, you need to smell the product - for one day it smells like lime, and over time the aromas of surrounding objects become mixed in.

You can check eggs for freshness using test methods using certain manipulations. Here are some of them:

1. 1. Load a raw egg into water is a well-known and reliable test way to determine its age. To do this, fill a glass or other container with water to a height of 10 cm from the bottom and lower the test object into the liquid: it drowned - it was fresh, it remained afloat, which means it was stored for more than a month, spoiled, and it is dangerous to eat it. The air chamber located inside tends to increase during long-term storage, therefore, in a submerged position, the egg can be at different levels, by which you can determine the degree of its freshness. A week old product lies at the bottom, a two week old product is approximately in the middle.
2. 2. Squeeze the product - you will feel a slight vibration of the contents, then shake. A fresh egg will not react to this in any way, and distinct fluctuations indicate that the product should not be used for food.
3. 3. Rotating the product on the table to determine whether it is cooked or raw is a method known to many. It is also used for research quality characteristics. A fresh egg spins with difficulty, very sluggishly. Old objects behave almost like they were boiled.

There are other ways to check eggs for freshness, but this time compromising their integrity. The shell of fresh products is hard and hard, it is difficult to peel off a cooked product, and with age it softens. Having broken a raw egg, they examine the smell and contents - the fresh product has no aroma. If there is an odor, the food has spoiled. The stench indicates that this happened a long time ago. Transparent, jelly-like white does not spread over the surface, the yolk is elastic and rises above the white - signs of freshness.

Technical methods

Instrumental determinants of egg quality include the ovoscope, special equipment with ultraviolet radiation, weighing devices and conventional electric lamps. Except for the scales, everything else technical means provide illumination of the object by light rays (including solar rays).

By purchasing eggs, we are essentially buying a pig in a poke. After all, the stamps on the packaging do not always correspond to reality, and on the market when selling home product and are completely absent.

If properly stored, eggs can remain edible for more than a month. But not always at poultry farms and points of sale of eggs necessary conditions are observed, thereby accelerating the spoilage of the product.

In order to verify the freshness of eggs or determine its degree, you can use a simple technique, which we will discuss below.

Checking eggs for freshness in water

You can easily and quickly determine the freshness of eggs using salted water.

Fresh eggs have practically no air inside, and the shell fits tightly to the membrane, so if you lower such an egg into a container with salted water, it will sink to the bottom and take a horizontal position.

During storage, air gradually penetrates through the pores of the eggshell, the membrane moves away from the shell, thereby increasing the air sac. The longer an egg is stored, the more air there is inside, which, if not properly stored and high temperature promotes the development of bacteria and rapid spoilage of the product. Such an egg, when lowered into water, will float on the surface.

Using water, you can not only check the freshness of eggs, but also determine its degree. By carrying out a simple test, you can find out whether the eggs you buy are suitable for poaching and dietary nutrition or they are only suitable for hard-boiling and adding to a salad.

Determining the freshness of eggs in a glass of water

1. For the first seven days, eggs are considered dietary and can be used to prepare poached eggs, scrambled eggs, biscuits, as well as various desserts and other dishes where the freshness of the product is important. If an egg, immersed in a glass of water, sinks to the very bottom and takes a horizontal position, it is undoubtedly fresh and can be used for any dish.
2. Eggs that have been fresh for a week or two will float a little with the blunt end up, but the sharp end will still touch the bottom. Such eggs can be hard-boiled and used for frying an omelet, but when preparing poached eggs, such an egg will simply scatter in the water. If you break a two-week old egg into a frying pan, the white will spread across the pan like a pancake and beautiful scrambled eggs will not work.
3. Eggs that are more than two weeks old, but are still edible, will take a vertical position in the center of the glass with the blunt end facing up. The sharp end no longer touches the bottom. Such eggs can only be used within ten minutes or more from the moment of boiling and used in salads or other dishes as needed. The advantage of such unusual freshness of eggs is that, unlike fresh ones, they are always perfectly cleaned.
4. If, during inspection, the egg floats to the surface of the water and takes a horizontal position, it is definitely spoiled, the process of decomposition has begun in it and it can no longer be used as food.

How to check the freshness of quail eggs in water?

The structure is the same as that of chicken, so you can check their freshness in water based on the information described above. Fresh eggs will sink to the bottom, and spoiled ones will float to the surface of the water in the glass.

Now you know how to find out the freshness of eggs in water and can determine it at any time at home. But in order to keep eggs fresh for as long as possible, you do not need to wash them before putting them in the refrigerator immediately after purchase. And it is better to check for freshness in water immediately before use. Upon contact with water, the protective shell that covers the pores is washed off from the eggs, which significantly reduces the shelf life of the product, since air begins to penetrate inside much faster.