How to Check If Your Eggs Are Fresh

When Good Eggs Go Bad...

Eggs are delicious, nutritious and are called for in many of the recipes we enjoy. Not only are they great for eating but you can also do many things with their shells like making art or even using them for a planter!

Before we begin any meal or project involving them, we need to make sure our eggs are still good because spoiled eggs can suddenly explode and become a huge, gross and smelly mess and eating bad eggs could even make you sick.

Sometimes, we are not sure if an egg is still good to eat and might throw it out to stay on the safe side. Here are several ways that you can check if your eggs are still good so we can help to reduce our food waste and hopefully eliminate the risk of getting ill from eggs!

• Eggs
• Bowl (optional)
• Flashlight (optional)

Check them out - do you see any cracks or thin/warped shells? If you do, it could have accelerated the time it takes for the egg to go bad because the cracks and thin shells are no longer protecting the inner contents of the egg.

Tip: Some eggs become mostly see through when you shine a flashlight behind them. Then, you can easily see any damage or deformities!

Did you know if you submerge an egg that has gone bad under water that it will rise to the surface and float? This happens because gross gas starts to form inside the egg which causes it to rise.

An egg without this gas should lay on its side at the bottom and an egg that should still be okay to eat but should be eaten soon will be still touching the bottom but will be starting to lift off its side.

Please keep in mind that this is not 100% guaranteed because sometimes the gas in the egg hasn't built up enough to make the it float and sometimes the gas has already escaped out of a tiny crack in the shell.

As I explain in the following steps, it's best to also visually inspect your egg/shells and observe its smell after you crack it open but this floating method will help you sort out any bad eggs without even having to open them up!

After you crack the shell open, you should give it a sniff. If it smells awful then it has spoiled. If it has almost no smell then it is likely fresh enough to eat.

Even if it smells fine, make sure it doesn't have unusual colors like black or green. The clear part of the egg can be tinged yellow and the yolks will vary from pale yellow to a rich orange depending on the lifestyle of the chicken who created it - free range chickens get more nutrition than caged or barn birds and usually their eggs have richer looking, darker orange yolks. This is because they have access to food like grass and bugs.

Sometimes healthy chickens that lay perfectly fine eggs will leave small spots in them. These can be removed with a fork although they are also safe to eat.

Tip: If you're adding eggs to a mixing bowl with other ingredients, a good tip may be to use a small bowl as a first stop for your eggs. After you crack them open and put the contents in the small bowl, you can look at and smell them to make sure there are no signs of it being rotten. This will save you from possibly adding a spoiled egg to your good ingredients that are already in your mixing bowl!

If your egg didn't have cracks or a warped shell, didn't float, didn't stink and is normal in color then it passed this "egg-xam" and it's probably still fresh so go ahead and enjoy it!