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Dehydrating Eggs at Home (2015)
- Lunatic666 7y agoI was very sure (correct me if I'm wrong) that salmonella are only on the egg shell and could probably be decontaminated by dropping them in boiling water for a few seconds without denaturating the egg white. I really like the surge in dyi/food realated articles on hacker news, keep them coming!
- Jackim 7y agoSalmonella can be inside eggs. "However, outbreaks of salmonellosis (an infection caused by Salmonella bacteria) still happen because Salmonella also silently infects the ovaries of healthy-looking hens, contaminating the eggs inside the chicken before the shells are even formed, according to FSIS. To curb this form of contamination, the egg industry regularly tests hens for the ovarian bacteria." https://www.livescience.com/10016-salmonella-eggs.html https://www.livescience.com/10016-salmonella-eggs.html
- el_benhameen 7y agoI have heard of people using sous vide to pasteurize both the shells and contents of eggs. This guy seems to have a pretty science-based process (see the "Pasteurized in Shell Egg" section): http://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Poultry_and_Eggs http://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Poultry_and_Eggs This is admittedly another piece of equipment to add to the process, but I suspect that the intersection of "people who own a dehydrator" and "people who own a sous vide machine" is pretty large.
- wheels 7y agoThe Food Lab has an article on sous vide eggs, including pasteurizing them with a sous vide circulator: https://www.seriouseats.com/2013/10/sous-vide-101-all-about-eggs.html https://www.seriouseats.com/2013/10/sous-vide-101-all-about-... Generally it's a great resource for nerdy cooking stuff. I use that technique to make my own mayonnaise. I try to eat mostly organic (or animal-welfare certified) animal products, but organic mayo is overly expensive, so making my own is a nice (and super easy) alternative. You can make a jar's worth for about 40 cents.
- MegaDeKay 7y agoI have pasteurized eggs this way many times. The white gets cloudy but the egg is essentially raw. These are just the thing for Negroni Flips [0] or Tamago Kake Gohan [1]. Douglas Baldwin is the man when it comes to Sous Vide and food safety. [0] https://food52.com/recipes/26068-negroni-flip https://food52.com/recipes/26068-negroni-flip [1] https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/04/tamago-kake-gohan-egg-rice-tkg-recipe-breakfast.html https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/04/tamago-kake-goha...
- edoo 7y ago"Despite the concerns in recent years about cholesterol and other issues" I grew up in the era where the egg lobby had billboards up saying it was OK to eat eggs once a week. This was after cholesterol and saturated fat was demonized after some docs found peoples arteries stuffed with it. It turned out to be fake science. My parents fed me poisonous partially hydrogenated margarine instead of butter because of that crap. They've recently discovered eating cholesterol is of no concern. You don't have to worry about it at all. Inflammation is the real concern. Saturated fats are the safest fats.
- jbd0 7y agoOxidized cholesterol, on the other hand, is not healthy. I would not eat dehydrated egg yolks.
- ebg13 7y agoThis line got to me. > I blended two fresh eggs with ¼ cup of water and pan-scrambled them. Is adding water to scrambled eggs really a thing that people do? Never in my life have I added water to fresh eggs before scrambling them.
- mcphage 7y agoI add milk, sometimes. Never water. It might make them fluffier? i.e., more moisture, that converts to steam?
- bsagdiyev 7y agoI add some milk to eggs when I scramble them, but never water. Not sure if that's weird.
- ksherlock 7y agoyes, some people add a bit of water or milk. In theory the water turns to steam helps make them fluffy, I believe.
- Uhhrrr 7y agoYeah, it's definitely a thing, and I put in a little milk myself. But 2oz does seem high.
- hoorayimhelping 7y agoyep, the water creates steam which cooks them more evenly and fluffily. The milk is for extra taste and texture. It's like using broth/stock to cook rice with rather than water.
- guessbest 7y agoI add water to make them a little fluffier. Also, water doesn't spoil overnight, so I can take them to work and have them at my desk after the commute. On the weekends I use bacon grease.
- greglindahl 7y agoIt's common in the US to add milk. The first person who showed me how to scramble eggs without adding milk said it was "the French way to scramble eggs". She was Romanian.
- MisterBastahrd 7y agoYou could always use a sous vide device to pasteurize eggs before dehydrating them. Crack them, mix them, throw them in a bag, and pasturize them for as long as is appropriate. Easy.
- 205guy 7y agoAnother way to preserve eggs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg I've never had the chance to try them, and they don't look appetizing, but now I'm kinda curious how they taste.
- downerending 7y agoPretty bad. The white ends up amber and rather leathery. My Chinese friend won't eat them.
- scruple 7y agoI don't like them either. My wife adds them to congee and I always fish out the black pieces when I make my bowl. There's just something about it that I can't get passed. It's a little bit goofy because there isn't much (pungent food) that I don't eat. I eat durian and love durian deserts and stinky tofu but I don't mess with these eggs, which are pretty tame comparatively.
- airstrike 7y agoThat looks... absolutely disgusting, and I considered myself a fairly adventurous eater coming into this thread Read through the article and found that it's served along with "Head cheese" on special occasions, so I clicked on that only to find out I'm certainly not as adventurous as I thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_cheese
- rad_gruchalski 7y agoThat head cheese thing is really delicious. It’s simply chunks of meat with veggie in a jelly. What can be disgusting about it? I do wonder though, when you say you consider yourself an adventurous eater, what are the things you’d eat to call yourself like that? Not trying to discredit anything, just generally curious.
- cnasc 7y agoThe texture was more unusual to me than the taste was. I expected something more like a hard boiled egg, but it was very rubbery and didn’t yield to the teeth as easily.
- imglorp 7y agoWhat about vacuum dehydration? It should be much faster than the other methods. Something like a pressure cooker and a vacuum pump shouldn't be too hard to rig up.
- symgryph 7y agoThey could have used a SOUSVIDE Water bath and pasteurized the eggs themselves. About six hours at 140 doesn’t damage the eggs too much.
- nazca 7y agoAnother fun option for preserving eggs: salt them. I've never used them in a recipe (not sure if they'd work). but they are delicious eaten like charcuterie. https://www.google.com/search?q=cured+egg+yolks&oq=cured+egg+yolks https://www.google.com/search?q=cured+egg+yolks&oq=cured+egg...
- RandallBrown 7y agoIf you ever watch Bon Apetit videos on YouTube, they have a series where they did a cured egg recipe. They grated it onto pasta. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp6F7jW5cmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp6F7jW5cmI I highly recommend the whole "It's Alive" series with Brad if you're into preserving your own food.
- hirundo 7y agoI like to make large batches of frittata in muffin pans, seal in vacuum bags and freeze. Defrost and nuke as needed. It's less flexible than just eggs, but a great low carb treat. They don't last long around here. Suddenly "egg bites" are a thing in supermarkets and Starbucks. These are a homemade version without the need for an expensive vacuum chamber.
- mrtweetyhack 7y agoYou can also sell eggs. It's a new concept.
- koolba 7y agoHow about using a sous vide on the powder vacuum sealed eggs after it’s dried? A long enough period at a lower temperature should kill any salmonella no?
- Reelin 7y agoAccording to this page (I didn't verify it myself), salmonella is quite difficult to dry sterilize. (https://www.foodsafety-experts.com/food-safety/salmonella-secrets/ https://www.foodsafety-experts.com/food-safety/salmonella-se...) > Salmonella is very difficult to kill when it is sitting in dry powders. Depending on the product you might need to get the product heated to temperatures above 150°C for at least 30 minutes to achieve a 6-log reduction if any Salmonella present in the product.
- Xcelerate 7y agoWow, this is news to me. I always assumed there were time-temperature curves for pasteurization & sterilization that applied to bacteria regardless of the medium the pathogens existed within. Food safety is actually pretty complex and often gives me hesitation when cooking sous vide (for instance, botulism spores from garlic can easily survive anaerobic sous vide conditions).
- Reelin 7y agoCould you instead sterilize the garlic before use? Moisture level generally has strong effects on microorganism survival. Another example is B. cereus spores (can be present in rice) which can remain viable in boiling water for extended periods and are even more heat resistant in dry environments. I was a bit surprised by the extremely high temperature claimed by the article linked in my previous comment. I'm still wondering if perhaps they accidentally swapped C and F in the units there, but I didn't have much luck tracking down a time-temperature survival curve for salmonella under dry conditions.
- greglindahl 7y agoBacteria are completely different when they are wet and when they are dry.
- anonu 7y agoThat was oddly a fun read. And I got a chuckle from the conclusion: So is it worthwhile to dehydrate eggs? From a cost standpoint, the answer is unequivocally “yes,” but only if you keep your own hens to begin with
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- pnut 7y agoThat statement really confused me. The cost difference between those two scenarios is the purchase price of the eggs, which are what, $2/dozen? How can such an immaterial expense provoke an unequivocal conclusion? And how can one ignore the cost of feeding & housing chickens vs just going to the store and purchasing eggs? Store-bought eggs are almost certainly cheaper in absolute terms.
- itronitron 7y agoMaybe a less time intensive approach for benefiting from an egg surplus is to feed the eggs to a pig.
- shalmanese 7y agoYou don't get to control output if you own your own hens. If you buy eggs and you have too many eggs, just stop buying eggs. If you own hens and you don't sell/give away eggs, there's no equivalent solution, thus preservation.
- stickfigure 7y agoI have a few hens roaming around my property and just picked up another dozen chicks yesterday. $2/dozen are eggs from chickens living in questionable circumstances. Pasture raised eggs are usually $6-12 per dozen. You can see the difference in the yolks - chickens that eat a monodiet of grain lay eggs with yellow yolks, chickens that eat bugs lay eggs with orange yolks. Aside from fresh eggs, it's nice to have chickens around because they keep the tick population down. The cost of feeding and housing is near zero, and with an automatic door they pretty much take care of themselves. Kids love them.
- mythrwy 7y agoDehydrated eggs used to be very inexpensive. I bought a case (6) big cans I think in like 2009 for I want to say around $100. Wow that has changed. I still have most of the case, not sure how long they last. I opened a can like 2 years ago and it had an oxygen absorber and was fine. I got them here. https://honeyville.com/ https://honeyville.com/ I highly recommend the 6 grain cereal, it's awesome. https://shop.honeyville.com/6-grain-rolled-cereal.html https://shop.honeyville.com/6-grain-rolled-cereal.html The dried eggs frankly were not as good. I think they were mostly yolks. They were good to bake with. For what it's worth chickens aren't that cheap to raise anyway. You need a coop and usually food. I'd rather just spend a little and avoid the hassle. The last batch of chickens I had never even made it to laying before they were all eaten by a fox or weasel or something. But free range chicken eggs are very tasty.
- mattmaroon 7y ago"Eggs dehydrate easily, and most online sources suggest keeping the eggs at 135° F to 145° F for about 10 hours. However this temperature is not sufficient to keep salmonella from forming during the dehydration process, because this leaves eggs in the food safety danger zone for too long." Umm, no. The food wouldn't be in the danger zone very long, and even if it were the following 9 hours would be more than enough to kill them.
- rootusrootus 7y agoYeah that's what I was thinking. 135F will kill salmonella in under an hour. From how it's worded in the article, I assume they're just ignorant of how pasteurization works at different temperatures so they're going by the over-simplified recommendation from FDA. I see this same misunderstanding happen periodically on the sous vide forums.
- mattmaroon 7y agoYeah. Probably lots of people who don't know what they're talking about said that and he just assumed they are correct. A thin layer of egg in what is essentially a convection oven is going to heat up very fast.
- ganafagol 7y agoShe