How To Tell If Eggs Are Bad: 5 Easy Ways To Check

3. The Shake By Your Ear Test

Someone shaking an egg

Johanna Silver for LittleThings

This method falls in line with the method mentioned above.

Step 1: Hold an egg up to your ear and shake it.

Step 2: Listen carefully. If you can hear a sloshing sound inside the egg, it’s probably gone bad. If you hear nothing, it is likely to be fine to eat.

4. The Crack and Sniff Method

Someone cracking an egg

You have likely cracked an egg into a pan and noticed that it looks different than normal. Usually, we go right on cooking hoping that we are not contaminating our system with egg-borne bacteria. Here’s a way to avoid that:

Step One: Crack an egg onto a flat surface.

Step Two: Observe the egg. If it’s fresh, the yolk should be bright yellow or orange, and the white shouldn’t spread much. If the egg is old, the yolk will be flatter, and the white will be much runnier.

If the yolk is flatter and runnier, you should then smell the egg. Eggs should have no smell at all. You might not want to fry up this egg, but the remaining eggs in the container can be hard-boiled.

5. The Flashlight Test

Someone holding a flashlight under an egg

To me, this seems more like a fun experiment to do with your kids, rather than a kitchen hack, but it’s worth a try regardless. Believe it or not, a flashlight can be used to determine the freshness of a regular egg or to assess the development of the chick in a fertilized egg. Since you are likely not researching fetal egg development if you are reading this article, only use this method at home to see if your eggs are bad.

Step One: Go into a dark room with your flashlight. In the past, candles were used, but it’s more practical to use a small flashlight or reading light.

Step Two: Hold the flashlight up to the large end of the egg. Tilt the egg, and turn it quickly from left to right. If done correctly, the contents of the egg should be illuminated.

Step Three: Study the contents of the egg. This allows you to see whether the egg’s air cell is small or large. According to The University of Florida, “in a very fresh egg, the air cell should be thinner than 1/8 inch, or 3.175 mm. As the egg ages, gasses replace water lost through evaporation, and the air pocket will get larger.”

It’s very likely that millions of perfectly edible eggs go to waste each year. A lack of knowledge about how to tell when an egg has gone bad leads many people to throw out their eggs. Of course, even if your egg passes all of these tests, it still needs to be thoroughly cooked before consumption. Some eggs contain bacteria that cause food-borne illnesses, such as salmonella. Salmonella can be present even if your egg looks and smells totally normal, so always cook them properly.

If you plan to use these methods to check if your eggs have gone bad, make sure to SHARE them with anyone who could use a few tips!

Sourrce: littlethings.com/how-to-tell-if-eggs-are-bad/