There are many ways to preserve eggs when you’re lucky enough to have a surplus of them, but in general, each one has its own weaknesses.
Pickling eggs when all your girls lay during the summer offers delicious and consistent results, but the cooking of the eggs and the heavy wrapping scent are not appropriate for many meals.
How can fresh, raw eggs be preserved?
An old preservation strategy, which may have gone wrong, but which many people remember carefully, is preserving eggs in isinglass. Extracted from the dried swim bladders of fish, isinglass is a form of collagen. This naturally occurring material coddles fresh eggs with a jello suspension to give a sheltering period of up to one year, and is used as a fining agent to clarify a brew.
Related: Can You Boil Eggs without Water?
It’s not even complicated. With a short list of ingredients and equipment, you can easily add isinglass preserving to your list of food prepping skills.
You’ll need:
- Fresh eggs, wiped over and not washed, shells intact.
- Isinglass (you can buy online or at a homebrew store)
- Deep sealable pot/jar/crock, washed thoroughly in soap and hot water
Method:
1. Shred/cut the isinglass and warm in a pan of water until completely dissolved.
Check the pack for quantities and work according to the instructions (they can vary).
Allow cooling.
2. Gently place your clean eggs, pointed end down if possible, into the crock. We’ve used a glass preserves jar for the purpose of this guide, but an opaque one is better for long-term storage.
3. Pour the isinglass into the crock, ensuring that the eggs are completely submerged.
4. Leave to set to a slightly loose, jello-type consistency before placing on the cap or sealing.
5. Store and use eggs as needed.
You can make up your own mind on this, but some people say eggs preserved in isinglass can taste a little ‘chalky.’ However, when cooked into a recipe or seasoned with herbs and the like, the flavor improves considerably.
Related: 7 Survival Uses of Egg Shells
That is possibly a small price to pay for preserving fresh eggs under pantry conditions. Keep your isinglass eggs store in a cool, dark place and remove each egg out of the pot as needed. Keep so, predict a shelf life of 6-12 months. It’s worth remembering that the shells can get more fragile as you reach the point of six months.
If one of your preserved eggs has not stored properly and smells unpleasant, it may be due to a hairline crack in the shell. Don’t worry. Ditch the bad egg and try the others – the remaining ones will not be harmed by one rotten egg.
