We Ate 9 Month Old Eggs...

DISCLAIMER: We recommend you follow U.S. Government FDA guidance for food storage, preservation, and preparation. Campfire Homesteading accepts no liability for your personal attempts to perform this food storage method. The following is simply our experience with this method and how we approach egg storage and preservation on our homestead.

That title is not click bait… it’s for real.

During our initial stages of looking into homesteading, we came across a ton of information about how to preserve food for the long haul. We both love breakfast food, so much so we could eat it at every meal of the day. Logically, we wondered into how to preserve eggs for long-term storage and use.

What we found was so simple we initially believed it was pure BS. I remember watching the first four-minute video. A woman was sitting at her kitchen table and simply coating eggs with mineral oil and placing them back into their carton.

That’s it!?

This could not be real. There is no way. If this worked, the government would tell us how to do this so we could all keep eggs for a longer period of time, right? Something this simple would be so broadly advertised that it would be as cool as one of those Life Hack things… right?

Well, we checked. And to our surprise, this method of preserving eggs is not only not recommended by our government food safety overlords, it is questioned in a way to lead the reader to believe it is completely unsafe.

What we found is that people have been using the mineral oil egg preservation technique for quite some time. And if you have been homesteading for more than a few days, you know that you learn by giving things an honest try. So we did.

It’s that simple…not to be done without coffee of course

March 2019, after a typical grocery store trip we decided conduct our test. I pulled the eggs from the refrigerator, set up my mineral oil station, and began lightly coating the dozen eggs. I was super excited but also found that it was pretty short lived. In all, it took only a few minutes. I placed the eggs back in the refrigerator and that was it. Done and done.

In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we just went on about our normal routine. Work, gym, dinner, chores, hang out a bit, rinse and repeat.

This is where it gets crazy.

We completely forgot about that set of eggs. I think our initial idea was to try them at three months to see if the technique actually worked. However, month three came and went.

September comes and we are preparing breakfast. You know the routine. You are trying to wake up, the coffee is in the French press, grab the bacon and eggs out of the refrigerator, collect seasonings, set pans on the stove. Go.

I cook, we sit, we eat, we talk, it was a great Saturday morning breakfast at home.

Clean-up. I go back into the kitchen to start cleaning up my mess and am putting things away. As I grab the eggs to close them, there is a note on the inside of the container, ‘March 2019’. “Oh Shit,” I think to myself. I look at Heather and say, “I think we just ate six month old eggs.”

Our next reaction is not what you may think. We laughed and looked at the container together in disbelief. Then discuss how our stomachs will tell us pretty quickly if the eggs are bad or not.

What blew us away is that the eggs were fine. As if we had purchased them a few days prior.

Back into the fridge they went.

A few days later, we tried them again. This time we were completely aware and were breaking and inspecting them as if we expected these ones to show some sign of being spoiled. NOPE. Perfectly fine eggs. They weren’t discolored, they didn’t stink, they were normal eggs. And they tasted great!

Our test worked and we were true believers. Who would have known that our great-grandparents knew what they were talking about!?

If you have never heard of this, join the club. But if you decide to do some personal study on the practice, you may run into the Holmer & Stadelman (1962) research of the practice of preserving eggs with oil. They were able to trace the practice to Dutch famers in 1802 who would submerge eggs in linseed oil for several hours before storing them, citing research from Spamer in 1931 titled ‘Historic Methods and Current Practices of Preserving Eggs in Holland,’ which was featured in U.S. Egg Poultry Magazine. Holmer & Stadelman (1962) concluded that oiled eggs, stored at cooler temperatures, would keep significantly longer than unoiled eggs. The idea is that the oil protects and amplifies the bloom or outer egg coating, to keep the egg sealed, longer.

A tip of the hat to the Dutch for their ingenuity!

Three months later, Heather was bitten by the baking bug and was turning the kitchen into a warzone. She was excitedly going along doing her thing, making delicious baked goods and everything was right in the world.

Then I hear it. “I used the old eggs!.” Expecting her to follow that up with a line about how the goodies were now ruined because nine month old eggs were used as an ingredient, I said, “Really!?” To my surprise, she was fine with it. She couldn’t even tell. We shared a reluctant chuckle and waited for it to finish in the oven.

Like the breakfast three months prior, it turned out amazing. However, we waited again to see if our bodies would tell us if we made a horrendous mistake. NOPE… all good again.

But those eggs went into the trash this time. We figured that nine months was probably pushing the test a bit too far.

“If it doesn't look right, smell right, feel right, or makes you wonder in any way at all, trash it!”

Our rule for preserved eggs

The float test is also used to tell if the egg is good or bad. If it sinks, its good. If it floats, trash it.

In our pantry now, are several dozen eggs that we have preserved via the mineral oil method and it feels amazing not needing to buy them from the store. (It’s safe to store your raw, unwashed and oiled eggs on the shelf, since they haven’t been refrigerated yet!) The bonus is that our chickens are laying like crazy and we have a few dozen that are our eggs… from our chickens… on our land!

Reading more into how people have used this method to preserve eggs, we now understand that flipping the eggs at least monthly is helpful in preserving the yoke. And that long-term storage [9 - 12 months] should only be done if the eggs are kept in the refrigerator.

We hope you find this story both funny and interesting, and you give the mineral oil or other preservation methods a shot with your eggs. Do you homework and see if this egg preservation method is right for your home.