HELP! I'm up to my cloaca in excess eggs!
- Heather Barclay
- Mar 16
- 5 min read
"Today's egg is better than tomorrow's hen."- Turkish proverb
Anyone who has kept chickens knows it can sometimes be feast or famine. You scrape through the winter hoarding every egg like it's a gold nugget, and then suddenly the days get longer and you're trying to remember why you thought 24 chickens seemed like the right number.
For those of you thinking about dipping a toe into the backyard chicken world, you may not already know that hens need between 12 and 16 hours of daylight a day to produce eggs. Younger girls don't need quite as much light, so you may not notice a slowdown in their first year, but by year two, they may decide to shut up shop for the winter altogether. Succession planning is one way to compensate for this - if you get your babies at the right time of the year, you can usually keep them laying through their first winter, so even if your second/third year girls take a break, you're still getting some fresh butt nugs. The other way to deal with this is by finding ways to preserve your summer surplus for use over the winter months!
Egg glassing
One of the ways you can preserve excess butt nuggets is a method called "glassing." When I say I was skeptical... This process involves mixing pickling lime and water (one oz lime to every gallon of water), carefully putting eggs - pointy side down - in a jar, and covering with the liquid. "They" say you can leave eggs like this for up to 18 months. I won't admit how long I left them the first time I tried this! What I WILL admit is how shocked I was by the result. I discarded the cracked eggs - there were only three - and cracked open a test egg. I held my breath... not with anticipation, but with fear that it would have gone bad and if you've ever smelled a bad egg, you'd hold your breath too! As others had warned, it changed the texture of the egg. The yolk didn't hold together quite as well, and the white was runnier than your standard egg. BUT they were still bright yellow, no bad smell, and worked well scrambled. They'd also be perfect for baking. Because I'd left them in there for SO much longer than the reccomended 18 months, I ended up using this batch for the dogs, (they love a fresh eggie on their breakfast!) but now that I know what I'm working with, I'll be doing this every year, and will have scrambled eggs for my breakfast sandwiches all winter!
Some things to emphasize. The eggs MUST be fresh unwashed eggs. Do NOT do this with storebought eggs. This method depends on the "bloom" being intact. When you're putting the eggs in the jar, make sure you're putting them pointy side down, and layering them very carefully so you don't crack any. I used a gallon glass jar with a mouth wide enough for me to stick my hand in, but I've seen other folks use plastic pails with lids - lowe's blue buckets, eg (never Home Depot buckets - they'd make the eggs spoil instantly. Read The story of Do it HERself... for the context there). Keep them somewhere cool and dark - my cellar was the perfect place.
Egg Freezing
There are many ways you can do this - it's really up to you. The main thing is that you should scramble your eggs before freezing. If you freeze them without first scrambling them, the yolk can become really gummy, they won't freeze evenly due to the variance in textures of white vs yolks, and they will likewise thaw more evenly as well. But once you've cracked and scrambled your eggs, the world is your oyster (hen?). If you're a big baker, using a large ice cube tray is a great way to go because you're freezing uniform and perfectly portioned batches of egg. You can put them in a freezer-safe jar. Think: EggBeaters or similar ready-to-cook cartons of egg. This second method is my preferred. I giggle when I think of how many cartons of scrambled raw eggs I used to buy. Now I'm swimming in egg and begging my neighbors to take some!
Egg dehydrating
Lastly (no, it's not THE last of the ONLY options - it's just the last of the options I am going to outline) is dehydrating. Dehydrating fresh eggs is a neat and very "I feel like an astronaut or doomsday prepper" way to preserve your surplus, and it's easier than you might think. The trick is, as with freezing, to scramble your eggs before you start the drying process. If you tried to dehydrate them "whole," the yolk and white dry at different rates, so it would leave you with a weird, clumpy mess. But once you've scrambled them smooth, you’re good to go. You can dehydrate them in a standard food dehydrator or even your oven on the lowest setting. Just spread it all out thinly on some sort of baking sheet. Once they're dry and crumbly, toss them into a blender or food processor until you’ve got a fine powder. Store it in an airtight jar, and you’ve got shelf-stable eggs ready for everything from camping trips to emergency baking sessions. (I'll be honest - I haven't once ever in my life had an "emergency baking session," but I'm sure that emergency situation has existed for someone.)
Reconstituting dehydrated eggs is super easy kitchen magic. The basic ratio is 1 tablespoon of egg powder to 2 tablespoons of water makes the equivolent of a single egg. Just mix them together until it's all smooth and runny, like you just cracked a fresh egg. I like to let it sit for a couple of minutes to fully absorb the water, but if you’re impatient (like me literally every single day always), you can dive right in. Fry it up, scramble it, bake with it — whatever you need. And honestly, if you’re baking, you can usually just toss the powder right into your dry ingredients and add the water with the wet stuff. Less fuss, same great results.
Honorable mention - buttered eggs
I have never tried this, but I found the concept interesting (albeit a mess and waste of good butter, IMO). The reason it works is similar to the glassing - it essentially seals the pores of the shell, keeping the fresh in and the bacteria out. This was a popular technique in Ireland. Essentially they'd collect the eggs fresh outta the chute, and roll them around in their buttery hands. If you ever give it a try, let me know how it works out!
Happy egg hoarding!
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