After how long, when left out, do eggs go bad?

I’d eat em. No idea if it’s kosher or not, but I have a hard time believing it would do any damage. That wasn’t very long.

In the days before refrigeration eggs would be treated be sealing the shells with “Egg Glass” and could last weeks. If untreated it will depend on temperature and humidity, but I won’t eat them after more than a week if left out. They don’t go rotten at that stage, but they do start to go watery. If just overnight there is no problem – most supermarkets don’t refrigerate them.

They’re fine. Here in England (where I’m visiting) eggs are left out all the time. They’re even left in the warm in grocery stores. I’d say a few days at most they’ll be fine!

You are fine. And you will know if a egg goes bad when you open it up. They stink.

@chels I think that’s a European thing. Totally freaked me out the first time I saw it.

@primigravida Yeah we just bought some to bake with and I was told we could leave them out for a few days, freaked me out but they were absolutely fine! Silly Europeans!

You can also take a bowl and fill it with water so you can submerge the eggs and then if they float they are bad, if they sink they are still good!

@chels I leave my eggs out for a while when baking to get them to room temp!

My mother used to say you can take off a day for every hour they remain out of the refrigerator.

In college, where we weren’t supposed to cook in the dorm rooms and people worked out how to cook almost anything in a popcorn popper, my roommate would buy a dozen eggs and keep them in the room for up to a week. So I wouldn’t worry a bit.

Whoaa cool trick, @IBERnineD

@chels Isn’t it crazy? I lived with a family in Spain last year who left the milk out all day but refrigerated chap stick and canned goods.

The chickens don’t lay them into a refrigerator. They are fine.

@breedmitch is right. My parents have chickens and they gather eggs once a day but chickens lay eggs throughout the day, so there are some eggs that sit out for up to 23 possible hours. They never have a bad one unless a chicken lays one out of the coup and abandons it.

Thanks Randy. Good to see you.

I think they can be left out for a couple of days before they go bad, but you don’t know if they were left out before they reached you, so use caution.

Put the eggs in cold water. If they float they are off. If they stay on the bottom go ahead and eat them. To keep eggs fresh cover them with vaseline to keep them out of the air.

@DarkScribe what kind of material is egg glass?

Assuming the shell is not cracked, eggs can keep for a very long time without refrigeration.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/1977-11-01/Fresh-Eggs.aspx

Of course, you have no way of knowing how old those eggs were by the time you purchased them from your local supermarket, but my guess is they should last for quite awhile even without refrigeration.

@liminal DarkScribe what kind of material is egg glass?

It is a water soluble lacquer – a sodium/potassium silicate mixture. Eggs were dipped in it and allowed to dry – it made the shell air-tight. Eggs shells are normally oxygen permeable. (It is also known as “Water Glass” .)

From Wiki.

Food preservation

Sodium silicate was also used as an egg preservation agent in the early 20th Century with large success. When fresh eggs are immersed in it, bacteria which cause the eggs to spoil are kept out and water is kept in. Eggs can be kept fresh using this method for up to nine months. When boiling eggs preserved this way, it is well advised to pin-prick the egg to allow steam to escape because the shell is no longer porous.

@DarkScribe that is fascinating, thanks!