Dehydrating Eggs at Home (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Dehydrating Eggs at Home (2015)

backwoodshome.com

48 pointspmoriarty57 comments

"Eggs dehydrate easily, and most online sources suggest keeping the eggs at 135° F to 145° F for about 10 hours. However this temperature is not sufficient to keep salmonella from forming during the dehydration process, because this leaves eggs in the food safety danger zone for too long."

Umm, no. The food wouldn't be in the danger zone very long, and even if it were the following 9 hours would be more than enough to kill them.

Yeah that's what I was thinking. 135F will kill salmonella in under an hour.

From how it's worded in the article, I assume they're just ignorant of how pasteurization works at different temperatures so they're going by the over-simplified recommendation from FDA. I see this same misunderstanding happen periodically on the sous vide forums.

Yeah. Probably lots of people who don't know what they're talking about said that and he just assumed they are correct. A thin layer of egg in what is essentially a convection oven is going to heat up very fast.

She

I like to make large batches of frittata in muffin pans, seal in vacuum bags and freeze. Defrost and nuke as needed. It's less flexible than just eggs, but a great low carb treat. They don't last long around here.

Suddenly "egg bites" are a thing in supermarkets and Starbucks. These are a homemade version without the need for an expensive vacuum chamber.

Another way to preserve eggs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg

I've never had the chance to try them, and they don't look appetizing, but now I'm kinda curious how they taste.

Pretty bad. The white ends up amber and rather leathery. My Chinese friend won't eat them.

I don't like them either. My wife adds them to congee and I always fish out the black pieces when I make my bowl. There's just something about it that I can't get passed. It's a little bit goofy because there isn't much (pungent food) that I don't eat. I eat durian and love durian deserts and stinky tofu but I don't mess with these eggs, which are pretty tame comparatively.

That looks... absolutely disgusting, and I considered myself a fairly adventurous eater coming into this thread

Read through the article and found that it's served along with "Head cheese" on special occasions, so I clicked on that only to find out I'm certainly not as adventurous as I thought

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_cheese

That head cheese thing is really delicious. It’s simply chunks of meat with veggie in a jelly. What can be disgusting about it? I do wonder though, when you say you consider yourself an adventurous eater, what are the things you’d eat to call yourself like that? Not trying to discredit anything, just generally curious.

The texture was more unusual to me than the taste was. I expected something more like a hard boiled egg, but it was very rubbery and didn’t yield to the teeth as easily.

A friend took me to a place in Beijing that does these with tofu, sesame oil, and soy sauce. It was delicious. Kind of nutty and cheesy, if I remember correctly. If you like strong/complex flavors, you might like these.

Based on that experience, I found a place in San Diego that did them when I lived there. The egg was somewhere between uninteresting and bad. So I guess it really depends on who makes them and how they're prepared.

The taste reminded me of clay and the alkalinity made my throat somewhat uncomfortable. Not in a painful way, but like I swallowed some powdered soap. Dry, yet slippery.

Not the worst thing I've eaten, but I've definitely never jumped at the chance to eat them again. Although my problem could've been eating them plain while it seems most people add some sauce or seasoning.

They're delicious! In congee, or on cold tofu. It's creamy inside and firm outside. I think people might get grossed out because they are expecting something egg-like. I don't really think about them as eggs... they're just their own thing.

Dehydrated eggs used to be very inexpensive. I bought a case (6) big cans I think in like 2009 for I want to say around $100. Wow that has changed. I still have most of the case, not sure how long they last. I opened a can like 2 years ago and it had an oxygen absorber and was fine. I got them here. https://honeyville.com/

I highly recommend the 6 grain cereal, it's awesome. https://shop.honeyville.com/6-grain-rolled-cereal.html The dried eggs frankly were not as good. I think they were mostly yolks. They were good to bake with.

For what it's worth chickens aren't that cheap to raise anyway. You need a coop and usually food. I'd rather just spend a little and avoid the hassle. The last batch of chickens I had never even made it to laying before they were all eaten by a fox or weasel or something. But free range chicken eggs are very tasty.

That was oddly a fun read. And I got a chuckle from the conclusion:

  So is it worthwhile to dehydrate eggs?

  From a cost standpoint, the answer is unequivocally “yes,” but only if you keep your own hens to begin with

That statement really confused me.

The cost difference between those two scenarios is the purchase price of the eggs, which are what, $2/dozen?

How can such an immaterial expense provoke an unequivocal conclusion?

And how can one ignore the cost of feeding & housing chickens vs just going to the store and purchasing eggs? Store-bought eggs are almost certainly cheaper in absolute terms.

Maybe a less time intensive approach for benefiting from an egg surplus is to feed the eggs to a pig.

You don't get to control output if you own your own hens. If you buy eggs and you have too many eggs, just stop buying eggs. If you own hens and you don't sell/give away eggs, there's no equivalent solution, thus preservation.

I have a few hens roaming around my property and just picked up another dozen chicks yesterday.

$2/dozen are eggs from chickens living in questionable circumstances. Pasture raised eggs are usually $6-12 per dozen. You can see the difference in the yolks - chickens that eat a monodiet of grain lay eggs with yellow yolks, chickens that eat bugs lay eggs with orange yolks.

Aside from fresh eggs, it's nice to have chickens around because they keep the tick population down. The cost of feeding and housing is near zero, and with an automatic door they pretty much take care of themselves. Kids love them.

"Despite the concerns in recent years about cholesterol and other issues"

I grew up in the era where the egg lobby had billboards up saying it was OK to eat eggs once a week. This was after cholesterol and saturated fat was demonized after some docs found peoples arteries stuffed with it. It turned out to be fake science. My parents fed me poisonous partially hydrogenated margarine instead of butter because of that crap. They've recently discovered eating cholesterol is of no concern. You don't have to worry about it at all. Inflammation is the real concern. Saturated fats are the safest fats.

Oxidized cholesterol, on the other hand, is not healthy. I would not eat dehydrated egg yolks.

You could always use a sous vide device to pasteurize eggs before dehydrating them. Crack them, mix them, throw them in a bag, and pasturize them for as long as is appropriate. Easy.

Another fun option for preserving eggs: salt them. I've never used them in a recipe (not sure if they'd work). but they are delicious eaten like charcuterie.

https://www.google.com/search?q=cured+egg+yolks&oq=cured+egg...

If you ever watch Bon Apetit videos on YouTube, they have a series where they did a cured egg recipe. They grated it onto pasta.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp6F7jW5cmI

I highly recommend the whole "It's Alive" series with Brad if you're into preserving your own food.

This line got to me.

> I blended two fresh eggs with ¼ cup of water and pan-scrambled them.

Is adding water to scrambled eggs really a thing that people do? Never in my life have I added water to fresh eggs before scrambling them.

I add milk, sometimes. Never water. It might make them fluffier? i.e., more moisture, that converts to steam?

I add some milk to eggs when I scramble them, but never water. Not sure if that's weird.

yes, some people add a bit of water or milk. In theory the water turns to steam helps make them fluffy, I believe.

Yeah, it's definitely a thing, and I put in a little milk myself. But 2oz does seem high.

yep, the water creates steam which cooks them more evenly and fluffily. The milk is for extra taste and texture. It's like using broth/stock to cook rice with rather than water.

I add water to make them a little fluffier. Also, water doesn't spoil overnight, so I can take them to work and have them at my desk after the commute. On the weekends I use bacon grease.

It's common in the US to add milk. The first person who showed me how to scramble eggs without adding milk said it was "the French way to scramble eggs". She was Romanian.

Yes.

I've been meaning to try this - corn starch slurry mixed in with the eggs see this Egg Foo Young recipe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnRBW7F3TOg

My aunt made the best scrambled eggs ever. Many years later, I learned that her secret was the addition of a small amount of Cheez Wiz to the mix: about 1 Tbsp to four eggs. That right there is a game-changer.

Grate about 1 tsp. Romano, or Parmigiano Reggiano...curd the eggs only, leaving a wet sheen. Heaven.

> Never in my life have I added water to fresh eggs before scrambling them.

It's what you do when you run out of milk. It tastes better with milk so try not to run out of milk.

I add sour cream (much better than milk IMO), but have never added water.

This is pretty typical (along with milk) for people who are scrambling their eggs over moderately high heat, under the belief that it makes their eggs fluffier.

What it actually does is make wetter eggs. By breaking the yolks and mixing before cooking you are breaking down the various proteins, and by adding liquid you are just making the eggs wetter. (Much like how a custard can weep if you hit it with high heat.) If you like a dry scramble, hit those eggs in a ripping hot pan with some oil, but no water.

I strongly recommend folks cook low and slow with their eggs, agitating them regularly to build up a small, creamy curd.

FWIW, ATK recommends half-and-half. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/1055-how-to-mak...

As I recall, the underlying science is that this helps alleviate the fact that the various proteins in eggs coagulate at different temperatures so adding some fat means that there's less of an issue with some of the proteins drying out while waiting for others to solidify.

I do often add fat, though typically in the form of butter or cream product (sour cream, creme fraiche, etc.) Half and half probably works in a pinch.

Why half-and-half and not cream or butter?

Half-and-half is cream. They prefer that level of fat to milk or heavier cream.

Probably enough butter to make a difference would change the flavor.

> Half-and-half is cream.

No, half-and-half is, as the name describes, half cream and half milk.

What about vacuum dehydration? It should be much faster than the other methods. Something like a pressure cooker and a vacuum pump shouldn't be too hard to rig up.

How about using a sous vide on the powder vacuum sealed eggs after it’s dried?

A long enough period at a lower temperature should kill any salmonella no?

According to this page (I didn't verify it myself), salmonella is quite difficult to dry sterilize.

(https://www.foodsafety-experts.com/food-safety/salmonella-se...)

> Salmonella is very difficult to kill when it is sitting in dry powders. Depending on the product you might need to get the product heated to temperatures above 150°C for at least 30 minutes to achieve a 6-log reduction if any Salmonella present in the product.

Wow, this is news to me. I always assumed there were time-temperature curves for pasteurization & sterilization that applied to bacteria regardless of the medium the pathogens existed within. Food safety is actually pretty complex and often gives me hesitation when cooking sous vide (for instance, botulism spores from garlic can easily survive anaerobic sous vide conditions).

Could you instead sterilize the garlic before use?

Moisture level generally has strong effects on microorganism survival. Another example is B. cereus spores (can be present in rice) which can remain viable in boiling water for extended periods and are even more heat resistant in dry environments.

I was a bit surprised by the extremely high temperature claimed by the article linked in my previous comment. I'm still wondering if perhaps they accidentally swapped C and F in the units there, but I didn't have much luck tracking down a time-temperature survival curve for salmonella under dry conditions.

Bacteria are completely different when they are wet and when they are dry.

I don't believe anyone has ever gotten botulism poisoning from sous vide cooking and people cook garlic/onions that way all the time. I'm sure it doesn't kill the spores but perhaps the heat still kills enough?

I was very sure (correct me if I'm wrong) that salmonella are only on the egg shell and could probably be decontaminated by dropping them in boiling water for a few seconds without denaturating the egg white. I really like the surge in dyi/food realated articles on hacker news, keep them coming!

Salmonella can be inside eggs.

"However, outbreaks of salmonellosis (an infection caused by Salmonella bacteria) still happen because Salmonella also silently infects the ovaries of healthy-looking hens, contaminating the eggs inside the chicken before the shells are even formed, according to FSIS. To curb this form of contamination, the egg industry regularly tests hens for the ovarian bacteria."

https://www.livescience.com/10016-salmonella-eggs.html

I have heard of people using sous vide to pasteurize both the shells and contents of eggs. This guy seems to have a pretty science-based process (see the "Pasteurized in Shell Egg" section):

http://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Poultry_and_Eggs

This is admittedly another piece of equipment to add to the process, but I suspect that the intersection of "people who own a dehydrator" and "people who own a sous vide machine" is pretty large.

The Food Lab has an article on sous vide eggs, including pasteurizing them with a sous vide circulator:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2013/10/sous-vide-101-all-about-...

Generally it's a great resource for nerdy cooking stuff.

I use that technique to make my own mayonnaise. I try to eat mostly organic (or animal-welfare certified) animal products, but organic mayo is overly expensive, so making my own is a nice (and super easy) alternative. You can make a jar's worth for about 40 cents.

I have pasteurized eggs this way many times. The white gets cloudy but the egg is essentially raw. These are just the thing for Negroni Flips [0] or Tamago Kake Gohan [1]. Douglas Baldwin is the man when it comes to Sous Vide and food safety.

[0] https://food52.com/recipes/26068-negroni-flip

[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/04/tamago-kake-goha...

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