The Eggstraordinary Fortress | Hacker News Reader

The Eggstraordinary Fortress

ahmed1011001.github.io

104 pointstippa12336 comments

Eggs really don't go bad quickly. It is common knowledge that due to different washing techniques it's safer in Europe than in North America to keep them unrefrigerated (raw), but let's just say a certain spouse of mine is pretty callous about that - a tray of 30 of them from Costco doesn't fit in the fridge right now so it sits around for a few days - and we've had exactly zero issues from all that. And hardboiled eggs don't spoil very fast either. If it had been sitting out for a week, I'd take a careful sniff at it before consuming but overnight is nothing. Edit all this assumes the raw eggs are going to be cooked, of course.

Indeed, eggs are far more shelf stable than most people give them credit for (even washed ones). Though refrigeration helps maintain egg grade. So while your costco eggs may be 100% safe to eat they might be grade B by the time you get to them.

You can pasteurize your own eggs if you own an immersion circulator (as used for sous vide). 135F/57C for at least 1h15, per Douglas Baldwin's site (https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Pasteurized_in_She...). The whites do not whip as quickly per Baldwin, and the whites are a little milky-looking, but for any preparation they are safe, and for those who like runny eggs but have to serve them to people who may be immunocompromised, it's a very good solution. You can poach or cook sunny-side-up and leave the yolk juicy and wet.

A plain egg yolk, served (effectively) raw, is a sauce in itself.

There are some variations between European countries too, although not the washing. When the UK was importing eggs due to shortages caused by bird flu, I recall government warnings about not eating raw eggs because the imported eggs were not as safe, but no warnings about storing them any differently.

So, wherever they were being imported from they were not washed American style (or we would have been warned about storage) but at least some of them were from places that had significantly different standards in some other way.

Probably the salmonella vaccine; it's mandatory in much of Europe, but there are a few countries where it's not commonly used and at least one where it's banned.

Why is it banned? I can understand its not being mandatory, but given how nasty salmonella can be why stop vaccinations?

Agreed - a boiled egg is absolutely safe after a day. Had many I've "acquired" at hotel breakfast buffets, and left at the bottom of my backpack. Only to consume +1,+2 days later.

I think the author meant well with their security metaphor but overindulged in the classic overthinking engineer and food safety.

Yeah. When I moved from the UK (back) to the US I didn't know any better, and spent a year or two storing (washed, US) eggs on the counter or in the cupboard for weeks at a time. Never had a problem. I absolutely don't recommend doing that, and now conscientiously refrigerate my eggs. I do not, however, stress that much if an egg spends a bit of time at room temperature. It's maybe a risk? But it's not very much of one, in my opinion.

That egg was totally still edible, even if you pierce it for the cooking, it should be good for at least a few days. If you do it right, it can be weeks. In Germany you can buy cooked eggs in the super market and they are not refrigerated.

It addresses this in the article, but in countries that wash the bacterial layer off (like the US), they have to be refrigerated. This is to minimize salmonella contamination, EU deals with this by vaccinating hens against salmonella instead.

Does the same apply for cooked eggs? I would have thought all bacteria is gone from the shell after the process, making EU and US cooked eggs virtually the same. A short search seems to agree with that.

it is very, very unlikely that a fully cooked egg that sat out overnight would have enough bacterial growth (and toxin production by bacteria) to represent a threat to a normal person with a typical immune system.

If the egg had bacteria already growing in it (which is also unlikely) then it's possible that enough of the bacterial toxins could accumulate and be inside when you eat it.

There are probably a number of extremely rare scenarios which would modify the situation but this article includes a lot of words and facts only to come to the unlikely conclusion.

Even though it had a hole in the shell?

This article was weird, in that he went through the whole thing about how effective the layers are without also mentioning there was a hole through all of them other than the egg white (until the end).

That’s true, at least I would have eaten it. I did leave out boiled eggs with holes after cooking them for at least a day in the past. It depends of course, I don’t live in a super humid and hot climate, results may differ there.

The egg cooker is a mystery to me. What is the hole for? I hard-boil eggs by heating a pot of water containing the eggs. Why would you puncture the shell?

I do not know about TFA and the egg cooker, but I usually boil the water first so I can pull the eggs out at a specific time (6:30 to 7:00) so the yolk is gooey. When I put an egg into boiling water without putting a hole through to the air sac, I think there's a higher chance that the egg will crack and spew albumen throughout the boiling water.

Yeah, cooked eggs keep for weeks with no refrigeration, despite the hole. At least in temperate climates.

This gave me a bit of culture shock. Do American children not dye/paint hard-boiled eggs for easter?

Hardboiled eggs are good two weeks at room temperature and 4 weeks in the fridge:

https://www-ndr-de.translate.goog/ratgeber/kochen/warenkunde...

That makes them a good food for (multiday) traveling/hiking too.

> My background is in sterile large molecule manufacturing within biotech, the kind of work where even a single microscopic breach within thousands of gaskets and kilometres of stainless steel can trigger an investigation lasting months or even years.

I would love to learn about such things but there seems to be very little writing about topics like this compared to all kinds of software niches.

What's up with engineers working in industrial contexts? From where I'm standing it seems like they are one of the groups that talk the least about what they do. You hear a lot more about science, law, finance... Is it due to IP issues? Is it a cultural thing? Is it just that I'm not looking in the right places?

>Is it just that I'm not looking in the right places?

Pretty much. That and there's a lot more talk about software because there seems to be this "conventional wisdom" that software people need to blog.

Anyway...

https://www.plctalk.net/forums/forums/plc-questions-and-answ...

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/

https://www.thefdalawblog.com/category/medical-devices/

https://www.eevblog.com/

https://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=6

A few off the top of my head. The other thing to think about is that while there are tons of software blogs, sites and forums, 99% of it is just regurgitating the same crap.

A little off topic, but: we who have chickens know that fresh eggs last for weeks if left unwashed.

How long does it take for a chick to hatch from an egg?

About 3 weeks

most chicken eggs (particularly the ones produced for consumption) are not fertilized by a rooster

You don't have to keep chickens to know this - outside of the U.S. eggs aren't washed before being sold as washing removes the antibacterial cuticle which then means that they need to be refrigerated. Seems like a ridiculous idea to me - wash them to make them more likely to spoil, but of course the best solution is to vaccinate the hens to prevent salmonella contamination.

Lots of thinking, from someone apparently experienced with lab testing of anti-germ precautiuons. Zero testing.

Disappointing. He actually has the lab equipment to measure some of his theories about denatured proteins et al.

there are people who look specificly for old eggs , that they then pickle, also there are a wide variety of cultural food practices, probably banned here in the west, that involve eggs and other foods bieng "aged" under certain conditions personaly, I cant eat factory eggs, something in the feed comes through in the eggs and makes me a bit queezy, farm eggs no problem, tried factory eggs a bunch of times blech!,every time.

So one of those egg council creeps got to you too, huh? [0,1]

[0] https://frinkiac.com/video/S06E12/-1x9jGk4guJdUb76ZrC2FbPyug...

[1] https://youtu.be/AHAFMFFQlkI

Odd, I never refrigerate eggs.

They should only be refrigerated if you live in an egg washing country such as the U.S. as washing will remove some of the antibacterial coating on the outside of the shell. Elsewhere, eggs can be left at room temperature and still be safe to eat for a few weeks.

It would be safe overnight.

Any food can be poison including if it's sealed before a use-by, it's about a percentage which a overnight boiled egg would be lower than for the English word 'safe'.

The claim is cooked eggs don't last as long as normal eggs, what is interesting is what is the percentage/graph?

Boiled Easter eggs are a tradition. You don't hear about mass deaths around Easter unlike rice that's been left out at pre-wedding to wedding parties etc.

Okay, I'll bite: who's dying from wedding rice?

Not the OP, but cooked rice if not properly stored and reheated can lead to food poisoning (Bacillus Cereus is the bug).

Ah. I don't think of cooked rice as a common wedding-dinner dish, but I guess it must be common in parts of the world that eat a lot of rice in general (and who don't have the same default association between "rice" and "weddings" that we do in the West).

What I heard: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fanciful_drawing_by_...

What they meant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirin_polo

https://www.karmactive.com/uk-food-poisoning-cases-rise-due-...

> Rice left at room temperature for more than two hours should be discarded rather than refrigerated.

I believe part of the problem is that re-heating the rice doesn't kill off bacillus cereus so once the rice has been sat around for a couple of hours it can't easily be made safe to eat.

The classic one for rice is bacillus cereus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_cereus#Pathogenesis, specifically the emetic form). That said, while unpleasant, it very rarely kills people.

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