You can get unwashed eggs from farms in most parts of the US. Farm-fresh eggs are much better than supermarket eggs, regardless of whether they're washed.
[1] http://www.splendidtable.org/episode/july-17-2010
edit: (Or do you feel that this segment is malarky!)
[Following up: the answer appears to be "it's a designation for premium eggs at the supermarket".]
I suppose similar things exist in the US?
Organic eggs are by definition free range eggs (in the US at least), but the reverse is not necessarily true.
Well, it's a designation as to the conditions in which the chickens are kept.
I think that both Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have done programs that have covered how poultry is farmed, but which ever one it was that I watched it definitely left me with the lasting belief that I don't want to eat eggs or chicken that isn't free range.
"free range indoors" means large stables, no cages, multiple levels and a maximum of 9 hens per m^2.
"free range indoors and outdoors" is the same as indoors, but with the addition of an outside yard with at least 4m^2 per hen.
Battery cages were banned in 1988, but cages are still allowed. max 13 hens per m^2 and max 16 hens per cage, and there needs to be a nesting area.
So it's not all crap, but the day when we can synthesize food cannot come fast enough.
If you're not an egg person, the difference is probably subtle.
There is an obvious difference in freshness between supermarket eggs and farm eggs. Egg freshness is uncontroversial; as they age, the membrane around the yolk breaks down and the whites thin. Supermarket eggs are usually around 2 weeks old.
There is an obvious difference in color between supermarket and farm eggs; farm eggs have orange yolks and supermarket eggs have yellow yolks. This does make it hard to blind an egg taste test, though. The color difference comes from the feed of the chicken.
Apart from cooking up better, farm eggs taste richer to me, and don't have "off" flavors (a small number of supermarket egg chickens get feed that includes fish meal).
Nope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_year_egg#Modern that's with alkaline, and you can use acid to make a pickled egg.
Think of hardboiling eggs as a recipe for getting the most out of old food, much like making french toast with stale bread or fried rice with yesterday's steamed rice.
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What? How can you people not know this? Oh wow, I love these little cultural snippets where you assume that everyone else knows some things you do, because you were taught them as a child. :-D
Hm, eggs here in Sweden are generally washed, but not refrigerated, so it's neither like the situation in the UK nor the US. Interesting.
//deleted// feeble attempt at ascii art.
An unfresh egg has a flat white, with a dome for the yolk.
A really fresh egg has an extra raised bit just before the yolk. In cross section it has three levels, rather than two.
And from reading the article, I get the impression that weeks-old refrigerated eggs are the norm in the US. I had no idea. Yuck. :-)
(I know I'm wrong, refrigerated eggs last a long time, and they're perfectly fine, it's just not what I'm used to or were brought up to.)
As home-laid eggs age, they become pretty much identical to supermarket eggs, though there are still some differences: they are not as perfectly identical as supermarket eggs (their sizes, colors and shell thickness vary), and they have a small black dot which is the embryo (which some people don't like -- you can prevent it by only having female chickens like most egg plants).
Our chickens are sometimes in their run (which is roughly 5x bigger than the requirements to call it free range, but is mostly scratched to bare earth), and sometimes out in the yard. When they've been in the yard for a few days, the yolks get a much deeper golden color.
The research for chicken food is amazingly thorough.
The gas on a tomato really does ripen it, it's not just appearance (although that doesn't necessarily help the taste).
You actually don't want to pick a tomato when it's red (ripe), the best is to pick them just at the start of the ripening process (a hint of red), then put them in sunlight to let them finish, the taste and texture is much better because it doesn't get diluted with extra water if you left it on the plant (and also avoids the risk of the skin splitting).
With some plants they bred the ability to self ripen out of them, so ethylene gas is required. But I'm not sure if that was done to tomatoes.
As for tomatoes, yes, that was my point: supermarket tomato color is the product of manipulation. Color is a necessary but insufficient indicator of quality. (I'm not saying there aren't good supermarket tomatoes, if you buy them at a sane time of year).
You suggest that battery farms are boosting beta carotene to alter the color of egg yolks. Ok, I believe you. What I'm saying is that I doubt that the family in Michigan who sells us dirty chicken eggs in the summer is manipulating the beta carotene content of their feed to market their eggs; they don't do anything to market their eggs at all. Whatever they're eating, it's (a) naturally high in beta carotene and (b) sharply different from what battery hens eat.