An Update on Our Egg Preservation Experiment

Back on July 5th of last year I believe we posted about trying a new way to preserve eggs.  Before the mink killed the majority of our flock, we had a plethora of eggs.  We used a dehydrator to dehydrate a bunch of them.  You can read about that process by clicking this link right here:  Dehydrated Eggs

At the end of that post in which we showed the process of dehydrating them, we mentioned at the end that we would keep you updated when we ate them to give a review.  Eight and a half months later and here we are.  Tricia pulled a half pint jar of dehydrated eggs out of the pantry and ran it through the food processor to turn it to a fine powder.

Here is what the dehydrated egg powder looks like.  It smells like... well, eggs.

So now the time comes to scramble up some eggs.  So how do you convert this powder back into eggs?  Well, the ratio is 2 Tablespoons egg powder + 2 Tablespoons water = 1 egg  (We played around with the amount of water until we got the consistency we wanted.)

So we followed the recipe and rehydrated our egg powder into an egg:

Okay, I'm going to be honest.  It just looks gross.  I guess I'm an egg purist.  I like gathering fresh eggs, cracking them and frying them in a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.  This process seems weird, but we're looking at different ways to preserve eggs.  Each method has its benefits, to be sure.

We put the reconstituted egg in the skillet and scrambled it.  It cooked like an egg. It looked like an egg.  It smelled like an egg.

There was one important think left to do.  Taste it.  This egg has been sitting in a jar in the form of a powder for 8 1/2 months.  How would it taste?  Here are the reviews:  

Kyle:    It tasted like a scrambled egg.  The texture was slightly different than a fresh egg, but I would have thought that this was a fresh scrambled egg had no one told me about it.

Tricia:    It had a slight "metallic" taste, but it was definitely edible.

We've eaten it several times since this post.  It's always fun to learn to do new things.  I like my eggs fresh, but if we had an abundance of eggs and wanted to make some 'shelf stable,' this is definitely an option.

How Do You Like Your Eggs?

This is almost a sacrilege, I know, but I don't like my eggs "sunny side up."  I don't like my eggs "over easy."  I don't like a runny yolk.  Tricia describes the way I like my eggs is "toasted."  In other words, cooked through.  I like them with peppers and onions in them, spiced up, with cilantro and green onions on top.  I have a good wife that goes through the extra time and steps to prepare for me eggs to my liking.

We eat a LOT of eggs.  Scrambled, Fried, Boiled, and Pickled.  We have lots of hens and pick up multitudes of eggs each day.  We've experimented with several methods of preserving eggs.  One of the ones we showed you was Waterglassing eggs.  We were looking for another method and that's what we'll talk about tonight.

We have been really using the food dehydrator that a friend gave us many years ago.  We have dehydrated more things this year than you could shake a stick at.  So we got to thinking.  Why not eggs?  I've got to admit, powdered eggs do not seem appetizing to me.  I think of school cafeterias.  But with the girls laying "to beat the band," we have to think of new and different methods (to us) of food preservation.  Let's give it a whirl.

To dry eggs in our dehydrator, we'll use our new silicone trays.  We cracked a number of eggs and scrambled with a whisk and then poured on the trays in the dehydrator.  We put the setting on 135 degrees for 6-8 hours.  In just a little bit, they looked like this!:  (Note the dark yellow color of the pastured hens' yolks.)

At the eight hour mark, they looked like this:

We turned off the dehydrator, crumbled the eggs up and poured into an air tight jar.

We will eventually blend into a powder.  Basically, to re-hydrate them, you add one tablespoon dried egg powder to 1 tablespoon hot water and that equals 1 egg.  Simply scramble them to the consistency you like your eggs.  Disclaimer:  We just did this, and have plenty of fresh eggs, so I haven't tasted them yet.  I'm anxious to do so and give a taste test review of powdered eggs.  We'll keep ya posted.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

"Let sleeping dogs lie" is an old saying that means leave things as they are.  Don't go stirring things up that are better left alone.  There's a lot of wisdom in that.  It can also be meant in the literal sense.  Belle was sleeping out in the garage.  She must have been deep in REM sleep.  She never even heard me.  That big 'ol girl was sprawled out on the cool pavement on her back.  When someone (beast or person) is sleeping so soundly.  It is best to leave them be!

But that doesn't mean that everyone's napping.  We've been busy.  We've learned new skills in beekeeping and we'll be opening the hive in another week to see if the queen is laying.  Can't wait!  Spring time means the hens are laying lots of fresh eggs.  Daily production has doubled and we've been eating lots of eggs.

Tricia boiled a bunch and pickled a gallon and a half of them.  It'll be a nice snack.  We're allowing them to sit a while in the spices so they are flavorful.  There's some jalapenos and garlic in there, along with the other seasonings.

The cabbage crop has all been harvested.  Once it starts warming up, it's time to pick them.  The snails wreak havoc with the heads of cabbage.  I picked them all and we've had cole slaw a bunch of times as well as cabbage sweated down in a cast iron skillet and a deconstructed cabbage roll dish with sausage.  This weekend we cut up a bunch of cabbage and carrots, mixed with ground beef and spices and made homemade egg rolls.  We ate until we couldn't eat another one.

This strange looking thing is something new we tried.  Dehydrated cabbage.

First time we've ever tried putting cabbage in the dehydrator.  After completely dehydrated, we store in mason jars and will add to soups and such.

Almost forgot to mention that we made homemade Sauer kraut.  We put the jars in the back of the fridge.  The longer you let it sit, the better it gets.

I trust your spring is going well?

From Asparagus to Zucchini

While picking snap beans the other day, I looked down and saw the last of the asparagus coming up.  Most of it matures quickly now as it's warming up.  It's easy to miss.  But I got the asparagus, snapped it off, and ate it raw, right there in the snap bean row.

I finished the beans and remembered that I needed to check the squash.  They're growing ever so fast as well.

I had planned on weighing the garden produce this year, just to start tracking that, but, to be honest, it's too much work, ha ha.  Here's a big basket of nothing but zucchini I picked.  There will be more coming in tomorrow.  Tricia kind of gave me "the stink eye" when I came in with this.  "What are we going to do with all this," she said.  "We're gonna eat it," I replied.

We also give it away.  Today we walked some over to one of our neighbors.  Tricia also made Zucchini Fritters tonight.  We ate an entire zucchini squash, I'm not ashamed to say.  Zucchini Fritters are like crab cakes, without the crab.  You grate zucchini, put it in a colander, salt it, and let the water drain off.  Then you add flour, cheese, eggs, garlic and seasoning and stir.  Then make little patties and fry them.  My wife made a sour cream ranch dressing that we dipped them into.  Very good!

Since we've been using the dehydrator to preserve a lot of the fresh produce coming in, we decided to dehydrate some zucchini.  The zucchini was cut into slices like you see in the measuring cup below and were blanched according to the time instructed.

Blanching aids in protecting flavor, color, texture in the vegetables.  It inactivates enzymes that cause vegetables to deteriorate.  Although the vegetables don't stay in the water for long, we were wondering if you lose water soluble vitamins during blanching?  The answer is yes.  Although it takes a little longer, the next time we blanch, we'll try steam blanching.  Steam blanching allows the vegetables to retain vitamins otherwise lost in water blanching.

After removing and putting in ice water to immediately stop the cooking process, the blanched zucchini is drained and placed on the trays of the dehydrator.  I don't know how this is going to work out.  Zucchini has a very high water content.  It seems to me this process is akin to dehydrating ice cubes.

Twelve hours later, the dehydrated zucchini is done.

Wowzers!  There's nothing left.  If I still read newspapers, I could read one through the zucchini.  It is transparent and thin.  There's nothing left to it.

Five full trays of cut up zucchini yielded a PINT of dried zucchini.

Good for adding to soups and stews, I imagine, and it'll keep.