Spring is right around the corner and Egg season is nearly upon us!
It’s always great when the days get longer and the chickens start giving us more fresh eggs again. And during the spring and summer months, when your egg-laying chickens are giving you about an egg per day, you can really build up an excess of eggs.
Don’t throw them out or give them all away! Learn to use them up or preserve them for those months when the chickens aren’t laying as much!
Here are our best tips for using up those extra eggs.
Preserving your eggs in times of plenty so you can use them when you don’t have enough is one of our favorite things to do! Whether it’s scrambled eggs, pickled eggs, water-glassing fresh eggs, freezing eggs, freeze drying eggs, or even making homemade aged eggnog, we’re always looking for ways to not let a single egg go to waste.
With that in mind, we’re so excited to announce our newest class all about preserving fresh eggs! In this class, we’re teaching you NINE different egg preservation techniques so you can enjoy those farm-fresh eggs all year-round.
When you’re raising chickens for eggs it means they’re a seasonal product. Meaning some times of the year you have a LOT of eggs, and other times of the year, you don’t have enough.
When spring and summertime come around and you have an abundance of eggs, make sure you begin with understanding how to properly handle farm fresh eggs, and then be thinking ahead on how to use them or save them up.
Here are five of our top ways to do this…
#1 – Eat More Eggs
It may seem obvious, but oftentimes we only think of eggs as breakfast food. Eating eggs for lunch or dinner is a great way to use up those extra eggs.
We love having eggs with dinner alongside savory sides or even making an omelet for lunch with whatever veggies we have on hand.
#2 – Store in a Root Cellar or Cold Storage
You may be surprised to know that eggs can be stored in a cool area for up to six months! Utilize spaces such as a cool closet, root cellar, pantry shelves, or even a shelf in the basement.
Place your unwashed eggs into an egg carton in a single layer, large end up, and leave them until you’re ready to use them.
#3 – Make Egg-Rich Recipes
Using your eggs in a lot of egg-rich recipes such as French toast casseroles, custards, and bread puddings is a great way to not only use up a lot of extra eggs, but to disguise them so your family doesn’t get tired of eating so many eggs.
#4 – Preserve Eggs in Food
Use up your eggs by making food that is shelf-stable. This preserves your eggs to use in the future while also having easy convenient meals ready to use on the shelf.
Making food such as aged eggnog, or homemade egg noodles is a fantastic way to turn your eggs into foods you can use later or store long-term.
#5 – Preserve Fresh Eggs
One of the methods we use all the time is to preserve our fresh eggs using a lime-water solution (called water-glassing eggs) which preserves your fresh eggs for up to 18 months.
Eggs that come out of the lime-water solution are nearly as good as farm-fresh eggs straight from the henhouse.
Using these methods along with the others we teach in our class, The Abundant Pantry: Preserving Eggs, you can ensure that you have eggs year-round without having to go to the grocery store, even in a northern climate like ours where the days are short and the hens nearly stop laying for several months of the year!
