Egg Safety IS All It’s Cracked Up To Be

Salmonella is a word that cooks do not want to hear.  With the recent outbreak, eggs could get a bad name.  Interesting enough—the sale of eggs have actually risen since the outbreak.   That’s OK!  Eggs are the perfect source of protein, and should be a healthy part of everyone’s diet.   As far as safety goes, only 1 in 20,000 eggs might contain Salmonella.  They say that equals the chances of you getting it once every 85 years!  Still—you should handle them safely.

We have been inundated with calls about safe eggs—“Are mine safe?” “If they do have salmonella, will cooking them make them safe?”  All good questions!  There is an FDA website  that you can check for food recalls, past and present, if you are looking for any food item that may be recalled at any given time.  You can always find great information from the http://www.incredibleegg.org/ website. To answer the question of safety—eggs may contain Salmonella and look, smell and taste fine.  You should always treat every egg as if it was contaminated—and your eggs should be safe to consume.

• Never use cracked or dirty eggs.
• Always check the use by date—they are good three weeks after that date.
• Keep eggs stored at 41⁰ F or less—so the back of your fridge is the best place to store them.
• Cook eggs hard (145⁰ F) when preparing them.  Runny or undercooked eggs are not considered safe to eat.
• People with lowered immunities should never eat undercooked food products.

Many callers tell me that their parents stored their eggs on the back porch and never worried about Salmonella.   This may be true—but Salmonella is a relatively new bacterium that has entered the reproductive tracts of chickens in the past 15 or so years.  So, it wasn’t a problem back then.  Handling eggs and poultry safely is the only way to be sure.  On a side note, it is now recommended that you do not wash your poultry before cooking it.  The potential to spray bacteria around your kitchen is great if you wash it in the sink.  It is recommended that you cook all your poultry to 180⁰, and then there will be no worry about Salmonella or Campylobacter.