I finally found a bottle of mineral oil at my local Walmart. I had been looking for the better part of month at Walmart and Target without any luck. I was beginning to wonder if everyone else had the same idea in mind, though, that’s probably not the case. 😉
Anyway, if you’re unaware, the idea is to coat eggs with mineral oil to act as a replacement for the bloom that normally protects eggs from bacteria when they’re laid. In so doing, you can then store eggs at room temperature, you know… not in the fridge. Store-bought eggs are washed before packaged and, therefore, do not have the bloom.
Fortunately, the process is quite simple. Here’s what I did:
1. I put on some latex gloves and poured about half the bottle of mineral oil in a bowl (I didn’t end up using that much so next time maybe 1/3 of the bottle). Then one-by-one I coated each egg from one 18-egg carton.
2. I let the eggs drip off any excess oil for several seconds so that they were less likely to puddle in the carton. I have no idea if this was necessary or not but it seemed like a good idea to me. When finished dripping I replaced each egg to the carton.
3. Here’s what the eggs coated with mineral oil look like. There’s an obvious sheen to them if the picture isn’t that clear.
4. I then marked one egg container with the words “mineral oil” and the other as “control”–I’m feeling a bit nerdy right now–so that I would know which was which. And finally I placed the cartons in an old plastic drawer to contain them for whenever they went bad and spoiled.
The plan is to check an egg from each carton each week (probably on the weekends) to see if they’ve gone bad yet. If they last that long this will be a 4.5 month experiment because each carton contains 18 eggs.
As for how to check them, I think I will start by placing an egg from each carton in a bowl of water to see if they float or not–floating is bad–and maybe, just maybe I’ll eat it if the mineral oil eggs don’t float. My wife has already emphatically stated that she would NOT be consuming these eggs! Where’s her spirit of adventure. 😉
You know, it is a bit weird to not place these eggs in the refrigerator. I kind of feel like I just put my shoes on backwards or maybe forgot my pants. We’ll see how it goes… wish me luck!
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