How to tell the freshness of an egg

I learned this a while back and it has always served me well. Have you ever been mystified as to whether the remaining eggs in your fridge are good or not, and scared to risk it? Or worse yet, have you gone ahead and bought a whole new dozen package just because you weren't sure? Well, stop wasting money and mental energy and listen up. Here's how you tell if an egg is fresh or not.

Fill a medium-sized bowl with tap water, and gently place the questionable egg at the bottom of it (one egg at a time is best to move the process along quickly). In short, if the egg floats, it's bad. If it sinks, it's still good. If it hovers off the bottom of the bowl but still touches the bottom, there's still time left but you better hurry and eat it!

The reason this happens is that over time, the albumen inside the egg slowly releases a gas as it degrades from fresh to rotten. If you see the egg floating in the water, that's showing you that too much gas has accumulated inside that sealed container, and it is a sure signal that your egg is not as fresh as you would prefer.

But don't take my word for it, try it yourself! I have been using this technique for about five years now, and haven't eaten a bad egg since. I paraphrased these instructions from an article I read in a book a while back. If you'd like to read the original source, go out and buy a very good book I recommend, called Kitchen Science: Getting to Know the Hows and Whys for Fun and Success in the Kitchen, by Howard Hillman.

Best of luck and happy cooking!