How To Make Pasteurized Eggs (Cooking With Raw Eggs)

Sat Jul 12, 2008 5:48 pm
Name: Laura | Comment: Has anyone had problems whipping egg whites of pasteurized eggs? I have tried using the commercial ones a few times but I can't seem to get a good froth from the whites.
Mon Sep 08, 2008 6:36 am
Name: Jenny | Comment: I just try pasteurizing a couple eggs last weekend, to make homemade mayo. I cannot find past. eggs at my market, and i do not want to risk it with un-past. eggs. I have had food poisoning in the past, and i do NOT want to be in that place again, so I am pretty nervous.

Anyway, i did a little experiment, i pierced the shell and used an instant read thermometer to check the internal temp of the egg. it took approx. 25 minutes for an egg in a small amount of water to reach 140-150. I had to keep adding hot water. I then made sure it stayed at that temp for at least 4 mintues (the time required to pasteurize).

Your method doesnt take into account the amount of time it takes for the center of the egg to reach 140 - is this important??? It seems to me it is, or is it overkill??

even with my method, i was pretty scared, so i threw the mayo away, haha. when i had food poisoning, it was truly awful, so i dont know if i will ever not be afraid of a home method, unfortunately (and my food poisoning was actually from a restaurant)

Do you have any references for your method? thanks!!
Sun Nov 23, 2008 6:37 pm
Name: Julie Lane | Comment: The only part of the egg that needs to reach 140 to 150 degrees for 3-5 minute is the outside shell because that is the only source of possible salmonella. You do NOT NEED TO HEAT THE INSIDE THE EGG!!!! DUH DUH DUH!!!!!!!!!!
Sat Dec 06, 2008 7:18 pm
Name: katherine | Comment: geez julie, way to be nice!
Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:33 pm
Name: Michael | Comment: @ Julie: Not only were you unnecessarily mean, you were also absolutely *wrong*. It is possible for the chicken's ovaries to be infected with Salmonella, thus making the bacteria present in the entire egg. See the following document at the California Department of Health:
www.cdph.ca.gov/healthinfo/discond/Documents/Salmonella.pdf
And lay off the caps lock next time. That's just plain childish.
Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:06 am
Name: Orlando | Comment: I thought that Jenny's question was thoughtful and reasonable. Moreover, her clever experiment seems to show that the proposed method of pasteurizing eggs is questionable. I agree with previous post - Julie shouldn't be so nasty in response to a perfectly reasonable question.
Sun Feb 01, 2009 4:02 am
Name: Drewski | Comment: There's a lot of suggestion that salmonella from chickens (that is in side the egg) is derived from poor farming/raising conditions. They go on to say that another way to drastically or almost completely remove salmonella risk is to buy eggs from small farms with free range chickens.

Also keep in mind that 1 in 20-30 thousand eggs is a very low odd of getting salmonella. I wouldn't get too worried.
Wed Feb 25, 2009 3:00 pm
Name: David | Comment: Did y'all miss this part?
*************
"Pasteurizing eggs won’t completely eliminate the risks that eating raw eggs bring"
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Precisely because the interior of the egg from a very sick chicken may contain salmonella. (That's a chicken with salmonella living in its bloodstream, not just in its vent. But most very sick chickens are caught and removed. (Poor farming conditions == you don't notice your chicken is really sick.) No human process is perfect, some might slip through, so there will always be some risk of this..

Trying to pasteurize the whole egg won't solve that short of cooking the egg. Julie is right. What we're trying to do here is sterilize the exterior shell, not the interior. The main risk is salmonella living in the chicken's vent and contaminating the exterior of the egg. This method deals with the main risk and sterilizes the shell. It does not deal with the fringe risk of the interior. If that is not good enough for you then your solution is not to eat uncooked eggs.

If you buy pasteurized eggs in the belief that the interior has been pasteurized then you are wasting your money.

If you think this technique was designed to pasteurize the interior then you are wasting your time.

(RANT Irradiating the egg would remove all danger of salmonella. Salmonella kills people. No one's ever gotten sick from or been harmed by irradiated food, which contains no radiation itself. We could stop salmonella, listeria, e. coli, in all of our hamburger, our spinach, our salsa, our peanut butter tomorrow if we just irradiated them. We could preserve milk for years with irradiation and ship it to hungry children without needing refrigeration. We don't because we are irrationally terrified out of our wits by even the thought of radiation../RANT)

Tue Apr 07, 2009 4:15 pm
Name: billy | Comment: hi is it realy safe
Sat May 02, 2009 2:41 pm
Name: Mary Anne | Comment: I use this method to pasteurize the exterior shell. THEN, I use a method on culinaryarts.about.com to pasteurize the yolks. It's a little labor intensive, but it gets the yolk to the proper temperature without cooking it. To answer the "irradiating the egg" RANT, I've read that it creates problems with the shells, and creates a foul-smell.
Sun May 10, 2009 9:08 am
Name: Jack | Comment: Dear David, You are correct in your assertion that radiation will in fact kill all of the pathogens listed in your post. My objection to irradiating food is not based upon an irrational fear of radiation, but rather an accurate assessment of human nature. E-coli contamination, for instance, occurs when the contents of the animals digestive tract come in contact with the meat of the animal. This primarily happens as a result of poor slaughtering techniques/methods. If irradiation became the norm, do you think the slaughtering techniques would improve?, stay the same? or, deteriorate? I would suggest to you David that it would probably be better to keep the shit off of the food - I don't care to eat it, sterile or not!
Fri Jun 05, 2009 3:09 am
Name: Captain | Comment: Sorry to get off track but Jack is correct, E-coli from cow poop should NEVER happen. It was standard practice for cows going to slaughter to not have access to food 24 hours before slaughter & no water 12 hours before. This process eliminates waste from the animals system.
The cows were also kept in pens & kept calm for this 24 hours AFTER the stressful truck or train ride & this was to aide in a better quality of meat. Unfortunately with today's American mind set of MORE volume, MORE profits, MORE quickly, so many standards with our food are falling.
Not only are we seeing more hormones, chemicals, sugars, salts, fats & crap added to our food but the humane treatment of these animals is also overlooked when the focus is on high profits for less cost in less time. What I also find disgraceful is that with the PUSH for high volume sales we see about 30% of food in this country getting PUSHED straight into land fills.
Tue Jun 23, 2009 1:23 pm
Name: Steve | Comment: Over here in the UK (this appears to be a mainly US-read site) we have all sorts of eggs, ranging from crappy cheap ones from caged chickens (I think Europe or Britain is banning 'battery-farmed' or caged chickens soon, which is good) , to 'indoor 'barn' eggs to organic free-range eggs which are most expensive.
I made some fresh mayonnaise for the first time a couple of weeks ago with organic free-range yolks, and boy was it good. So much better than out of a jar. And, as the eggs were good quality, hopefully less chance of posioning my guests. (All of us were fine).
I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you're otherwise fit and healthy, use good eggs, eat loads of mayo and be happy! (And get fat). Mmmmm Aioli....

Captain's right. Too much is eaten, aswell as too much is thrown away. The UK is getting fatter and fatter, eating too much sh*t pumped full of crap, the kids don't know how to cook, so they will have a life of getting fatter and fatter. We have Jamie Oliver here who although he's annoying, is right in the fact that kids need to be taught the basics of cooking, so that they may even develop an interest in cooking beyond doing it just to remove hunger (which a Maccy-D's does for 10 minutes, then you're bloody starving again....)

Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:10 am
Name: JJ | Comment: According to the USDA, you cannot pasteurize eggs at home fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Focus_On_Shell_Eggs/index.asp
Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:15 am
Name: JJ | Comment: One company does this -- by exceeding a 5 log reduction in pathogens inside the egg. FDA approved. (see safeeggs.com)
Thu Aug 13, 2009 8:30 am
Name: Marvin Blundell | Comment: I make homemade ice cream using eggs. My practice has been to whip the eggs with a quart of milk and then heat the mixture to 140 degrees and hold for a few minutes. I have never timed how long I maintained that temperature. If the temperature goes much higher the eggs begin to cook and look like scrambled eggs in milk. Will this procedure destroy the salmonella?
Wed Aug 19, 2009 12:20 pm
Name: Stephanie | Comment: Why do you need to pasteurize eggs in the shell? Break them out of the shell, heat them to 140 F (hot enough to coat the spoon, but not hot enough to cook). This is the method that has been recommended by the USDA for a decade now. I use it for eggnog. I still use unpasteurized eggs for everything unless I'm serving guests or my Dad (who has severe health concerns) because the chances of an individual egg being contaminated is very small. Commercial eggs MUST be pasteurized because one egg can contaminate the thousands of eggs that are combined.

My issue with irradiation is that not only does it kill pathogens, but it also kills all the vitamins. I don't have a problem with my immune system and I cook things properly. Irradiation just encourages manufacturers to extend life expectancy dates of their product beyond what is reasonable while giving us a nutritionally inferior product.
Thu Aug 27, 2009 11:35 pm
Name: Dave M. | Comment: I for one agree that many egg farmers go for quantity over quality too often. But I also know that it doesn't much matter how the farmers deal with the eggs themselves. As long as the egg is pasteurized by the distributer, I'm happy. Because this process also washes the egg of anything that might be on it. Think of it like this, would you rather wash your dishes in cold, or hot water? As long as the water is above 140 degrees F, bacteria is killed. Pasteurizing eggs may not eliminate Salmonella completely from the interior of the egg, but it will at least sterilize the exterior of the egg. Another bonus is that pasteurized eggs stay fresh longer than un-pasteurized eggs, if kept refrigerated the same as any eggs. As far as irradiation goes, everything I've read about it suggests that the process does cause a drop in nutritional value, but ONLY for Vitamin C, B1, and E. At higher levels of irradiation, Vitamin A and K can also be effected. The amount of vitamin loss depends on the food and the level of irradiation. It can range from 5-80%. Cooking your food also causes atleast a 50% drop in nutritional value across the spectrum, not just a hand full of vitamins such as in irradiation. On a final note, if you're worried about your food coming into contact with feces, don't be. Chances are you've already come into contact with all those nasty microbes the last time you touched a door knob. Just thoroughly cook your food and we'll all continue to live long and happy lives. Have a good one.
Fri Nov 06, 2009 3:55 pm
Name: Raul | Comment: "Sun Nov 23, 2008 6:37 pm
Name: Julie Lane | Comment: The only part of the egg that needs to reach 140 to 150 degrees for 3-5 minute is the outside shell because that is the only source of possible salmonella. You do NOT NEED TO HEAT THE INSIDE THE EGG!!!! DUH DUH DUH!!!!!!!!!!"

Your "Duh" is quite ironic since you are wrong. Salmonella occurs right to the center of the egg since most cases are from hens with contaminated ovaries. Moreover those infected chickens are usually outwardly healthy.
Another poster uses the number 1 in 30,000. No, it is one in 20,000 and estimates are that it is about 1 in 10,000 in the northeast and growing.

The above method does not work. eggs in 145 degree water for "3 to 5 minutes" will not even come to 110 degrees in the yolk. you need 20 to 25 minutes in 145 degree water.

As to the exchange above in may and june 2009 concerning e-coli, the extensive cause of e-coli is simple, it is the use of corn in the diet of cattle, which destroys the cattle's liver, necessitates antibiotics (when you read No antibiotics added" on beef packages what that means is no antibiotics are injected into the post slaughter beef, it does not mean the cattle wasn't on a daily diet of antibiotics. The problems with digesting corn also cause the cattle to prodigiously produce contaminated feces.

The good news is if you like your beef rare that e-coli (unlike salmonella) is only on the surface and you can throw a 20lb roast into the oven at 400 for 30 minutes and have the inside frozen cold if you like and still be safe. it is the mixing of the outside and inside in grinding meat that calls for cooking beef through at 145.cold.

Ironically the safest ma tto eat is actually pork whci we somehow have a cleanliness aversion too, despite it begin the least infected and least pathogen meat there is.