BURSTWhether you’re coming home from the grocery store or farmer’s market, you likely wash your fruits and veggies before eating them. But what about eggs? After all, who knows how many hands have been on those eggs—especially because dirt and germs spread easily when packing them with other foods in your tote bags.
The fear is real: fresh, uncracked eggs may contain the Salmonella bacteria that cause food poisoning, per the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in six Americans get sick from contaminated food or beverages each year, and 3,000 lose their life due to foodborne illnesses. So, should you wash eggs? Find out what a food safety expert says.
Should you wash eggs before cooking them?
Although your intentions to follow safety practices and avoid foodborne illnesses come from a good place, you’re actually better off skipping this step entirely. Here’s why: “They’re already washed. Usually in commercial washing facilities, they use sterilizing agents to wash the eggs, which isn’t something that you’re normally going to do at home. It doesn’t hurt to wash them, but it doesn’t help either,” says Bryan Quoc Le, PhD, a food scientist and food science consultant.
That said, it’s hotly debated whether you should wash farm-fresh eggs. Unlike store-bought eggs from the grocery, farm-fresh eggs have a protective coating that allows them to stay at room temperature for several weeks, Dr. Quoc Le says. “Here in the U.S., we have decided that washing farm-fresh eggs mitigates a lot of risks, but the problem with washing them is that it removes the cuticle—the protective coating—so it makes them susceptible to spoilage. So if you do wash your eggs, you have to refrigerate them,” he explains.
How to wash unwashed eggs and extend their freshness
Dr. Quoc Le recommends using warm water to wash farm-fresh eggs thoroughly; the warm water will kill more microorganisms. In the fridge, farm-fresh eggs can last up to a month, as long as there aren’t cracks. If there is some damage to the shell, he advises throwing away the egg and cleaning any spills to avoid the cross-contamination of bacteria. But even if there aren’t any cracks, Dr. Quoc Le says you should keep eggs away from other foods in the fridge.
“Making sure that they’re not touching other foods is really critical because they can transfer Salmonella on the shelf with other food. So just make sure that there’s separation between them or some physical barrier,” he says.
Keeping farm-fresh and store-bought eggs in the fridge also extends their freshness. According to a study published in Poultry Science, refrigerated washed and oiled eggs maintained their Grade A quality after 15 weeks compared to unwashed eggs stored at room temperature dropped from Grade AA to almost Grade B in one week. FYI, the grade of an egg refers to its interior quality, with Grade AA being the freshest. Grade B eggs have thinner whites and flatter yolks, so they are usually used to make liquid or dried egg products, per the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The bottom line
To wash your eggs or to not wash your eggs, that is the question. And experts say that the answer varies, and it depends on where they’re produced and sold. Essentially, if you want to avoid foodborne illnesses, you shouldn’t wash store-bought eggs because they’ve already been sterilized. But if you go the farm-fresh route, you can wash them in warm water and then store them in the refrigerator to maintain their freshness.