L.A. Times Test Kitchen tips: Storing eggs

Next time you stock up on eggs, don't even think about storing them in the handy open plastic egg holder on the door of your refrigerator. Keep the eggs in their carton, on a shelf, toward the back of the fridge.

Egg shells are porous, and they absorb odors easily and can lose moisture. Keeping eggs in their closed carton helps to protect them from stray odors and gives them a little cushioning to protect them from cracking. Storing eggs on a refrigerator shelf will keep them consistently colder than storing on a door, where the temperature is often not cold enough and fluctuates each time the refrigerator is opened.

If you have any kitchen tips or questions you'd like me to explore, leave a comment below or shoot me an e-mail at noelle.carter@latimes.com.

-- Noelle Carter
Twitter/noellecarter

Photo: Alex Broking

Comments

[Chris Green]

Likewise, here in the UK it is very rare for people to store eggs in the fridge.

Refrigerating eggs has absolutely no impact on extending their shelf life, and will usually only result in the eggs taking on the odours and flavours of everything in the fridge. Thus, refrigerating eggs is a completely pointless task.

Storing on the counter top or in a cupboard, in the original cardboard container, is a perfectly acceptable solution, and your eggs will be perfectly good to eat right up to (and likely beyond) the use-by date on the carton.

[Nancy Singleton Hachisu]

Hi Noelle,

I agree that temperature fluctuations are bad for eggs and your advice is sound.

On the other hand...if you get buy eggs from a farmer (or live on an egg farm like I do), you might want to skip the refrigeration all together depending on the weather. Actually we have incredibly hot and humid summers here in Japan, and I still don't refrigerate. But then we use the eggs up fairly quickly.

Cold eggs aren't good for baking or mayonnaise, so all in all the counter top storage method works better for me.

Nancy