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You can pasteurize the eggs, in the shell, in 5 minutes or so.
Put them in a pot of water. Heat the water to 140 F and hold it there for 3 minutes. Jumbo size take 5 minutes. Run cold water into the pot to cool them down.
Thanks! Will the eggs still be completely runny and "raw-like," or will they be soft-boiled?
If done right, they will be the same consistency as raw eggs. That's how they can sell pasteurized eggs for normal use.
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
My concern would be the difficulty in maintaining the precise water temp when trying to Pasteurize eggs at home.
It's not hard as long as you have a good thermometer, like an InstaRead ($10) or a good digital ($ 10 - 30). Turn the heat down as soon as the water hits the right temp, and it will usually cruise at that temp for the indicated time. The only adjustment needed would be if the water temp dropped below 138 F before you had completed the indicated time, in which case you'd have to start over.
If the water gets a little too hot, say 150 F, no harm done. But much higher temps or much longer times and you'll be into soft-boiled range in no time.
About the only place I've found pasteurized is places like Whole Foods and other natural food stores. I've never seen them in regular grocery stores around here. I used to buy them occasionally to use when I made brownies or cakes just so my kids could lick the bowl. I'd always let them do it, but then we started hearing all the talk of how dangerous it was, so I stopped until I could find pasteurized ones, but they were really expensive. After thinking about it I realized that in my key lime pie recipe, cooking was optional, and I never did it. No one ever got sick from it. My kids had never gotten sick before so I quit buying the pasteurized ones and just went back to the plain old eggs. Never a problem.
I've eaten a lot of raw cookie dough (homemade) without worries. I don't eat raw eggs in other forms because they are goopy and slimy, not because they are dangerous.
The dangerous foods, if you go by numbers of people sickened or numbers of scares each year, are peanut butter, alfalfa sprouts, spinach, tomatoes, and cantaloupe.
I just ate my 2nd bad egg in 10 years last week, almost went to the emergency room. Eating a bad egg is not just being a little nauseous, it was quite painful.
First, you can be reassured that eggs are generally safe to eat in the US. Although an estimated 1 in 4 Americans suffer food poisoning each year, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and about 5,000 deaths, less than 1% are attributed to eating eggs.
Normally only about 1 out of every 20,000 eggs carries salmonella. Even if you happened to eat one of those rare contaminated eggs raw, the chances are excellent that your immune system could knock it down with little more than experiencing a bit of "flu."
Before the big salmonella epidemic with eggs happened a couple of years ago, the shell was considered the main threat. Raw chicken eggs were sterile inside, but the shell could harbor salmonella if not properly washed. That's why you should never use a cracked egg, because the crack can let infection seep in to the sterile inside, where it can grow rapidly.
Then, through a series of mishaps back in 2010, the eggs themselves got contaminated at two farms which had wide distribution, and before it was over a couple thousand illnesses had been reported and a half million eggs were recalled.
In the aftermath of that mess, regulations concerning egg handling were tightened up, particularly in the way the eggs are washed and the way they're tested, and today eggs are safer than they were before.
It's still best not to serve raw eggs to infants, or the elderly, or to anyone with a compromised immune system, but the rest of us really have little to worry about. And pasteurized shell eggs remove the last of the worry.
I always use raw egg yolk in things like Chocolate Mousse, Tiramisu, Mayonnaise, Hollandaise, Bearnaise, or a raw egg yolk on Steak Tartare or Ham and Cheese Crepes and have never had any problems since childhood.
I suppose pasteurising egg seems like a good idea though if you are worried about it.
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