Fresh eggs, or maybe not so fresh eggs.
Discussion
The poached egg thread got me wondering about freshness of eggs in UK shops, as opposed to other countries and direct from the farm.
If I go to my local ICA supermarket in Sweden, ICA is basically the equivalent of Tesco, or the Coop which is the next one along, (for some strange reason I can't bring myself to use Willys
) but I can pick up a carton of eggs, and they will be as fresh as fresh can be.
I mean you can do picture perfect poached eggs without even trying all the Hairy Bikers malarkey and so on. If want fried eggs the white holds in the pan perfectly and doesn't spread out.
Yet if I go into a UK supermarket, pick up half a dozen with the latest date I can find, even if used the same day most times the poached egg is impossible to do easily as evidenced by the poached egg thread. Plus sometimes the white on a fried example holds up and sometimes it spreads in a watery mess all over the place.
I've even bought from our local farm shop, which isn't a poultry farm btw, and get the same results.
So my question for the farmers and grocers is, why do we get such crap eggs in UK?
And secondly, eggs in UK are almost totally brown shell. The Swedish ones are white shell. Is that part of the difference e.g. model and marque of hen? Or?
If I go to my local ICA supermarket in Sweden, ICA is basically the equivalent of Tesco, or the Coop which is the next one along, (for some strange reason I can't bring myself to use Willys
) but I can pick up a carton of eggs, and they will be as fresh as fresh can be.I mean you can do picture perfect poached eggs without even trying all the Hairy Bikers malarkey and so on. If want fried eggs the white holds in the pan perfectly and doesn't spread out.
Yet if I go into a UK supermarket, pick up half a dozen with the latest date I can find, even if used the same day most times the poached egg is impossible to do easily as evidenced by the poached egg thread. Plus sometimes the white on a fried example holds up and sometimes it spreads in a watery mess all over the place.
I've even bought from our local farm shop, which isn't a poultry farm btw, and get the same results.
So my question for the farmers and grocers is, why do we get such crap eggs in UK?
And secondly, eggs in UK are almost totally brown shell. The Swedish ones are white shell. Is that part of the difference e.g. model and marque of hen? Or?
Interesting Andy, so considering that unless I search out local poultry farmers and buy fresh laid or as near as possible from them, and that the supply chain prevents us buying fresh laid in the shops, what would you consider as fresh and getting a bit past it? 7days?
Reading between the lines I'm thinking that the best before date stamped on the shell should be more than three weeks away, ie egg laid < 7 days and after 7 days the white starts to thin?
Reading between the lines I'm thinking that the best before date stamped on the shell should be more than three weeks away, ie egg laid < 7 days and after 7 days the white starts to thin?
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