​​How to Freeze Eggs…or putting all your eggs in one freezer.

Unless you’ve been living under a very large rock, or perhaps in a country where Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza isn’t decimating wild birds and commercial poultry farms, you’ve noticed both the price of and scarcity of eggs. 

And it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

Daily the news cycle brings stories of HPAI spreading and birds being culled to try and stop that spread…which means fewer eggs in stores. And eggs are used for more than just breakfast, many products require eggs. But there’s something you can do when you can pick up an extra dozen or so: freeze them. Unlike powdered eggs, thawed eggs can be used for scrambles, baked goods, just about anything other than hard boiled.

Supplies:

-Freezer space

-Eggs

-Freezer gallon bags or a FoodSaver or freezer safe containers

-Salt (optional)

Note: Do not freeze eggs in the shell. Not only can they crack and subsequently make a huge mess when thawing, the white and yolk could be exposed to bacteria on the outside of the shells. No one wants an E-Coli omelet.

Note #2: This can be messy, or maybe it’s just the way I do things, but don’t be surprised by some mess.

Some people freeze several eggs together in one container, but I rarely need 4 or 6 at a time, so I decided to freeze mine using ice cube trays. Later, I used a large block soup freezing tray to freeze 4 eggs at a time.

The process is simple:

Put the ice cube trays on a metal baking sheet. This will keep them stable in the freezer.

Break an egg into a glass measuring cup, then add a pinch of salt (This is optional, but it helps stabilize the whites). For best results, mix the yolk into the white. You don’t have to beat it-though you can-just incorporate the two. A chopstick works well for this.

Now, the messy part: pour the egg into the slots in your tray. For me, a generic white plastic tray used two slots for one egg. Okay, maybe it was just messy for me the first few times, but it got easier.

Since I’d established the 2 cubes for one egg, I began to break 3 at time into the measuring cup, which made things go faster. Oh yeah, make a note, either on the bag or somewhere logical the ratio. I later bought trays that were 3 slots to 1 egg and a large soup freezing tray that held 4 per slot. You’ll just want to know how many cubes to use in recipes.

Freeze the eggs. This takes several hours.

Once frozen, it’s time to prep them for long-term storage, using freezer bags or a FoodSaver. Be sure to write the date on the bags.

Before use, you can thaw them in the microwave or by sitting out for a few minutes. They thaw really quickly. I lost a bag that a family member forgot to put back in the freezer in a timely manner.