Large egg with wrinkled shell, placed on a countertop.

How to Break Things Off with a Bad Egg

Large egg with wrinkled shell, placed on a countertop.

In a moment of eggsasperation, Nate pulled a wrinkly egg from the refrigerator and thrust it in my face. I was supposed to determine if the strange-looking specimen would present harm to the family. My first instinct was to run.

“Why?” he asked. “Why is it so wrinkly, and what happened to the chicken? What happened to it?”

I didn’t—and still don’t—understand the chicken part of his question. Unfertilized chicken eggs typically don’t contain chickens, though I suppose they could, so I ran a search and mostly came up with headlines such as this one from the Penn State Extension site: “Prevention of Egg Eating in Chickens.” In other words, some chickens will eat their own eggs. How eggshilarating.

In any case, I was now in possession of the wrinkly egg and had to determine what to do with it. Here were my options as I saw them:

  • Carefully inspect the egg, looking for cracks and sniffing for powerful odors.
  • Drop a photo of the egg, and my question, into a chat my co-workers started for random, after-work banter.
  • Crack it open and let the feathers fly.

Eventually, I did all three, but not necessarily in that order. I inspected it and discovered the shell was so thin that maybe micro-cracks were starting to form, so I decided to toss it by breaking it open over the garbage disposal and placing the shell in the composting bin. In doing so, I determined that perhaps it was a perfectly good egg after all. The yolk looked fine, and there was no smell.

But, just to make sure, I asked the chat group, and one of my coworkers said she always does the water test, which I know about and have used in the past, but in the heat of all the confusion and potential danger, I forgot about it.

Basically, you’re supposed to drop the egg gently into a bowl or glass of water. If it sinks, it’s good. If it floats, it’s bad. However, the article “How to Tell if Eggs are Bad” on the Bon Appétit website cracks that myth right open. Instead of the water test, you’re supposed to just take a chance, take a whiff, see how the yolks run—or simply make a determination to not take any chances. It’s really a 50/50 deal.

So maybe I made the right choice, didn’t crack under pressure, gave things one shell of a try, but I’ll always wonder about that one bad egg that got away and how good it would have been in a cheese soufflé.

Your Turn: Do you have a method for testing whether a favorite food is too ripe or just right?

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Published by ckennedy

Author of the DIY blog: Fixin' Leaks and Leeks. Paper/Rock Writing Consultation, Sole Proprietor.

24 thoughts on “How to Break Things Off with a Bad Egg”

  1. I’ve never seen a wrikled egg before! If something seems off, I’ll check the Sell By and Best Used By dates. If the questionable food is within those dates, I use it. If not, I throw it out. Usually. Depending on what it is.

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  2. Occasionally, we get a wrinkled egg. The eggs we use are all local, organic, and free-range. None of them have ever been a bad egg, and we’ve eaten them happily. I think it just has something to with the calcium in their diet on a certain day, or something magic maybe.

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  3. Never knew chickens could get bronchitis, a common cause of wrinkled eggs. The egg is safe to eat, according to several websites. DuckDuckGo is a great search engine. Good to know about the water test being 50/50. Avocados are ripe when they “give” with a gentle squeeze. One of the few foods I know how to find ripe. Mostly, it’s a toss up for me. I hope whatever it is is ripe.

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  4. Hi. I guess I’ve nearly always had good luck with eggs. Milk is another story. Sometimes I wonder why milk at times goes bad at home even if the “sell by” date is still far away. Maybe it happens because the dairy or the food store didn’t refrigerate it properly. Enjoy the weekend!

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