On my farm, I raise laying hens and Muscovy ducks. I had so many eggs last year I tried my hand at water glassing eggs! Water glassing is a technique which helps preserve eggs for up to 18 months. The eggs (clean and unwashed) are submerged in a pickling lime and water solution. This process seals the shell, allowing you to enjoy fresh and unspoiled eggs for an extended period with minimal refrigeration.
I had never heard of the water glassing technique until I saw it on Instagram. When I had several dozen eggs of various ages, I picked out the cleanest eggs. I may have had to flick off a little piece of dirt, sawdust or chicken droppings, but I worked hard to use the very cleanest. You cannot wash the eggs before you put them in jars.
There are many websites and YouTube videos with detailed water glassing instructions. I’ve included a link below to instructions from The Farmhouse on Boone. The primary goal of my blog post is not to give the instructions, but to share my results and an update of how well they were preserved after almost a year.
https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/water-glassing-eggs/
I did a few jars of eggs with just a dozen eggs in them, because most water glassing resources recommend you leave 2 inches above the eggs of space between the top of the eggs and the top of the jar. That space is then filled to the brim with the water and lime solution. The other jars I filled with 15 eggs, one more layer, and they seemed to do fine without the extra 2 inches between the eggs and the top of the jar.
I live off-grid and can not always use the AC in my barn house/cabin/tiny house. I also have limited fridge space. The first 3-4 dozen eggs I put in 1/2 gallon jars and added the lime as directed. I stored them at the bottom of my fridge out of the way. Because I water glassed the first batch of eggs in August last year, it was just too hot to leave them out. As it cooled off in the fall, I continued to glass more eggs. I think I did the last ones in October. I only had so much room in my fridge and we ended up with about 15-20 dozen glassed eggs. I put the later batches in what we call the cool room on the North side of our barn. We live in the “barn”, so it is also our house. There is an attached pantry area that is not cooled or heated like the house. We left the eggs in the cool room all winter. It got below freezing in the cool room for a couple of days, so we brought in our perishable items that would not do well with freezing temperatures. We put the eggs on the floor in a cool area of the house.
We began using the water glassed eggs when our chickens were not laying many eggs in the coldest part of the winter. My partner, Tim, used them the most, and he found them to be just fine. We also used them to make dog food for all our dogs. One of our dogs has specialized dietary needs and cannot tolerate kibble. We give scraps to all the dogs almost daily. So they also got the glassed eggs.
So how did the eggs do? The first ones were much more firm. As the spring and summer progressed this year, the whites got thinner. But there was no smell or rot at all. A few eggs went bad, however. We always open our eggs one at a time into a separate dish before using them. We do that with fresh eggs also just to be sure!
A couple of jars had one or more cracked eggs in it which did not ruin all the other eggs as I suspected it would. There was one jar with 3 cracked eggs. This was probably caused by moving them around from my fridge in the tiny house to the cool room at the barn, and I had to compost the whole jar. It was pretty stinky! I cracked an occasional egg that had a mild unpleasant odor, so I put it in my compost as well. Overall, however, I feel like our water glassed egg experiment went well and I plan to try this preservation method again next year, incorporating what I have learned.
If we had more hens, I would try it sooner. However, this year we have fewer chickens as we have been gradually losing them to predators. I will raise some new chicks this fall before it gets too cold for next year. Let us know if you have questions about glassing eggs! And you can visit our website to see videos of the eggs as well. Here is the link: www.agroshareMD.com.
