Cooking Hack: How to tell if an egg is fresh enough to eat

 This is a question that came up recently on a Facebook group that I have been following.  With the price of food always going up and with so many people now facing loss of income thanks to the recession following the start of the COVID-19 crisis throwing away good food is now less acceptable than ever. Did you know it is estimated that 720 million eggs are thrown away in the UK in a year because they are "out of date"?  Although chickens now seem to have date stamps attached to their bums the date on an egg or the box is the "Best Before" date- not "Use By".  This is an indication that it is safe to eat the contents a few days after this but it will not be as fresh as before and suffer from a loss of flavour/colour/quality. So how do you tell with an egg?  You do the water test.

An egg has an air sack at the rounded end.  When the egg is fresh this is small, as it ages it gets bigger.  So if you put your egg in a jug of water (see through is better) and it sinks to the bottom and sits horizontally it is really fresh and can be used in any recipe.  If it sinks but floats more vertically (rounded end nearly upright) then it is semi fresh and still good to use in most recipes. If it sinks but is now floating vertically with the rounded end up then use right away; this egg will not be as good in recipes like poached eggs or where you need to separate the egg white from the yolk as the white will be more watery and the sack around the yolk more fragile.  If it floats - bin it! 

Still not sure what I mean - the following YouTube vid shows you...