How long does a hard boiled egg last?

“I just ate one that was in my jeep for over 8 hours no adverse effects as of yet”

“Hmm...was this an experiment or were you just really hungry?”

“This was an awesome old thread. Lotta peeps.”

“Yup, good thread.”

“Raw eggs will keep for a year if you rub them with Vaseline to keep oxygen out. An old (very old) sailor's trick.”

“Sounds like an old (very old) wives' tale.”

“Frozen grapes are awesome. According to my grandmother, who grew up without refrigeration, FRESH chicken eggs are good about 2 weeks in cooler weather and about a week if at any time the weather hits 80 degrees. This is not going to be the case if you buy your eggs at a grocery as you have no idea how long between the time the chicken laid it and the time you purchased it, plus you do not know what the chickens ate or how healthy they were.

You can make a relative guess how old an egg was if you crack it and examine it. The older the egg, the more it will tend toward watery whites that want to spread and thin out, and the yolk may have a slightly cloudy look. Just because one egg in a carton seems pretty fresh because the egg plumps up and the white holds together as a gelatinous mass means nothing about the rest of the eggs in the pack as it is routine at most grocery stores to lift the good eggs out of a pack where a few have cracked and combine them with other like eggs to make a good dozen to sell.

My grandmother on hard boiled eggs: If your eggs are taken fresh from the hen and carefully washed to ensure the shell is clean it is possible to boil them and eat them a safely a week or even 2 weeks later if they were stored in a clean, dry place out of sunlight and kept cool. When I asked how cool = kept cool, she said 70 degree days would probably be the max and if it gets over 80, probably more like 3 to 4 days would be safest. She also offered if you peel the egg and cut it in half, you could sniff it and tell by the smell if it was safe to eat.

Another fun fact according to my grandma. You can fry an egg through one day and keep it in a cool, dry place protected from any contact with bugs or sunlight, and safely eat it for 48 hours. She used to make a big breakfast and a big dinner on Sundays. Lunch was provided in the form of leftover pancakes and fried eggs on the table under a plastic cover. None of our large, extended family ever had the slightest illness from consumption of these leftovers from breakfast for lunch.

Butter, mustard, and dill pickles also require no refrigeration as long as they are kept sealed in a cool, dry place away from sunlight. My grandma never refrigerated any of the above items. There were some more, but I forget what they are and will have to ask her tomorrow as it is late. I think ketchup was one of them.”

“Ask her how she froze them with no refrigeration. We could learn anlot from previous generations. That's really cool you still have her to learn from, Gertie. Mine are all gone now”

“I wonder if there is any info in the Foxfire books?
When I was a kid we used to carry egg sandwiches in our lunches and never had a way to keep them cool...
Our chef said mayo is safe to keep unrefrigerated for longer periods of time because the eggs they use in it are now pasteurized ...
...cheese can be dipped in wax to last longer...
...and salsa will last a few days without refrigeration ...”

“I was thinking about foxfire too Div. The talked a lot agout making jerky, which of course was to keep longer.
I'm not too sure about salsa though. I've forgot and led it out before and it doesn't last too long on the counter.”

“I found some info and posted it on my facebook...
One was a survival guy who had some neat info....and of course there was Mother Earth News....”

“I froze the grapes, not my grandmother. Sorry that was unclear.

My grandmother has been telling me all sorts of stories about how they stored things since my first question about the eggs.

In the summer, they kept food cold in a cool box built into the kitchen. It had openings at the top and bottom. The top one into the house, the bottom one to the outside, and they covered the opening to the outside with cheesecloth kept wet with a bowl of water which was changed regularly twice a day. I did some looking, and I think I found something called a "California Closet" that approximates this design and keeps the space reportedly as much as 20 degrees cooler than the room.

She also mentioned various methods such as root cellars, canning, brine, packing some produce such as apples in sawdust, and drying things like jerky and many fruits and veggies.

She says I shouldn't waste my money on expensive camping food products. She's trying to find the book of recipes my great-great-grandmother used for the trail when they went west in a covered wagon. She says the hard candy we make every Christmas named "Hard Tack" was a trail food they made with family before they left for the trip. She wants to give me the recipe for what sounds like the equivalent of a homemade energy bar that was popular for the trail. She says my great-great-grandmother used to make it in the wood stove and it was one of her favorite treats.”

“Fresh eggs that will only last two weeks?
According to my mother/grandmothers they keep much longer than that, if the eggs are stored reasonable cool (for example in the cellar). They should be used within 4 weeks.
Nowadays all eggs bought at the supermarket have a date printed on them, when they were layed. On the box is printed the due by date. I just checked the eggs in my fridge. The date printed on them indicates they were layed 1st January. The 'sold by' date on the box says 22nd Jan and the 'due by' date is 1st of Feb. So they should be used within 4 weeks after they were layed. In the supermarket the eggs are not kept in refridgeraters, but in ordinary shelves.
Hard boiled eggs, stored at normal room temperature, should at least be good for 4 weeks, provided they don't have any cracks in their shell. The supermarkets around here sell year round 'Easter Eggs' (hardboiled and colourfull painted eggs). The dye they use obviously serves to closs the pores and keep the oxygen out. Almost like the vaseline in Gremlins story. Thus the eggs will keep at least four weeks without refridgerating.”

“I feed my chickens oyster shells and they produce a much harder egg shell than ones bought in store.Growing up in the amish community we never refrigerated our eggs and ate them or sold them within a month.We would alsoe pickle them and ate many six months later.I wonder how they teach chicken s to put a date on the egg.Maybe they cross the road to figure what day it is
last edited: 1/24/12 4:40:33 AM”

“Why? One can expect Swiss chicken easily figur out how to print the date on their eggs. All they need is Swiss watches and an army knifes.”

“Oh yes the watches ..i love swiss cheese made in Ohio.Guggesburg.”

“Yup, and if you have chickens, don't clean the eggs, they have a natural, uh, 'mucous' the will keep oxygen out. Obviously this can't be done with commercial eggs.

Clean them before you use them, of course, and wash your hands fully before proceeding (slmonella risk).”

“Swiss chicken are pretty clever. I am not sure if MacGyver could figure out how to lay an egg.”

“Unwashed eggs will keep in the fridge for over a year, BTW.

Swiss chickens would prolly tell all the other animals of the «basse cour» how to behave, eh, Karin?”

“Last night I was reading chicken porn on the WWW and they said the average egg you buy at the grocery store is 45 days old by the time you eat it. It's no wonder my 2 day old eggs taste so much better.”

“We have dates on our eggs too.”

“Fresh eggs right from the nest are soooooooo much better.”

“The trick is to cook them good (thoroughly). I have ate eggs from the fridge over a month old. but boiled about six days in the fridge outside three days, might just have been lucky but I love eggs.”

““We have dates on our eggs too.”
Gremlin
So, Canadian chickens have figured it out too? They were probably audited by Swiss chicken

Swiss chicken are clever, keep fit (lots of jogging around) and their eggs at the Migros supermarket are the very, very freshest.
http://youtu.be/gGzk2B2azJY”

“LOL! I think you posted that before.

BTW, Canucks being like the Swiss (where everything that is not forbidden is compulsory) is prolly better than what National Lampoon Magazine said about Canadians: 'The only people more boring than the Swedes.'”

“How long does a hard boiled egg last?

It depends on how quick you eat it.”

“what last longer? the boiled egg, or the boiled chicken, that is the question!”

“I think the egg was stapled to the chicken.”