Wateregging! It’s always exciting to come across a new word and more so a new concept, a new way of doing things, a new way of saving the world one egg at a time.
I discovered it in a recently published book, The Good Life, by Gillian Swinton, which details the author’s valiant attempts to maintain self-sufficient farming on a 2.7ha property in Central Otago. I bet it’s cold there right now. Autumn turning to winter in Central, a stack of dry firewood close to the door, footprints deep and dark in the white frost of morning – there goes the sustainable Swinton, her head full of novel ideas and good intentions, heading towards the chookhouse.
Wateregging is the practice of storing eggs in water. It keeps them fresh, or fresh-ish. “Refrigerated eggs can be kept for 4-5 weeks past the packing date,” advises the authority on all matters ovum, the Egg Producers Federation of New Zealand (Inc). It adds, “It’s best to keep eggs away from strongly flavoured or strongly smelling foods like onions.” But they last longer in water as per Swinton’s instructions.
Literature on the subject claims they are good for up to two years or longer. Also, there is no danger of the eggs being exposed to onions, unless you wish to add an onion to the water. I don’t know why you’d want to do that. People are strange.
Wateregging, or waterglassing eggs, is an exact science. “The process involves suspending eggs in a lime solution, inhibiting air through the shell and therefore preserving the contents inside,” Swinton writes. Use fresh farm eggs only. Put them in a glass jar. Mix 1 litre of unchlorinated water to 30g of lime, and stir. Put a lid on it. Go about your life. Wait for the world to end. The eggs will wait with you.
Wateregging is also referred to by Swinton as slack eggs or lambing eggs – what awful terms. Sometimes I think language is a disease of the mind. I take sustainability very seriously in my household and am forever composting, recycling, letting as little as possible go to waste, and that includes the regular practice of saving up meat bones.
I wrote about it in these pages a few weeks ago and actually hoped it might inspire some readers to likewise put aside leftover bones from their dinner, boil, then, burn them, and scatter the ash onto the vegetable garden. The first step is to store them in the freezer. I have accumulated quite a lot of skeletal remains and I call it bonefreezing.
Wateregging seems to me about as much actual use as bonefreezing, which is to say it seems like a lot of effort for not especially tangible results. Swinton is on uncertain grounds when she describes what the wateregged eggs actually taste like.
She writes, “The consistency of the egg is slightly more watery than a fresh one, but once gently mixed, the consistency is similar to a fresh whisked egg. It is worth noting that the longer they sit in the lime solution, the more watery the yolk is, and the shell will become more fragile.”
The world ends. You sit in your reinforced generator-powered underground bunker and cook a wateregged egg. It tastes like water. You cry, your tears rolling into the wateregged water.
Wateregging, though, works for banana bread. Swinton writes that fried and poached wateregged eggs “didn’t lead to a successful cook”, but adds, “Baking? Perfect. Every time I bake my banana bread, I grab a few of my limed eggs for the recipe.” The world ends, but you will survive, kept alive by bananabreading.
