How to pasteurize eggs at home

Pasteurizing eggs at home is an easy process. It literally takes only minutes. Many people consider the risks of eating raw eggs minimal, and so they eliminate this step when making anything from mayonaisse to salad dressings to Royal Icing. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a regulation expected to prevent each year the approximately 79,000 cases of foodborne illness and 30 deaths caused by consumption of eggs contaminated with the bacterium Salmonella Enteritidis. For additional info, please feel free to check out this link. 

There is a lot of information available about how eggs become contaminated, etc.  My goal here is only to show that pasteurizing can be done at home without the expense of store-bought pasteurized eggs. 

However small the risk, prevention is just one instructable away!

Step 1: Items needed

Ingredients and tools:

• Whole raw eggs, washed
• Water
• Saucepan
• Slotted or regular spoon
• Timer
• Cooking thermometer (optional)
• Permanent marker (optional)

Comments

[rexit]

I raise a few totally free range chickens(Who, by the way, like to roost on my porch at night and can't hold their poop till they go back to bug hunting in the field in the morning) I used to drink a dozen or so raw store bought eggs with a little chocolate when I had ulsers..Never thought about pasteurizing them...I don't wash my eggs(To preserve the bloom)so I'll be passing your amazingly simple process along to the people I share my eggs with in case they have any concerns about them.....Thanks for the education................(Now...If I can only get my chickens to wear diapers at night, I wouldn't have to wash off the porch every morning.).....................

[sunshiine]

Nice and informative instructable! Thanks for sharing!

[Kimberly^]

Thanks sunshiine!

[TN777]

Wait- wouldn't washing the egg with soap and water remove the bloom of the egg? Or are you using storebought eggs?

[Kimberly^]

Yes, I use store bought eggs. I wish I had fresh laid eggs! However, since the commercial egg industry already removes the bloom, which is nature's way of protecting the egg from bacteria, I find it even more important to pasteurize any egg I eat raw.

[marcellahella]

Thanks! I always eat raw eggs in Italy because here it seams normal, but when I go in California I see that everybody doesn't like that so much...so I will pasteurize them and people will eat my mayonnaise over there too (and will be safer for me too).
Do the white part of the eggs become a little bit cook or it stay completely raw?

[Kimberly^]

Thank you for commenting! The whites can look a bit cloudy, but they are still raw.

[The Daeng]

great instructable...
pasteurization is an activity to eliminate microbe like coliform from food and beverages without broke the nutrient value like protein that will denaturate in 176 F...

milk pasteurized by heating it until 167 F, allow the bacteria to form "microspore"...
then milk let sit to allow it cool and the microspore will form new bacerial agent...
finelly milk heated to 167 F again to eliminate new bacterial agent

sorry for bad english TT_TT

[Kimberly^]

Thank you for commenting. Your English is fine :)

[bajablue]

This is such an informative Ible, Kimberly! I had no idea pasteurizing eggs was so dang simple!

[Kimberly^]

Thank you bajablue! No more of paying top dollar for those things, IF you can find them! Woo hoo!