Egg-cellent Uses for Eggshells

But before we talk about eggshells, let’s talk about eggs. For many years, there were various warnings about eggs and their high cholesterol content. Worry no longer. Today, we know this is an urban myth from 20th-century medical care. According to the Mayo Clinic and researchers, eggs don’t raise cholesterol levels the way other cholesterol-containing foods do.

Yay! I’ve always eaten eggs liberally. It seems as if half the households in my town raise at least a few eggs for sale; the corner store carries fresh eggs from a small farmer up the road, and most years, I have eggs from my own small laying flock.

Relatively cheap, high in protein and other vital nutrients, eggs offer the family cook unparalleled versatility. Fried, boiled, poached, baked, scrambled, souffléed, pickled, devilled (try this recipe), meringued—there’s an egg dish for every meal and any special occasion.

Eggs also star as leavening, binding, and moisture-holding agents in baked goods, pancakes, custards, quiches, batters, hashes, and meat loaves. Various kinds of egg-wash add shine, color, and/or or crispness to the surface of pastries and other baked products.

Extra eggs also freeze well, either separated or whole (whites and yolks mixed together). Some people freeze them in lightly oiled ice-cube trays, then store the frozen cubes in containers. Thawed, they cook and taste like fresh eggs.

Eggs From Backyard Chickens

You may have noticed that backyard chicken-keeping has become very popular, a trend that has forced cities and towns across the nation to rework building codes and zoning ordinances to allow the practice under strict guidelines.

Home and community gardeners emphasize the dual value of chickens in their food-production systems, since they provide valuable manure as well as fresh eggs (or meat). The hen manure and bedding (straw, hay, sawdust) provide plant nutrients and boost the organic matter content of the soil.

Laying hens are the easiest livestock to keep. Once you set them up with suitable living and nesting quarters, they cost very little, especially if allowed to range during the warmer months, when their preferred foods are bugs and weeds. I’ve gotten deeply attached to my “working girls.” I find them whimsical and charismatic, with distinct individual personalities.

Egg Safety

The primary warning on egg consumption these days involves contamination from bacteria, primarily salmonella. Even though the risk is very low, affecting primarily the very young, the very old, and the very sick, you probably want to take it seriously. 

• Salmonella can survive for weeks outside a living body, and they are not destroyed by freezing. Ultraviolet radiation and heat accelerate their demise; they perish after being heated to 55°C (131°F) for 90 min, or to 60°C (140°F) for 12 min. To protect against Salmonella infection, heating food for at least ten minutes at 75°C (167°F) is recommended, so the centre of the food reaches this temperature.

Bottom line: Just wash your hands after handling raw eggs, never serve raw or lightly cooked unpasteurized eggs, and forgo sunny-side-up and over-easy, cooking all egg products until both whites and yolks turn firm. These warnings extend to organic eggs, eggs from your local farmer or farmer’s market, and eggs from your own hens.

Unless you can find commercially pasteurized eggs, don’t use raw eggs for homemade mayonnaise, ice cream, raw egg dressings, or eggnogs. No undercooked, runny eggs for breakfast. No raw-egg-white drinks for muscle-building. And don’t sample the raw cookie dough.

You can find instructions online for do-it-yourself pasteurization. As an experienced and ardent do-it-yourselfer, I wouldn’t trust raw eggs I’d pasteurized myself. I’ve had two bouts of food poisoning in my lifetime, and I don’t ever want another one. But you can prepare cooked-egg bases for most raw-egg favorites.

Eggs for Medicinal and Cosmetic Use

You’ll find innumerable of web pages advocating raw egg yolks, whites, whole eggs, or the thin, inner membrane of a raw egg for treating/curing burns, acne, oily skin, large pores, for removing wrinkles, old scars and more, as well as many do-it-yourself beauty sites that suggest using raw, unpasteurized egg whites or yolks as facial masks and hair/scalp treatments.

In the past, I’ve both tried and recommended many of these practices. After all, eggs, egg membranes, and eggshells been used for various medicinal and cosmetic purposes for thousands of years.

But I no longer use any part of the raw egg for healing or hair or skin care. There are so many other ingredients available in my home (aloe leaf, oatmeal, olive oil, cider vinegar, baking soda, herb tinctures and salves) it doesn’t seem worth the risk.

Would pasteurized eggs work as well as raw eggs for medicinal or cosmetic purposes? I can’t find information either confirming or denying whether the pasteurization process would destroy the active compounds that make raw eggs useful for these purposes.

6 Ways to Use Eggshells

If you eat eggs, you’ll have eggshells. I generally toss mine in with the rest of the kitchen scraps, which end up in the compost pile at one edge of my big garden. But lately, I’ve begun saving the shells for all sorts of uses.

For many uses, grind the eggshells into powder. First sterilize by covering the empty shells with water and boil for five minutes. Remove them from the water, set individually on a cookie sheet to dry. When the shells are completely dry, grind them to a fine powder in a blender and store in a closed glass container.

1. Avoid Blossom-End Rot: I plan to treat each of my tomato transplants and summer-squash hills to a handful of ground eggshell powder to add calcium to the soil to prevent blossom end rot, which can be a real challenge during summers of erratic rainfall. Just place eggshells in the bottom of the hole when transplanting.
    
2. Boost Your Own Calcium: Powdered eggshells can serve as a digestible calcium supplement in the diets of people and companion animals. One teaspoon of eggshell powder makes about 800 milligrams of calcium. It also contains small amounts of other essential minerals present in the shell. You can add the powdered eggshells to baked goods, or sprinkle them into soups and casseroles.
    
3. Calcium-rich Vinegar and Salad Dressing: Old-time sauerkraut makers sometimes added crushed or powdered eggshells between the layers of cabbage, where it gradually dissolved in the mild acid environment of the fermenting kraut. Today, some people dissolve the eggshell powder in cider vinegar and add the vinegar to salad dressings. It needs to infuse for 6 weeks and then be decanted.
    
4. Feed to Chickens: Some people feed eggshells back to their chickens, who need an abundant supply of calcium to provide for both their own needs and for making new eggshell material. Hens really do need a lot of calcium to lay eggs. Oyster shell is a popular supplement. But you can also add ground eggshell and mix your eggshell supplement.
    
5. Use to Deter Pests: Sprinkle eggshells around areas to deter slugs and snails which will avoid sharp shell edge because they are soft-bodied. I usually sprinkle eggshells near the base on seedlings to keep pests away.
    
6. Plant Seeds in Eggshells: This is an old-time trick. In the days before nice peat pots provided by your local nursery, an eggshell worked nicely. Here’s advice from 1880: “Take eggshells cut in half, make two or three small holes in the bottom of each, fill with sifted soil, , sink in a box of sand, sow seeds and cover with glass, of course keeping them in the right light. Water only the sand, for they will absorb enough through the holes. In transplanting, break off the shells, leaving the lump of earth intact without the roots being jarred or disturbed.”

I have no doubt that there are MANY more uses for eggshells—at least an egg-friendly dozen! Your ideas and thoughts are welcome below.