How that boiled egg in your favourite lunchtime sarnie could be a month old
IT might taste like it was just cooked this morning, but that egg in your shopbought sandwich or salad could be up to 26 days old.
The eggs are being boiled in bulk in factories and pasteurised to kill bacteria which means they will last for weeks.
Eggs are seeing a boom in sales because they are viewed as healthy and have become a mainstay of popular protein-based diets.
Packs of scrambled, poached and even ready-made fried eggs are also being made on production lines and supplied frozen to pubs and restaurants.
The same is the case with so- called ‘long eggs’ – 10in long, perfectly cylindrical eggs, which produce even slices.
They are made by breaking a large number of eggs and cooking the whites in a mould with a hole in the middle.
The yolks are then poured into the middle and they are cooked again. Vacuum packs of the egg cylinders can then be sent out to produce perfect slices, each with a yolk in the middle. The revelation of longlife eggs comes from Brusco, a major wholesale food supplier, which sells boiled eggs that are designed to last up to 26 days.
In a new departure the firm is now able to offer bulk supplies of boiled eggs with a perfectly runny yolk.
These are a way for pubs, hotels and restaurants to reduce their costs, as they can avoid paying a chef to precisely batch-boil a large number.
The long-life eggs, which have been precooked and frozen, are heat treated or pasteurised to kill any bacteria and so ensure they are safe.
Andrew Ashby, managing director at Brusco, told trade magazine the Morning Advertiser that the product will offer the trade the option of serving a popular dish quickly and consistently without wasting time on fiddly preparation. ‘Our eggs are of the highest quality and provide guaranteed results every time, putting a family favourite back on the menu with a process that is both time- efficient and cost-effective,’ he said.
Supermarkets, restaurant chains and pubs routinely sell old or processed food to customers on the basis it is ‘fresh’ or has been freshly cooked.
For example, the apparently fresh fish sold by supermarkets can be up to three weeks old. Salmon served up in ready meals could have could have travelled thousands of miles across the globe for processing and can be many months old.
At the same time, producers and supermarkets now offer fresh produce, including apples, which was actually harvested a year ago. The fruit is kept in a state of suspended animation for months by being placed in chilled warehouses with a modified atmosphere that halts ripening.