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If you get home from the grocery store and immediately transfer your eggs to the refrigerator’s designated egg compartment, you might want to think twice. Although it’s a convenient and attractive place to store your eggs, it’s not exactly the best place to do so.
Rather than taking the eggs out of their original packaging and throwing it away, it’s a good idea to keep the eggs in the carton that they were sold in—and then stash the carton near the back of the fridge. “The original carton is the best place to store eggs because it helps protect them and keeps them in a more consistent environment,” says Elisa Maloberti, food safety manager at the American Egg Board. “Eggs should be stored in the main body of the refrigerator, not in the door or a built-in egg compartment, where the temperature can fluctuate more as the refrigerator is opened and closed.”
Keep reading to learn why it’s important to keep eggs in their original packaging.
Your eggs are secretly soaking up fridge odors
Although that hard shell does a lot to protect the whites and yolks, it’s also quite porous, which means that your eggs can soak up strong fridge odors from aromatic ingredients and leftovers, which can impact how they smell and taste. “Keeping them in the carton adds a layer of protection and helps prevent those odors from affecting the eggs,” says Maloberti.
That flimsy cardboard carton is doing more than you realize
Not only does the original carton prevent eggs from absorbing some stinky fridge odors, but it also protects the structure of the egg and ensures that you don’t use an expired egg by accident. “The carton helps protect eggs from bumps and breakage, reduces moisture loss, and keeps important information like the Best By date close at hand,” says Maloberti. If you have multiple cartons of eggs stashed in your freezer, the carton will provide the information you need to ensure that you’re using the oldest eggs first.
What’s more, the cartons are actually designed in a particular way to ensure the egg is stored properly to maintain freshness. “Cartons are designed to hold eggs in the standard packed position, with the pointed end down and rounded end up, which helps keep the egg secure and maintains the air cell at the top,” says Maloberti. Storing the eggs this way can also help prevent breakage, as well as premature spoiling. Most refrigerator egg compartments aren’t designed this way, which is why you should keep that carton on hand.
Bottom line:
While you might be influenced by social media to store your eggs in a pretty bowl or some other type of container, the truth is, if you want to keep them as fresh as you can for as long as you can, it’s best to use their good ol’ carton.
