Chef Tips: You’ll Never Separate Egg Whites This Way Again

When it comes to eggs, Chef Julian Bond shows us we’ve been doing it all wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkepmPMNdsITo illustrate the food dangers associated with eggs, chef Julian Bond paints us a picture:Eggs sit in cartons at the supermarket. People are opening and closing cartons, inspecting and touching the eggs, looking for cracks.“Everybody’s looking at eggs, everyone is taking their face right up to eggs—nobody’s sneezing on eggs are they?” the chef asks innocently. “Nobody’s got a cold when they go to the grocery store?” he continues.His point? “Eggs are exposed,” says the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts instructor.Which becomes an issue when you want to get cracking.

The Best Way to Crack an Egg: Crush Don’t Crack

 “You never crack an egg, you always crush an egg,” says the instructor and chef.“Because if you crush your egg on a flat surface, all the little shell sticks to that membrane on the inside and you’ll never get the shell in your egg.”However, Bond says if you crack an egg on a sharp surface, the shell falls away and you’ll get shell bits (covered in bacteria and who knows what else) in your food.

How Not to Separate Egg Whites

On the road to an egg white omelet, one has to separate the yolk. Chef Bond demonstrates the common, in-the-shell technique, the one you see on cooking shows where hosts use half a cracked egg shell to scoop the yolk from the egg—but if you watch closely, what happens to the egg white?“It’s cleaning my shell,” explains Bond. “Of all the bacteria on there, or all the gunk, or whatever may be on your eggs.”The egg white slides down the side of the shell and takes everything that was on the surface with it. Delicious!

Separating Egg Whites the Right Way

“What you should do is, when you have an egg, you must learn to crack an egg with one hand,” says Bond.And the rule to remember is “one hand dirty, one hand clean.”First step: Start with clean hands. Your dirty hand will be your egg-cracking hand. Tap it on a flat surface to crush the egg. Open it up in one hand and pour the egg into your clean hand (over a bowl) with fingers lightly separated. The egg white streams through, while the yolk remains—gross shell-washing problem averted!

Bonus: Egg-Separating Trick to Impress Your Friends Everyone

Crack an egg into a bowl. Then take an empty water bottle, squeeze out the air and stick the mouth of it up next to the yolk. Release the water bottle and watch the yolk get sucked right up! (The video above shows this trick in action).

For more chef tips from PICA’s Julian Bond, check out: Garlic: ‘One of the Most Dangerous Ingredients in Your Kitchen’