Mitigating Salmonella Risk In Recipes With Raw Eggs

In advance of my next post on Tiramisu, I thought it would be wise to say a few words about the salmonella risk associated with using raw eggs in recipes.

All unpasteurized raw eggs carry some risk of salmonella. The risk is very small – less than one egg in 20,000 is likely to be contaminated with the bacteria – but that isn’t the same as NO risk. And while I am completely comfortable taking that risk myself, I am NOT comfortable forcing that risk onto other people.

Cartons of pasteurized liquid eggs and of pasteurized liquid egg whites are widely available – but, more often than not, my recipes with raw eggs use only egg yolks: mayonnaise, Hollandaise, Caesar salad dressing, and my beloved Tiramisu.

Pasteurized shell eggs are increasingly available in larger chain grocery stores, but they aren’t available everywhere.

You may find thousands of references that explain HOW to approach heat-treating eggs at home, but the consensus of the experts is that pasteurization is best left to the professionals. And I agree with that assessment! NONE of the methods for heat-treating eggs at home is perfect, OK.

Unfortunately, I can’t always get my hands on professionally pasteurized egg yolks, so I occasionally need to take steps to mitigate the risk of using the raw eggs in my recipes. So that’s what I’m going to address in this post. I want to share how I choose to process my eggs at home to sensibly reduce the risk of illness from salmonella.

The biggest takeaway here is that taking steps to heat-treat your eggs at home will further reduce the tiny risk of salmonella in your raw eggs but is no substitute for using professionally pasteurized eggs.

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If you only need pasteurized egg whites, then you really should be able to get them at your local grocery store. They are usually sold in pint containers – near the shell eggs. Not all cartons of egg whites are pasteurized so read the label carefully. Also note that pasteurized egg whites usually have less volume when whipped than their equivalent weight in unpasteurized egg whites.

You can see there is a warning here that the pasteurization process will reduce the volume of the whipped egg whites.

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Don’t automatically assume that your local store doesn’t stock pasteurized shell eggs (with their highly desirable pasteurized yolks!). Davidson’s Safest Choice® Eggs are widely available – and you can always use their website to look for local stores where their eggs are sold. ALWAYS go with professionally pasteurized shell eggs when they are available. They will be significantly more expensive but they will be safer than non-pasteurized or home-heat-treated eggs in your recipes.

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But pasteurized shell eggs aren’t always available (or conveniently available) everywhere. So in cases where you can’t get your hands on professionally pasteurized shell eggs, you can still mitigate the risk of salmonella by heat-treating the raw eggs you use in a recipe. The remaining notes apply in cases where you can’t conveniently get professionally pasteurized shell eggs.

(1) If you’re going to heat-treat your eggs at home, start with branded eggs (eggs with a brand name). I happen to like Eggland’s Best eggs. With branded eggs, you can easily search to find out if there has been a product recall due to illness. For branded eggs, you can also find out how the farms approach food safety.

Branded egg farms love to include little brand stamps on their eggs.

Only buy refrigerated eggs and refrigerate them when you get home.

Don’t heat-treat eggs until you are ready to use them in a recipe.

(2) To heat-treat your eggs, start by bringing the eggs you will use to room temperature. Many approaches recommend that you simply leave your refrigerated eggs at ambient room temperature for a half hour or so – but I have never found this to be a sufficient way to get the whole, unbroken egg to de-refrigerate (for lack of a better term). I take the eggs I need and place them in a bowl of hot tap water and allow them to exchange heat for a half hour.

Place the eggs in a bowl and fill the bowl with hot tap water.

After a half hour, you can see that the water is still warm.

The water surrounding the eggs helps them exchange heat with cold more efficiently.

(3) Once the eggs are no longer cold, place them in a large pot and cover them with water. Heat the water and eggs slowly until the water registers 140°F.

Once the water temperature reaches 140°F, start a timer. Continue to heat the water until the temperature reaches 145°F and then turn the heat off and take your pot off the heat source.

Leave the eggs in your heated water until you timer registers 10 minutes, then empty the hot water and cool the eggs under cold running water.

If there are cracks in any of the shells, you might see some coagulated white forcing its way through.

Note – Salmonella usually lives on the shell of an egg, but it can also live inside the egg. Bringing shell eggs to 140°F+ will reduce the risk of salmonella on the egg shells significantly. The goal with this heat-treating is to also bring the temperature of the egg whites and yolks up to around 140°F for long enough to mitigate the risk of salmonella internally as well. Unfortunately, the whites of eggs begin to coagulate at the temperatures I recommend here – so when you break these eggs, you will probably see some streaks of loosely-cooked whites. That’s no bother for me because I need safer yolks. Remember that pasteurized egg whites are more widely available – so I can get pasteurized egg whites any time I need them.

You can see the streaks of partially cooked white here in the bottom of the bowl as I secure the yolk in the shell.

So this is what I’m after here – a yolk from an egg I have treated to reduce the risk from salmonella in a recipe.