Can I Safely Eat This? - Frozen Boiled Egg edition

November 9, 2020 5:33 AM

At some point in the past few months I froze some boiled eggs and forgot about them. Are they safe to eat and How can I do that?

During the first Pandemic Lockdown [UK edition], I was finding it hard to stock up on perishable food, and use it before it past use by dates, especially eggs.

Somehow, sometime I decided to freeze some hard boiled eggs.

Then I forgot about them in the back of the freezer.

Now I've found them in a freezer bag again, all except one look fine, no cracks.

I can't find any definite answers online about my main two concerns -

1: Are they safe to eat?
2: If they are safe to eat, how to eat them. How do I (should I/ can I) safely defrost them?

Any help much appreciated

posted by Faintdreams to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

They are safe to eat but the whites will be tough & pretty much texturally weird & rubbery. To still be great 3 months is about the limit, after that time they are still safe to eat but start getting the usual issues of anything kept in the freezer a long time & 6 months is about the limit mostly for taste & texture not safety. If freezing hard boiled eggs you pretty much want to just freeze the yolk. If you want to freeze eggs, next time, freeze them raw, crack them open, beat the yolk & white together & then freeze them, the fats in the yolk stop the white going weird. They are great for things like cakes or french toast when done like this.
posted by wwax at 5:58 AM on November 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Take one egg out of your bag and defrost by leaving on the counter just long enough to remove the shell, then seal back into a water-tight ziplock bag and defrost the rest of the way in warm water.

Mash the hell out of it so the white is reduced into teeny pieces to disguise the textural changes at least a bit. Either turn into egg salad with mayo and raw onion, or use as a thickener in things like curry.

If the first egg works out enough to make them worth salvaging, find a use for the others soon.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:28 AM on November 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks. I'm going to try and defrost one and use it as curry thicker!
posted by Faintdreams at 11:11 AM on November 10, 2020 [1 favorite]