How Do They Pasteurize Eggs Without Cooking Them?

Pasteurization is a process that is used to kill any potentially harmful bacteria that a food or beverage may be harboring. Products are exposed to heat in order to destroy these dangers. It's commonly associated with dairy products, canned meat (including the type of canned meat that you should avoid), juices, some alcohol, and eggs. With something like canned meat, pasteurization doesn't seem so unusual (as the food inside is already cooked), but with eggs, many people wonder why they don't cook while they are being heated. The answer to this is simple: Pasteurized eggs are placed in warm water that is carefully heated to a temperature that destroys viruses and bacteria (like salmonella), but is not high enough to cook the eggs themselves. 

In the United States, egg companies are not required to pasteurize their eggs if they are kept in their shells. In fact, most eggs that you find in the grocery store are not pasteurized. However, any egg products that are out of their shells, like cartoned liquid egg whites, dried egg powders, and even eggnog, must be pasteurized before they can be sold.

Pasteurized eggs are typically sold alongside other eggs in grocery stores, and their package should indicate that they have been pasteurized. In addition, individual pasteurized eggs will be stamped with the letter "P" to set them apart from unpasteurized ones.

In most cases, pasteurized eggs can be used interchangeably with unpasteurized eggs; you can scramble, fry, or boil them just as you usually would. People might opt for the former to take extra precaution against bacteria if they have a compromised immune system, or if they will be making a dish that requires raw eggs like homemade Caesar salad dressing (which use egg yolks), mayonnaise, or hollandaise sauce. When it comes to homemade eggnog, using pasteurized eggs is a sure fire way to make eggnog safe to drink. With that said, none of these dishes require the use of pasteurized eggs in order to be safe.

Some people think that pasteurized eggs are different to work with in the kitchen. This is true, in some instances. For example, the whites of pasteurized eggs don't whip as well as their unpasteurized counterparts because the pasteurization process affects the proteins. 

Because pasteurized eggs can sometimes be difficult to find, you might be interested to know that you can pasteurize eggs at home. Using a sous vide, bring water up to a temperature of 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Place your eggs in the water and leave them there for 90 minutes before transferring them to an ice bath. The eggs are now pasteurized. Failing this, you can always use lemon juice to kill salmonella bacteria that's present in eggs, but this can only be done once the egg is out of its shell.