STOP Boiling & Frying Eggs The OLD WAY! Try These 45 Appalachian Tricks

0:00 There's a pan sitting on my stove right this minute. And on it is six of the prettiest eggs you ever saw. Round and stand in up tall. Not one ragged edge on a one of them. And not a single one was boiled and not a one was fried. You have fought a rubbery bald egg and a shell that tore to pieces when you peeled it your whole life. I quit fighting mine a long time ago. I've cooked an egg this way a long, long time. And I never once told a living soul how the folks at church kept after me for it for years. My own lily has begged me. I never said a word. Now let me tell you what it is not. It is not boiled in a rolling pot. It is not fried hard in the grease. It

0:47 is not that fussy poach in a whirlpool of vinegar water you've been taught. And it is not some gadget you order off the television. So, I am going to leave that pan setting right there on the stove while we go. I will show you every step of it before we are done. That is number two, but not yet. That would spoil the best part of it. So, let me tell you what is coming down this list. Number 41 is how you cook a whole dozen hard eggs at once with no boiling pot at all. Number 26 is how you fry an egg with a soft yolk and never once flip it or bust it again. And number one, well, I would not hardly call it a trick at all. It is the humbliest thing on the place and it

1:32 is the truest thing that ever came down to me. Now, understand me, honey. These are not oldtimey foolishness. They are the plain hardearned sense of a mountain kitchen, and there is not many of us left that still hold it. Let us count down the 45 appalachin egg tricks you will wish you had known a long time sooner. And it does not matter one bit if your stove sets up a holler or in a city apartment. You can do every last one of these tonight. So do an old woman a kindness while you are here. Tell me down in the comments where you are watching from and tap that subscribe so you do not miss a single one. Number 45, the bacon grease can. Every one of you had one or your mama did. A can kept warm at the back of the stove where the good drippings off the morning bacon got

2:18 poured to save. Pretty near every egg in this holler was fried in a spoonful of it. That can is close to sacred up here, and it is not going anywhere. It carried families straight through the hard times and put the good flavor in most everything I was ever raised on. But here is the truth most folks have backwards. The grease was never what toughened an egg. What toughens an egg is the hurry. A skillet run too hot and too fast, ringing the water right out of it till you are left with something sad and leathery. So keep your grease can right where it sets and your bacon fat with it. Everything on this list past here is just me showing you an egg can do a sight more than come out of that can fried hard and flat. Number 44.

3:04 Season your cast iron skillet till an egg won't dare stick. Folks are quick to fault the egg when it grabs and tears at the pan. The egg was never the trouble. It was a hungry, ill-kept skillet. My mama's iron was dark as a chimney back and smooth as a riverstone, and an egg would glide across it like a sled on packed snow. She would have shook her head at anybody paying store money for a slick coating that flakes off inside a year. That dark shine on a worked iron skillet is nothing but fat cooked down into it, layer over layer, till there is not a rough place left for an egg to catch on. So keep your iron dark and seasoned. Warm it slow. Lay a little fat in it and it will turn a loose of your egg every single time. A skillet work like that outlasts the hands that raise it. Number 43. Make a jar of mayonnaise

3:52 out of one egg yolk. That jar of mayonnaise sitting on your counter, your granny made that fresh by hand out of one yolk and a bottle of oil and it beat the store jar all hollow. You put one yolk in a bowl with a little vinegar and a pinch of salt. Then you drizzle the oil in the thinnest thread while you beat like the dickens. Just a few drops to start it. It thickens up pale and glossy into real mayonnaise. Here is the wonder of it. That yolk carries a thing that grabs oil on one end and water on the other. So a hard beat and breaks the oil into little bitty drops the yolk holds together. Now hear me. This is a raw yolk. Use the freshest, cleanest egg you have. Keep it cold and it is not for

4:37 the poorly or the little ones. But made right, one yolk holds a whole cup of oil. Number 42. Egg in a hole. This was the first thing my mama ever let me cook my own self. Standing on a chair I was not big enough to stand on. You tear a hole out the middle of a slice of light bread, butter it good, lay it in a warm skillet, and crack an egg. right down in the hole. Brown the one side, flip it the once and the bread fries up golden all around while the yolk stays soft in the middle. Now do not you dare throw out that little round you tore from the center. You fry that right alongside for sapping up the yolk. And that little round is the cook's own treat. Some folks call it a children's breakfast and turn their nose up. It is a real breakfast and a

5:24 good one. And it fed a whole pel of young and sheep. Butter the pan. Hole in the bread. Egg in the hole. Low and steady. One flip. Number 41. Bake a whole batch of hard eggs in a muffin tin. No boiling at all. Here is that first one I promised you up top. When you need a dozen hard eggs for doubling, you do not have to stand over a pot. You set one egg down in each little well of a muffin tin. Dry and slide the whole thing in the oven at about 325° for near 30 minutes. then straight into ice water. Here is what happens. The dry, even heat of the oven cooks them through gentle, same as if they set in a pot, but you never watched a thing and you never cracked a one on the way in. A

6:10 whole dozen at once for egg salad or a plate of deiled eggs hands-free. Now, a muffin tin will bake you a batch, but the prettiest batch of eggs you ever laid eyes on is a whole different thing altogether, and it is waiting on you at number two. Number 40. Cook your scrambled eggs low and slow, never high and fast. If your eggs come out squeaking like a pencil eraser, do not go blaming the egg. It was the fire under them. A hurried cook cranks that burner to the top and walks off. My mama never did. She kept the heat low and gentle and pulled them a hair before they even look done. Now, here is what is going on in that pan. Egg sits soft down at a low heat. Blast it hotter than it needs and it seizes up and rings its

6:56 own water out. And there is your tough weepy breakfast. Pull it while it still looks a touch wet and it finishes on the plate. So, it was never the skillet's fault, honey. And it was never the grease, it was the hurry. Turn that fire down and take your time. Number 39. Crack the egg on the flat counter, not the rim of the bowl. I will bet you crack your eggs on the edge of the bowl. Near everybody does. And that is exactly how you get shell in your eggs. My mama could crack an egg one-handed on the flat top of the stove and never lose a speck. And here is what goes wrong on that rim. Wrap an egg on a sharp edge and you drive them jagged bits of shell and that thin skin down into the white. Wrap it flat on the counter and the shell cracks in one clean line without

7:42 shoving the pieces inward. Give it a good flat tap. Open it with your two thumbs. And if a little fleck does get away from you, chase it with a wet fingertip. A dry finger just pushes it around the bowl. A wet one and it comes right to you. Number 38. Wait for the butter to foam and go quiet. That is the pan telling you. The old cooks could read a skillet and you can too with nothing but a pad of butter. Drop a little butter in the warming pan and watch it close. Cold butter sings and hisses and foams up big. And the second that foam falls back down and it goes quiet and smells a little nutty, the pan is heated through even all the way across and it is exactly right for your egg. The reason is simple. Butter is fat

8:28 and water mixed together and them little beads of water sizzle the second the pan gets hot enough. An even foam means an even heat. Folks who just guess at it either scorch the egg or stick it. I can still see my mama's hand hovering over that black skillet, waiting on the butter to tell her, "You do the same." Number 37. Whisk the fat right into the eggs, not just in the pan. Here is one hardly anybody's mama taught him. Before them beaten eggs ever touch the skillet, you whisk a spoonful of fat right into the bowl. Soft butter, a little warm bacon grease off the can, a drop of oil, any of it. Folks who only grease the pan wonder why their scramble comes out dull and tight. Now, why does that help? That fat coats the little strands before the heat ever hits them. So, they cannot

9:14 grip each other too tight and the water stays locked inside. It is the very same reason a little fat makes a pie crust tender instead of tough. And listen, that bacon grease can setting at the back of the stove is sacred up here and it stays. It fed this country through hard times. a spoon of it whisked in and your eggs come out glossy and soft. Number 36. Base the yolk with hot fat instead of flipping it. You can set a thin film over a fried yolk and never once flip it and risk the break. You do it with a spoon. Fry your egg in a little butter or bacon grease. And once the white is setting, tip the skillet so the fat pulls off to one side and spoon that hot grease up over the top of the yolk again

10:00 and again. The hot fat carries a heat up over the top and films a thin white right over the yolk while the yolk itself stays soft as you please underneath. No flip, no busted yolk. No prayer over the pan. The old cooks basted and the short order line still does it this minute. So tip the pan and spoon the hot grease over that yolk till a thin veil sets over it and you have got a clean over easy you never turned once. Number 35. Beat the air in hard with a fork for a light egg. How you beat an egg matters near as much as what you put in it. Most folks give it a lazy little circle with the fork, and all that does is spin the yolk round and round. You want to beat it hard, side to side, like little waves crossing the bowl, till it goes pale and foamy and

10:45 full of bubbles. And for just a few eggs, a fork does it better than any whisk. What that hard beating does is drive air down into the egg. And air is lift, same as it is in a cake. Them little bubbles are what give you a taller, softer, lighter egg once it hits the heat. So, a fork held flat, hard little waves till it foams up good. And you have got a lighter breakfast for no trouble at all. That pan of eggs is still standing on my stove and not a one has gone flat in an hour. A boiled egg never done that in its life. And there they still stand. Number two. Number 34. When to salt your eggs and near

11:32 everybody gets it backwards. Folks argue this one to death and I was on the wrong side of it myself for years and my mama with me. My whole life I believed you salt an egg at the very last so the salt does not toughen it. That is backwards. You salt the beaten eggs and let them set 10 or 15 minutes before they ever hit the pan. Here is the tail. You will watch them go a shade darker and turn a little see-through. right there in the bowl. That is the salt unwinding the protein so it cannot bind up tight and they cook up tender and seasoned the whole way through. So salt in the bowl. Way to spell. Watch them darken then cook. And keep your eye on the little things. Honey, there is one plain thing you already keep in this kitchen that pulls off a job at number two you have

12:17 never once seen it do. Number 33. Reach for a skillet smaller than you think. A too big pan is how your eggs get away from you. Go smaller. For two or three eggs, use a little skillet, not the big one hanging on the wall. Here is the why. Less pan bottom means less egg cooking on the hot metal at any one second. And that gives you a slower, gentler set and more time to make your moves. A big wide pan sets the whole batch before you can lift a finger. Folks grab the biggest pan thinking it is easier, and it fights them every time. The careful cooks landed right where my mama already stood. So, a small heavy skillet for a small mess of eggs and a bigger one only when you are feeding the whole table. Match the pan

13:03 to the eggs and they will mind you. Number 32. Your steering hand sets the texture, not the recipe. You do not need one recipe for firm eggs and another for soft. You need a different hand. Stir them slow and easy and you get big, firm curds. Stir them fast and you get small, soft, loose ones. And here is the reason. Only the egg touching the hot metal is cooking at any one second. Stir fast and you keep breaking the setting egg up small and tender before it can firm. Stir slow and you let big sheets set before you ever move them. So you want them firm, stir slow. You want them soft and loose, stir fast. It is your own risk that decides and no recipe on earth. Now, folks keep asking me where a

13:49 body can get all these in one place. I finally wrote down what my mama never would, and it is called the holler receipt book. It is in the description and the comment section or aim your phone camera at the little code up on your screen and it will take you right to it. Now, number 31. Number 31. Stop the scramble before it ever looks done. This is the one nobody tells you. The most important thing you do to a pan of scramble is quit cooking it in time. The second your spatula draws a clean path and you do not see runny egg, you kill the heat. You break up any big clumps so there is no raw heating in the middle. And you drop a lid on and let the pans on heat finish them soft. Here is why it matters. Leave them sitting on the fire

14:35 to be sure and you overcook the protein and dry it to that sad spongy buffet egg. Think of a wet rag. The harder you ring it, the more water runs out. So off the fire while they are still a touch glossy lid on and let them coast on to done. That little bit of patience is the whole difference. Number 30. Brown eggs and white eggs are the very same egg. Here is one I have got to be straight with you about because folks pay good money over it. Plenty of people reach for the brown egg thinking it is more natural, more country, better for them. It is not. Inside that shell, it is the exact same egg. I used to think brown were finer myself, and they are not. The

15:21 color is nothing but the breed of the hen. A red-eared hen lays a brown egg. A white-eared hen lays a white one, and that brown is just a thin coat of color over a shell that is white underneath. What is inside is the same to the letter. The one thing that does change an egg is what the hen ate. A hen out on grass and scraps lays a richer egg than a hen on plain feed, brown shell or white. So do not pay a nickel extra for the color. Pay it mind how the hen was fed. Number 29. Water, not milk, in your scrambled eggs. Here is one I had flat wrong for the longest time and I will own it. I poured milk in mine for years because my mama did and hers before her. But if it is

16:07 light and fluffy you are after water beats milk every time. Any liquid loosens the eggs so it cannot bind up tight. But water flashes to steam in the hot pan and puffs them up the lightest while milk brings fat that weighs them down and can turn them dense and weepy. Now milk is not wrong. Exactly. Rich and creamy that is milk. Light and fluffy that is water. So, beat a good splash of plain water into your eggs and cook them low and you will get the lightest, softest scramble you ever set on a plate. My mama poured milk her whole life and never know the difference and I only wish you had. Just know which one you are after when you reach for it. Number 28. For eggs that peel easy, boil the old ones. Here is one that will save

16:54 your knuckles and your temper both. A fresh egg makes the worst hard-boiled egg there is. the kind that peels off in a hundred little flexcks and takes half the white with it. You want your older eggs for boiling. My mama kept a bowl of the older ones back. A purpose for it. Put a pinch of baking soda in the water. And when they are done, plunge them straight into a bowl of ice water. Here is the science. A fresh white is acid and clings hard to that skin inside the shell. As the egg ages, the white lets go of that skin easier and the soda helps push it along and the cold shot shrinks the white back off the shell. Or shake them in a jar with a splash of water and the shell slip right off. So save your older eggs for boiling, a

17:40 pinch of soda in the pot, and an ice bath after. Number 27. Poaching an egg the old ragged way and why there is a better one coming. A poached egg does not have to spread into a feathery mess. And here is the old fix folks give up on. You get your water to a bare simmer, not a hard boil. Put in a splash of plain vinegar. Give the water a good swirl with a spoon and slip your egg right into the little whirlpool you made. The vinegar sets the outside of the white faster so it holds together. And the swirl wraps the loose white in close around the yolk. And that honey is the whole of the fussy old way. One egg at a time and half of them still string

18:26 and tear on you. So it will do you in a pinch. But number two is how you get a whole mess of them perfect and round all at once. And I still have not breathed the word of how. Number 26. Steam based under a lid and never break a yolk again. Here is the one I promised you up top. If you love a soft yolk, but you bust it every time you flip, this one is for you. You do not flip at all. You lay the egg in the warm skillet, flick a little splash of water in at the edge, and drop a lid right down on top. Here is what happens under there. That water turns to steam, and the steam cooks the top of the egg soft and gentle while the bottom sets on the pan. No flipping, no busting, no mourning over a broke yolk.

19:14 My mama kept a lid to every skillet she owned for just this reason. And every short order cook worth his apron does it this very way. A warm pan, the egg, a splash of water, a lid, and count to about 30. Now, gentle steam, never a hard boil. That is the secret to a tender egg. And there is one more thing you can steam that will set you back on your heels. At number two, number 25. Count the minutes for the exact egg you want. You do not have to guess and you do not have to crack one open to check. You set a timer. My mama could tell the minute by the clock on the wall, but a timer will do it for you. Drop your eggs into gently boiling water and count. About 6 minutes and you lift out a

20:00 softboiled egg with a runny yolk to soop a toast soldier in. 9 minutes and the yolk goes jammy. Soft and bright but not runny. 12 minutes and it is hard set. clean through for slicing or deviling. It is the same every time because the egg does not care how you feel about it. It only answers to the heat and the clock. So, pick the egg you want, set the timer, and shock them in ice water the second the bell rings so they quit cooking. Just the exact egg you meant to make. Number 24. A canning ring makes a perfectly round egg for a sandwich. You know how a fried egg spreads all over the pan into a raggedy thing that hangs off both sides of the biscuit? Here is the old fix. You take a canning ring,

20:47 the metal band off a mason jar lid, grease it good, set it down in the warm skillet, and crack your egg right inside the ring. It cooks up round as a biscuit, tall and neat, and it drops right out when it is set. Fits a sandwich or a muffin perfect every time. Now that is how you hold one egg round. The way to hold a whole family's worth without any ring at all and no gadget neither that is waiting on you at number two. Somebody two hollers over offered me good money once for what I do to them eggs. I told them no. Some things ain't for sale. It is coming at number two.

21:33 Number 23. Spin the egg to tell raw from cooked without ever cracking it. I want you to go try this the minute we are done because you will not believe it till you do. You have got a boiled egg and a raw one set in the bowl together and no way to tell them apart. Do not crack a one. You spin them. Give each one a good spin right on the counter. The hardboiled egg spins fast and true like a top. The raw one wobbles and drags and stalls out quick. And here is the why of it. Inside the boiled egg, everything is solid, so

22:20 it all turns together. Inside the raw one, the yolk and white are still liquid slloshing around. And that slloshing drags against the spin and stops it. Touch it and lift your finger and the raw one will even start creeping again on its own. Spin them to sort them. It works every single time. Number 22. Candle an egg up to a light to see inside it. Before you ever cracked an egg open, the old folks could see clean inside it. And you can, too. My mama did it with a candle in a dark corner of the kitchen, and it is where the word comes from. You hold the egg up to a bright light in a dark room, and the light shines right through that porous shell,

23:07 clear all through with just the shadow of the yolk floating. That is a good egg. A dark cloud, a blood spot, or something starting, and you set that one aside. This is how a mountain woman checked the eggs from a found nest or from under a setting hen before she ever trusted them to the family. And the graders at the plant still do the very same thing today and they still call it candling. Same word, same light. A candle and a cuped hand tells you all of it. Number 21. One extra yolk makes the richest scramble there is. If you want a richer scramble, the answer is not another whole egg. It is more yolk. For

23:53 three whole eggs, you beat in one extra yolk all by itself. Here is the why. The yolk is where all the fat and the richness live. The white is mostly water. So more yolk and less added water gives you a creamier gold softer set near like a custard. The folks who make custard and the fine restaurants too all reach for that extra yolk. Now that leaves you a lonely white sitting in a cup. And do not you throw it out for white keeps fine and freezes near a year. So, three whole eggs and one extra yolk for a rich scramble. And set that

24:39 spare white by. There is a reason a body learns to keep her whites and her yolks sorted apart. Number 20. Scramble a big batch in two steps. The flood method. This is how my mama fed a houseful of us of a Sunday. The best pan of scramble for a whole table is cooked in two turns, not one. First, the liquid turn. As the bottom sets, you lift that set sheet with your spatula and let the raw egg flood in underneath onto the hot metal. Then the solid turn, the second it is all just set and there is no runny left, you pull it clean off the fire and

25:24 quit pushing it. Flooding lets every bit of egg get its own turn on the hot pan without any of it over cooking. and stopping the instant it sets keeps it soft. So, lift and flood the raw under the set, then quit the second it is done. And the prettiest skillet of eggs of all is still sitting on my stove waiting at number two. Number 19, deileled eggs or what some hollers call dressed eggs. There is one egg dish up here that shows at a grieving house before the preacher does. You boil the eggs hard, have them, mash the yolks up with a little mustard, sweet pickle, and mayonnaise, pipe it back in, and dust

26:10 the tops with paprika. In some hollers, they were never develed at all. They were dressed eggs. Now, some folks think of these as just a party tray. Up here, they are near a sacrament, a church dinner, a homecoming, a funeral. There was always a plate of them carried straight to whoever was hurting, and they are still the first plate emptied at every dinner on the ground. So make you a plate of dressed eggs and carry it to somebody who is hurting. That honey is the whole of what they were ever really for. Number 18, egg gravy. What the old folks called poor do. When there was two eggs and a

26:58 whole house full of youngans to feed, you did not fry them. You stretched them. You beat two eggs into a milk and flour gravy right in the pan fat. And in the leanest times, it was water instead of milk, and you poured it hot over a pan of split biscuit. The egg turns to tender little ribbons all through the gravy and thickens it up. In parts of these mountains, they called it poor dew. This was a logging camp breakfast, a hard times breakfast. Six youngans fed off two eggs and a little flour. It was arithmetic done with a skillet. Making the little bit feed the many. So beat two eggs into a milk gravy, pour it over

27:45 hot biscuits, and you have fed a pleel off next to nothing. That poor do and every last trick on this list is set down in the hollow receipt book in the description and the comment section or point your phone at that little code on your screen. Now number 17. Number 17. Eggs baked in a nest of tomato gravy skillet eggs. Here is supper made out of almost nothing and it will feed a family. You simmer a can of stewed tomatoes and a little chopped onion down in the skillet with a pinch of salt till it is thick and bubbling. Then you make little whales in it with the back of a spoon. Crack an egg down into each well.

28:33 Cover the pan and let it set till the whites are done and the yolks are soft. The egg poaches gentle right there in the tomato and it takes up all that flavor. You sap it up with cornbread or a biscuit. Folks, the world over have their own name for this, but up here it was just what you made when the garden was putting out tomatoes and money was thin. Cheap, hot, and it fills a plate. Number 16, [snorts] a tender folded country omelette. And do not you overcook it. An omelette is not a hard brown folded over thing dry as a shingle. A good one is soft. You beat your eggs, pour them thin into a warm buttered skillet and let them set just

29:19 barely on the bottom. Lift the edges and let the runny run under. Then, while the top is still a little wet and glossy, you lay in whatever you have got, a little cheese, some chopped ham, an onion, fold it over out of the pan onto the plate, and let the last of the heat finish it. Here is the whole secret. You take it off soft, never browned, never dry, because it keeps cooking a second on the plate. A country omelette does not have to be fancy to be good. It has just got to come out of that pan before you think it is ready. Number 15. A little blood spot does not mean a thing is wrong. You crack a good farm egg and

30:06 there is a tiny red speck on the yolk. And I would bet half of you throw the whole egg out. Do not My mama cracked 10,000 eggs in her day and never feared a speck. Let me set that old worry to rest for you. That speck is not a chick starting and it is not a sign the egg has gone bad. And it does not even mean the egg was fertile. It is nothing but a little blood vessel that broke back in the hen while she was making the egg. It is harmless. You see it more on real hen house eggs because the store shines a light through every egg and pulls the spotted ones out. Yours does not get picked over. So

30:54 if it bothers you to look at, tip it off with the corner of a spoon and cook your egg with a clear mind. Number 14. That green ring means overcooked, not spoiled. You peel a hard-boiled egg and there is a gray green ring around the yolk and it scares folks right off their breakfast. There is nothing to fear in it. I throwed out good eggs for years thinking it meant rot and it does not. Here is what it truly is. Under long hard heat, the sulfur in the white meets the iron in the yolk and they marry up into a harmless thing that colors gray green right where the two meet. It is

31:40 the very same iron that is in an iron pill. Cook them too long or at too hard a ball and you get more of it. So cook them gentle in water that is not roaring and cool them fast in ice water and no green ring ever forms. And if you do get one, eat it anyhow. It never hurt a soul. Number 13. A double yolk means a young hen just starting to lay. You crack one egg and two golden yolks come sliding out. And every granny had a saying for it. The old folks read a double yoker as a sign. Good luck coming. A wedding on the way,

32:27 a baby on the road. Now, here is the truth of it. A double yoker is not a sign of anything coming. It is just a young hen, a pullet only lately started to lay, whose body has not got the timing down yet. So she lets two yolks go at once and they end up in the one shell. Harmless and mighty good eating. So get you a double yokker and make a wish if you like. But no, it only means you have got a young hen out laying in the hen house. What I keep promising you ain't no new notion off a little screen. It grew straight out of something the old granny's done for the sick a hundred years back. Older than any of us. Number

33:13 two, and I still ain't said. Number 12, freeze your eggs for winter, but never in the shell. When the hens are laying more than you can eat, you do not have to lose a one. You freeze them, but not in the shell. For a whole egg in the shell will freeze and burst on you. You crack them, beat them, and freeze them one egg to a cube in an ice tray. Then bag up the cubes. And here is the catch worth knowing. If you freeze the yolks off by themselves, you stir in a little pinch of salt if it is for cooking or a pinch of sugar if it is for baking because a yolk goes thick and gummy when

34:03 it freezes and will not smooth back out. This is how my mama made sure nobody was ever caught short. Come the dead of winter when the hens quit, freeze them fresh and clean, thaw them in the ice box and cook them all the way through. Number 11. Store your eggs pointy end down to keep them fresh longer. There is a right way up to set an egg down and most folks do it upside down. You store them pointy end down, fat end up in the carton or the croc. Here is the why of it. That little pocket of air sits up in the round fat end of the egg. Keep that end up and the yolk floats centered up and

34:48 away from the air and the egg keeps longer and fresher for it. Turn it the other way and the yolk drifts up against the air pocket and goes off quicker. It is the same reason the old eggkeepers all set them point down and the grers too. So pointy end down, fat end up, a centered yolk, and a longer keep for no trouble at all. It is a little thing, but uh the old folks did not waste a one, and neither should you. Number 10. The old folks could keep an egg for months with no ice box at all. Now, hear me close on this one because this belongs to the old days and not to your kitchen. Now, before there was an ice

35:36 box in every house, a body could keep an egg down in a cool cellar clear through the winter, and the secret was fat. They took a fresh unwashed egg, dipped it in a little melted lard, buffed it over good with a rag, and set it point down in the cool. That thin coat of grease sealed up every one of them little holes in the shell, and shut the air out. And a greased egg kept the better part of a year. It is real. And it worked. The same notion as the mineral oil folks use to put eggs up today. But keep this one as a marvel of how they may do and let your refrigerator carry that load for you. Now, number nine, putting up a whole year of eggs in lime water. Here is another one that belongs to a harder

36:22 time than ours, and I tell it so it is not lost. In the plenty of spring, when the hens laid more than a family could use, they laid their fresh unwashed eggs down point first in a croc of water and pickling lime. That lime water sealed the shells against the months, and near nine out of every 10 eggs put down that way kept good a full year. This goes back to the early 1800s, and the homestead folks have proved it right on back up. a proper lime water croc and you were eating your spring eggs come Christmas. Think of that. A whole winter of good eggs out of a croc of lime water before ever a power line reached the

37:08 head of the holler. It is a wonder they had to be so clever. And a mercy we do not. Number eight, steam your eggs instead of boiling them. If you have ever fought a hardboiled shell that tore off in a hundred little flexcks and took half the white with it, this is your fix. You set your eggs up in a steamer basket over about an inch of water, drop the lid on, and let the steam do the work about 13 minutes, then straight into a bowl of ice water. The gentle steam sets the white without slamming it against a hard rolling boil, so it never turns rubbery and never takes on that sulfur smell. And here is the part you

37:54 will love. The shell slips off in two or three big pieces instead of a hundred maddening little ones. The cooks have all come around to it now. So steam them, shock them in ice, and peel them slick as you please, and you will never fight a boiled shell again. Number seven, pickled eggs in the beet brine. You know them ruby pink eggs floating in the big jar on the country store counter. That was a mountain standby. When you finished off a jar of pickled beets, you did not pour that pretty pink brine out. You dropped your peeled boiled eggs right down in it. And in a few days, they came out ruby red, clear through and tangy as could be. Here is what is happening. The vinegar acid

38:40 pickles and preserves the egg, and the beet juice stains it that deep pink all the way in. The miners and the store loafers love them, though the squeamish would not touch a one. So save your beet brine and drop your peeled eggs in, but keep that jar in the ice box now, not setting out warm on the counter like the old days. And the prettiest egg trick of all is still coming at number two. Number six, the bloom and why you never wash a fresh egg. They will tell you a farm egg left out on the counter is dangerous. The truth runs the other way. And I will be straight with you. It is

39:26 not that the old way was magic. An egg comes out of the hen with its own coat on it. a thin invisible seal over the whole shell. And the old folks called it the bloom. Leave that coat on. And the egg keeps just fine sitting on the counter a week or two. But scrub that coat off. And yes, now you had best get it in the ice box. That is why an American store egg is washed and then kept cold. While over in Europe, they let them set unwashed at room temperature. Same egg, two rules, and the bloom is the whole difference. My mama's egg sat out in a bowl my whole childhood and never made a soul sick.

40:12 Number five, an eggshell in the coffee pot settles the grounds. Nothing got wasted up here, not even the shell. On a wood stove, folks boiled their coffee right in the pot, grounds and all. And my mama would crush a clean, dry eggshell and drop it in. Sounds like an old wives notion. I know it. It is not. The shell is calcium, and the calcium cuts the bitter acid while a little egg still clinging to it grabs the loose grounds and pulls them down to the bottom. What you pour off is clearer and mellower and not near so bitter. I can still smell that pot of a cold morning. So, uh, if you ever boil

40:58 a pot the old way, crush a clean shell in and let it settle a minute before you pour. Even the shell had a job to do in that house and did it well. Number four, onion skin dyed eggs. The natural Easter dye. You never needed a store kit to color an egg. The prettiest ones my mama ever set out came off the very skins she would have thrown to the hogs. You save up the papery brown skins off your yellow onions, wrap your eggs up in them, tie an old rag tight around, and boil them. They come out of deep russet and gold, marbled and rich, prettier than any little paint tablet ever gave you. And here is the pretty part. You

41:45 lay a fern or a little clover leaf flat on the shell first under the wrapping. And where that leaf sat, the egg stays pale, and you have got it shape printed clean on the color. Folks, only let this go because the die kit showed up at the store. Save your skins, a leaf, and a rag, and make your Easter eggs the old way this spring. Number three, an egg carton lives a second life. Up here, nothing left the kitchen without a second job. And that goes for the very carton the eggs came in. Take a cardboard carton, not the foam kind. Fill each little cup with dirt and poke a garden seed down in it. When the

42:30 little plants come up, you tear off the cup and set the whole thing right in the ground and it rots away into the into the soil and the roots grow on through it. Or fill them cups with sawdust or drier lint. Pour your candle wax ends in and let them cool. And now you have got a carton of fire starters for the wood stove of a cold morning. The garden folks and the campers both do this very thing today. The mountains just never quit doing it. I am fixing to take that pan down off the stove and show you the whole of it right now. Stay with me. Here is number two. Number two. Now I keep my promise.

43:16 Let me go fetch that pan. Look at them. Six eggs. Everyone stood up round and perfect. And every last one cooked at the very same time. No boiling, no frying, no whirlpool, no gadget. The old folks did this for a sick child. They buttered a little cup. Broke an egg in it and set it in a pan of near boiling water covered to cook slow. A coddled egg, they called it, cooked in a water bath. The gentle water set it soft and never rubbery. I took that same old notion and made it stand up. You give each egg its own heat proof cup, a spoon of water in the bottom, and a good pinch of salt in the water. The salt firms the white as it sets so it holds its round

44:02 instead of feathering off. Break the egg onto that little water bed and the water keeps the yolk sitting centered. Stand your cups in a pot. Pour boiling water a third up the outsides. Drop the lid on and steam them low about six minutes. That is the secret I held 60 years. Number one, my mama's cast iron skillet. This one is not a trick at all and it is the reason I told you any of the rest of it. You have watched me cook this whole list and I cooked every last egg in one skillet. This one right here, black as a lump of coal and slick as glass. And it came down to me from my mama and to her

44:49 from hers. Three women's hands wore it smooth. It is the one thing off that whole hard place that came on to me. My mama fried a thousand mornings of eggs in it. She made poor in it when there was nothing else and stretched two eggs to feed the lot of us. She carried a soft egg cooked in it up the stairs to me when I was little and sick of bed. She dressed her eggs off it for the grieving and colored them off it come Easter and put by against the winter so no young and ever went hungry. Every trick I have shown you today her hands dead first in this skillet and one day it will pass on out of my hands into anothers. Still black, still slick, still good for another hundred years.

45:35 That is the whole of these mountains in a single skillet. Nothing wasted. and everything made to do more than it ever looks like it could. So now do this old woman a kindness before you go. Do not let this be a thing you only watched. Put your own two hands to just one of these this week. Steam you a batch of eggs and peel them slick. Salt your eggs and let them set before you cook of a morning. Or coddle a soft one up in a cup and carry it to somebody you love. Then come set with me a minute down in the comments. Honey, tell me who it was that taught you the old ways. A mama, a ma, some neighbor woman, and what your

46:21 people call these things where you come from? Is there anybody left up your holler? Still putting eggs down against the winter. Still keeping the old skillet slick. I read every one of them myself. And uh if you want every last one of these set down into one place, that is what the holler receipt book is. It is in the description and the comment section or just aim your phone camera at the little code up on your screen there and uh it will take you right to it because this was never backwardness, honey. And it was never been poor. It was a hundred years of knowing how to feed your people. learned at the elbow and carried in the hands and it closes a

47:07 little more every time one of us goes. So I am setting mine down here for you. Nobody ever wrote it down, so I did.