How to Tell the Age of an Egg - CHOW Tip

Harold McGee, author of Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes, knows that we don't always use a dozen eggs all at once. He shares a nifty way to test your eggs and separate the old from the new.

======================CHOW.com=========================
CHOW Tips are the shared wisdom of our community. If you've figured out some piece of food, drink, or cooking wisdom that the world has to know about, send us a message and tell us what you've got in mind!

See all the newest uploads from CHOW with the Latest Videos playlist: http://bit.ly/owLvNO

Subscribe to CHOW: http://bit.ly/xTzxYj

For more recipes, stories and videos, check out http://www.chow.com/videos
CHOW on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/CHOW
CHOW on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Chow
========================================================

TRANSCRIPT
You know, we buy eggs buy the dozen and we seldom use them by the dozen so we always have leftovers. How do you tell which eggs are fresh and which eggs aren't? It's very easy. You just take a bowl of water, put the eggs in. The fresh ones will lay flat at the bottom of the bowl. Older eggs, because they have a growing air cell at the blunt end, will tip up toward the surface of the water. Why do you care? Because it turns out that older eggs are actually much easier to peel if you're making hard boiled eggs. So don't throw them out if they tip up or float. Use them to make hard boiled eggs.