In terms of versatility, it’s hard to come up with a food item that can do more than eggs can. From starring in our favorite breakfast and brunch dishes, to their alchemical properties when used in baking, the egg really is one of the most useful foods out there!
In today’s post, we’ll be exploring some of the more surprising things you can do with eggs. So give these tips a try, and be sure to share your favorite tips, tricks, and hacks about eggs in the comments below. :-)
Find out whether those eggs you’re going to be eating are still fresh in my video below!
Related: This Clever Breakfast Hack Went Viral For All The Right Reasons
15 Unexpected Things You Can Do With Eggs
1. Enhance Homemade Soups
Adding either yolks or egg whites to your favorite soups will take them to another level! For smooth and creamy soups, stir in a beaten egg yolk right before serving for added richness and a silky sheen. For broth-based soups, slowly stream whisked egg whites into the soup while stirring and they’ll resurface in deliciously delicate wisps. Yum!
2. Make ‘Em Crispy
Crispy eggs tend to be a bit polarizing, but for those who like them, here’s a foolproof way to make them! Add a generous amount of olive oil to a pan and heat it until it just starts to smoke, then add your egg and lower the heat to medium.
In less than a minute, you’ll have a perfectly cooked eggs with fluffy whites, a runny yolk, and a perfectly crispy bottom that pairs perfectly with toast!
3. Brunch For A Crowd
Poached eggs are a brunch time favorite, but because they’re trickier to make, they can seem like a bad idea for brunches at home. But there’s an easy way to make them ahead of time that’s perfect for your next brunch party!
Poach the eggs a day or two ahead of time, in batches if necessary, then scoop them into a saucepan filled with ice water. Cover the pan and store it in your fridge, then come brunch time, just put the pan back on your stovetop over medium heat until the eggs are warmed through!
4. Waffle Them
If you’ve already got your waffle iron out to make breakfast, there’s no need to dirty another pan to make eggs! You can make an easy omelet right in your waffle maker.
Whisk a couple of eggs together with some cheese and salt, then pour them into your well-greased waffle iron. Shut the iron and cook for 3-4 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.
5. Make Egg Salad In A Flash
Making eggs for egg salad or potato salad used to be time-intensive process. But then I discovered a brilliant hack that allows me to make a batch of hard-boiled eggs in a fraction of the time, and totally eliminates the need to peel them too!
Read all about my time-saving hard-boiled egg hack here.
6. Pressure Cook Them
One of the things I love about the Instant Pot is that it takes a lot of the guesswork out of cooking. That’s why I switched from making hard-boiled eggs on my stovetop to cooking them in my Instant Pot!
No matter whether you like soft-, medium-, or hard-boiled eggs, the Instant Pot makes it easy to achieve perfectly cooked eggs every time. Get all the details on how to do it here!
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7. Next-Level Scrambled Eggs
At their best, scrambled eggs can be light, luxurious, and deliciously flavorful. At their worst, they can be rubbery, bland, and just plain boring. But this (admittedly weird) recipe for scrambled eggs falls firmly into the former category! Try it for yourself and see what you’ve been missing. :-)
8. Add Tasty Extras
No matter what recipe or method you use to make scrambled eggs, you can pump up the flavor by adding other ingredients! From creamy concoctions to salty sauces, there are tons of ways to add delicious flavors and textures to your morning eggs.
Check out 10 of our favorite scrambled egg add-ins here.
9. Steam Them For Easy Peeling
If you’re just making a few hard-boiled eggs for a snack, steaming them is a great way to go. I don’t know exactly why, but steaming eggs seems to make them quite a bit easier to peel than they are when cooked with other methods!
10. Powder Them
Have more eggs on hand than you can eat? Make powdered eggs! Not only will it extend the lifespan of your eggs by several months, they’re also handy to take camping or backpacking!
Read my post about making your own powdered eggs here.
11. Microwave Poached Eggs
Wish you had a fast and easy way to make delicious poached eggs at home? If you own a microwave, you already have one! Just add about 1/2 cup of water and a tablespoon of vinegar to a mug, then crack an egg into it.
Microwave the mug for about 1 minute, and voila, you’ll have a perfect poached egg to put on toast or for eggs benedict! Learn more here.
12. Warm Them Up In A Hurry
Need room temperature eggs for a baking project? Grab however many eggs you need for your recipe and place them in a bowl of warm (not hot) water. They’ll be ready to use in 5-10 minutes!
13. Make Mayonnaise
If you have a high speed blender at home, you simply must try making your own homemade mayonnaise at least once! The blender does all the hard work for you, and you get to enjoy the delicious and fresh taste of homemade mayo on your favorite sandwiches—it’s a win-win! :-)
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14. Test For Freshness
If you’ve had a carton of eggs in your fridge for a few weeks, you might wonder whether they’re still fresh enough to eat. But you don’t have to wonder, because there’s a very simple test you can use to find out for sure!
Grab one of the eggs from the carton and a large bowl, then fill the bowl with water. Place the egg in the water and watch what happens.
If the egg sinks, it’s still fresh, but if it floats, it’s probably past its prime. (If it stands on one end, it’s somewhere in between, which means you should use them in the next day or two if possible.)
15. Use The Shells
Eggs are so versatile that even their shells are useful! One of my favorite ways to put eggshells to good use is by sprinkling them around the base of my plants and flowers. Eggshells are rich in calcium and other minerals that plants need to thrive, and they can even help slugs and snails at bay too.
Learn more about useful things you can do with old eggshells here.
Do you have a favorite egg tip, trick, or hack that isn’t mentioned here?
Interesting. My Sister was describing the freshness test a few weeks ago.,They have chickens who lay eggs. They had discovered some eggs they didn’t know they had laid – so they did the freshness test.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.We love egg salad but hate the process of cooking and peeling eggs. That is until I learned to make them in my air fryer. 16 minutes at 250 and then drop them in an ice bath. The shells literally almost fell off and the eggs were perfectly set.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.I like to toast a piece of bread, then flatten the middle with a fork. I add an egg in the depression and pierce the yolk. Microwave on high for about 45 seconds, and you have an easy poached egg on toast with very little cleanup.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.LOVE the poached egg in a cup in the microwave. You can reuse the water/vinegar to make more eggs, but you need to microwave for less time as the water is already hot.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.I’ve seen the crispy fried egg idea a lot lately. My grandmother always called the crispy edges “fences.” I ate a lot of her fried eggs growing up. She worked in restaurants her entire life and fences were avoided, otherwise the egg was ruined. She didn’t like them and I don’t either. My husband had never heard of the term, so I started looking and I can’t find reference of it. Wondering if it was restaurant speak or just something from my great grandmother.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.I’ve made the popular just crack an egg from scratch before. I use 2 eggs, 1/3 c hash browns, 1T. Onion and chopped green pepper, 2T grated cheese. For my meat t use 2 T chopped ham . You can use other meats like bacon or sausage. I just microwave mine in a ramekin for about 1 and 1/2 minutes and stir it every 30 seconds . You can make this on the stove
Please log in or create a free account to comment.I forgot to say you whisk or use a fork to mix. You can make these ahead of time without the eggs. I eat these on days when I’m working long hours or crazy shifts.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.I prefer the flavor of olive oil, but do want to point out that olive oil’s benefits degrade when heated on high. Nice egg-cookbook post today.
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