Old School – Self Reliance 101

Separating eggs is simple, with just a little practice. You don’t need any special equipment, and after an egg or two, you’ll have the hang of it.

Crack an egg carefully in the middle. The Damsel likes a nice firm strike on the side of the bowl the egg is destined for. A big crack is better than a multitude of little cracks, because all those little cracks can become stray shells in your food.

Insert both your thumbs into the crack and pull the egg open over a bowl, but instead of dumping the whole egg into the bowl as you might normally do, pour the contents into one side. (The yellow cup is positioned to receive the bare yolk when it’s ready.)

Let the egg white slop over and run down into the bowl. Because the egg white is sort of one big glob, gravity will pull most of the egg white down and out, from around the yolk.

Pour the egg into the other half shell to get any remaining white out. You could pour it back and forth a few times to further separate the yolk from the white. But don’t fuss. It’s normally not critical to get every bit of white out of the yolk. As a matter of fact, the Damsel only knows of one instance where you have to watch it. When you make meringue, you can’t get any yolk in with the white, or the white won’t turn into lovely meringue. But as far as the Damsel has heard, the other way around doesn’t hurt anything. ( a little bit of white left in with the yolk) Please let the Damsel know if you know exceptions to that rule.

You could buy an egg separator. Most look something like this:

in which you simply crack an egg into the reservoir and the white runs out through the slots.

Or even one of these contraptions, in which you crack an egg in the top, the egg slides down the slippery slides–after which the egg is perfectly separated.

But honestly, why? An egg comes with its own built-in separator, requiring no room in the desperately full kitchen drawer.