Can eggnog be canned for long term storage?

I am not sure of the answers to your specific questions. Certainly eggnog could be canned professionally, but home canned? I am not sure how good the process is, because I don’t have a lot of knowledge about it, hopefully someone else will know. I would assume you can, that the processes goal is a sterile canning that is airtight? Again, I am not knowledgeable really.

I don’t know what an egg casserole is. But, generally I say back first then freeze about casseroles.

I do have suggesstions though. Cakes freeze very well, if you want to make several of those. You can just make the layers, you don’t have to do all the icing. When you need a cake you can defrost whichever flavors you want in the cake and put the layers together. You can bring cakes to parties/social get togethers, and eat them in your own home. Of course you can make other types, pound cakes, coffee rings, whatever you choose.

You can make pasta, bake some pasta dishes like lasagna, freeze them, and use them for dinners over the next few months.

Also, maybe you can give them away or trade with friends and neighbors. Some people might have extra tomatoes in their garden.

You can freeze breakfast casseroles before baking. Then just pop them in the oven.

Since eggnog can be commercially canned, I don’t see why it can be home canned.I could not, however, find a recipe. You might try posting a qestion on a canning board.

I feel like when it comes to something like this, better safe than sorry. Is it worth saving money on a few eggs if it means you end up deathly sick? Why not give the eggs to friends and neighbors?

How many eggs is it?

You have to be careful with eggs. They can make you very sick if not handled properly. I would say yes to freezing cooked eggs, but not raw eggs, but I’d also look for a more reliable source than I am.

Whatever you do, don’t put them all in one basket!

Nope. Eggs begin to curdle at about 80 degrees C. You can pasteurize sweetened dairy products at very slightly lower temperatures than that, but to get any kind of unrefrigerated shelf requires sterilization, not pasteurization. That would destroy the smooth mouth feel of the eggnog.

@thorninmud That sounds very logical. However, the one question it brings to mind is we can buy whole eggs that are pasteurized. I still would go along with not canning egg nog though.

@JLeslie Right, they’re pasteurized, but not sterilized. They couldn’t be kept long at room temp. Canning requires sterilization.

@thorninmud Right, of course, I even said it in my first answer, sterilize, and then I had a brain blip (happens too much now) when I read your answer. Somehow I failed to read your answer accurately. Thanks.

Pickled hard-boiled peeled eggs is a way to store eyes for long periods of time. That would be for weeks or maybe months without refrigeration.

Tetrapak Corporation of Sweden packages fresh milk products in their trademark tetrahedron cartons with a guaranteed shelf life of five years at room temperature. The products have dramatically improved the nutrition levels of children in areas around the world that have no access to electricity or refrigeration. They also do fruit juices.

The key is a process of injecting sterilized (zero bacteria) milk products into a sterile container through sterile machinery in a sterile room, and then seal the container. No humans touch the product before they leave the production room. It’s all done remotely with robotics from a separate control room. It’s complicated, proprietary, yet somehow cost-effective.

If you can emulate this process; the packaging of sterile eggnog (zero bacteria in the eggs and the milk) into a sterile container, you too should be able to attain a long shelf life for your eggnog.

Ah, @Espiritus_Corvus, sadly I will not be building a home-based sterile robotics canning operation. Good to know that someone’s developed a process using robotics.

@thorninmud, thanks for that tidbit, that explains why it’s not done at home, and the product only shows up during the winter season.

@Tropical_Willie, I haven’t had success with pickled eggs, yet. Do you have a recipe to recommend?

@marinelife and @JLeslie thanks for the info, I haven’t done a lot of freeze-and-serve, I grew up cooking for ten so left-overs or prep-aheads weren’t done, just feed-me-nows. It’s just Mom, a sister and me so now I’m learning the ways and means of handling surplus foodstuffs.

At the moment I have two dozen eggs, I gave my sister 3 dozen yesterday and will have 10–12 new eggs from the chickens today.

@DaphneT Sounds like you could be selling them? Local restaurants local grocery or at a farmers market. Eggs will keep for a long time in the fridge. Probably up to a month. But, if the chickens are producing bunches of them, that would not really help you. Are you eating all these eggs? You might want to get your cholesterol checked.

@JLeslie, hmm, that might be why I need to find a way to store them longer? No, that can’t be it.

Local sales require a bit more than we produce, frig space is limited, eggs can be stored longer than a month and still be good if handled properly. I’m just seeking information on what constitutes handling properly. Little details like curdling at 80 degrees don’t always jump out of internet information sources.

@DaphneT The health department must have rules on such things I would think? I don’t know much about that sort of thing. Maybe just sell them to neighbors. If I could buy eggs very inexpensively from my neighbor who I knew was nice to her chickens I would do it. Cage free for the price of a commercial dozen. But, it isn’t very much money for a dozen eggs. You might prefer to just give them away.

I use to buy eggs and honey from a man that was a farmer in the next town. Good honey and fresh eggs.

I am wondering about custard. Couldn’t you make custard and then freeze it? It might be a bit more trouble, but if you really want to use up the eggs, frozen custard would be my first choice. and YUM!

Or someone mentioning honey reminded me of this: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1916,153184-244192,00.html

And then there is THIS: http://www.georgiaeggs.org/pages/freezingeggs.html

But I like the tip about honey or salt in the first tip. When you freeze eggs, they won’t be any good for making mayonnaise from or any other food that leaves the eggs uncooked. ONLY use thawed eggs for foods that will completely cook the egg. That means NOT EGG NOG. Sorry. That is the bad news. The good news is that eggs are easy to preserve by freezing.

@cazzie Brilliant! The frozen custard reminded me that French Vanilla ice cream is made with egg yolks.

Well, I tried to can some homemade eggnog today and I don’t think it worked but I haven’t opened one yet. The reason I don’t think it worked is because when I too the jars out of my pressure canner they seemed to contain small clear balls throughout the contents next to the inside of the jars. I’m guessing it is small pieces of egg whites, even though I cooked the eggnog before trying to can it.

@thorninmud Eggs may ‘curdle’ at 80 degrees but I cooked my eggnog to 170 degrees and it didn’t curdle until I tried to can it

@Bird_Lady Notice that @thorninmud said 80° Celsius, which is 176° Fahrenheit. Since 170° Celsius would be 338° Fahrenheit, I'm going to guess that you cooked your eggnog at 170° Fahrenheit. That is lower than 80° Celsius, so that's why it didn't curdle until later.