I’m Genuinely Curious If This Egg-Separating Hack Works

Is this new method everything it's "cracked" up to be?

Some folks absolutely despise the task of separating eggs because it’s a somewhat delicate process and because it gets your hands dirty. And while I don’t love getting egg all over my hands, I really don’t mind the task, especially because it usually means I’m in the midst of cooking something that’s absolutely worth the effort, like a crème brûlée or a creamy, comforting pasta carbonara.

There are a few different ways to separate egg yolks from egg whites. You can crack the whole egg into a bowl, and gently scoop out the egg yolk with your hand or a slotted spoon and move it to a second bowl, or you can use an empty water bottle to suction the egg yolk from the egg white and squeeze it into a second bowl. For me, the simplest solution is to just use the cracked halves of the eggshell to pass the yolk back and forth until the egg white drops away, or use my fingers as a sieve and let the egg white slip from the yolk as the yolk sits in my hand.

However, I will admit that when I’m separating a high volume of eggs, I get a bit more impatient and less gentle. When I saw this video on Instagram, I thought I might have found the perfect solution to separating a high volume of eggs.

In the video, the chef set up two bowls next to each other with a wire rack on top. He cracked the eggs right over the wire rack, the egg whites drained through the wire rack into the first bowl, and he was then able to gently tilt the wire rack so the egg yolks dropped into the second bowl.

I decided to try it at home to see if it would be worth using the technique the next time I needed a bunch of egg whites or egg yolks. I grabbed three cold eggs from the refrigerator (always start with cold eggs when separating them—egg yolks are less likely to break when they’re cold). Then, I set up my kitchen counter with two bowls and a wire rack. Then I cracked the eggs over the wire rack, as close to the rack as I could. I immediately saw that I was not going to have the same result.

After cracking the eggs over the wire rack, the egg whites did not simply slide off the yolk into the bowl beneath the rack. Some of the whites did slip off easily, but most of the egg whites clung to the yolk. Even after giving the rack a gentle wiggle to see if that would help loosen the whites, they didn’t budge. Plus, while the first two eggs remained intact after cracking them over the wire rack, the third egg immediately broke, with the yolk running into the first bowl.

I still wanted to see if the first two eggs would separate after titling the wire rack and letting the eggs slide into the second bowl. The eggs took a fair amount of gentle shaking of the wire rack to slide down the rack into the second bowl, and most of the egg whites still clung to the yolks.

While I could still use the eggs to make a quick and easy omelet for lunch, they definitely weren't perfectly separated. Some comments on the Instagram video suggest that this technique would work better if you use farm-fresh eggs, which tend to have a less runny yolk, as opposed to store-bought eggs. My verdict? I will keep using the shell or my hands to separate my eggs.