HOWTO separate eggs with a plastic bottle

This Chinese-speaking woman has a cool tip for separating eggs, using the suction of a slightly compressed water bottle. That's a pretty clean separation. I could watch it all day.

如何巧妙分离蛋清蛋黄 (via Kottke)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: china • Food • howto • videos • youtube

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Guido

OK, that’s hack # 1 for DIY Hen Cloning. Expect the Maker edition around 2014.
cooperman

Just…Thanks!
billstewart

Amazing! Any idea how often they break? Usually the reason for separating eggs is so you can get egg-whites to whip, and they don’t behave as well if they get yolk in them. (The other direction’s not a problem; most egg-yolk dishes don’t care if there’s a bit of white mixed in.)
- Boundegar
  
  I agree, it’s a neat trick, but those bottles can be a bit sharp on the edges. It might pay to experiment with different brands.
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

That could have been a plastic device made in China and sold for $19.99 at 3 am by a cable TV commercial that ends with an 800 number on a blue screen.
- http://www.fagerland.org tofagerl
  
  The New Ovine SimulPrater 4 XP 2012, in fifteen different colors. Collect them all!
  - Godfree
    
    How about: Gramma’s Suck-an-Egg
    - Preston Sturges
      
      I don’t think you’re happy enough!
      That’s right!
      I’ll teach you to be happy!
      I’ll teach your grandmother to suck eggs!
      Now, boys and girls, let’s try it again!
      
      If’n you aint the grandaddy of all liars!
      The little critters of nature…
      They don’t know that they’re ugly!
      That’s very funny, a fly marrying a bumblebee!
      I told you I’d shoot!
      But you didn’t believe me!
      Why didn’t you believe me?!
Milton Baxter

Magic – its the simple solutions that fascinate me the most.
(would be nice if the ‘Chinese speaking lady’ was given credit by name)
- Jonathan Roberts
  
  I looked on the YouTube page, it’s a set of videos in Chinese demonstrating quick DIY activities under different categories. She doesn’t give her name in this video and other videos have different contributors.
- niktemadur
  
  A personal favorite is the shirt-folding trick. Here ya go, kids, knock yourselves out.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/65CSAR3QATRNKJW4NYNB2BESZE JohnQPublic
    
    Japanese and Chinese look and sound the same to you don’t they?
    - apoxia
      
      I suspect niktemadur was referring to videos of interesting tricks, rather than the ethnicity of persons posting videos on the net.
      - niktemadur
        
        You got it. Quick and sweet lifehacks is what I was going for.
    - niktemadur
      
      Japanese and Chinese look and sound the same to you don’t they?
      
      When you say Chinese, do you mean Mandarin, Wu or Cantonese?
    - http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt
      
      Not at all! Well, they do kinda sound the same to me, but that’s probably because I don’t hear the languages that often. But, generally with a bit of practice, it is pretty easy to tell a Chinese from a Japanese from a Vietnamese from a Thai……Also. the written languages are fairly easy to tell apart once you pay attention. There’s just a certain gestalt to each of them.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Well, they do kinda sound the same to me
        
        Are you joking? Japanese doesn’t sound any more like Chinese (I’ll assume Mandarin) than any European language does.
http://twitter.com/HubrisSonic HubrisSonic

can’t wait to try this at brunch on Sunday.
http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

Is this eggs aspiration?
robuluz

It’s easy enough to just use the egg shell, but that does look very clean. I’d stick with the half shell for a single egg, but if I was doing a few I reckon this would be the way to go.
BombBlastLightingWaltz

Are these bottle only sold in China and if so, how much is a dozen cases? I was sold on the Pachelbel background music.
- Jonathan Roberts
  
  The guy behind the Wahaha drinks company that sells those water bottles has quite an interesting story – he comes from a poor family and started the company in 1987 after only being able to find menial work in a school due to his lack of education. He topped the rich list of China in 2010 with 12 billion US dollars, although he’s since fallen to third. Oh, and as a definite 1%er, he’s also got a green card and allegations of tax evasion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_Qinghou
- cl3
  
  It’s George Winston’s version.
rattypilgrim

Break the egg in a bowl. Over another bowl pour the egg in your hand, fingers slighlty apart and gently shake your hand back and forth until the white spills through your fingers into the bowl and you are left with an unbroken yolk in your hand. Voila! Not as fun but no plastic is involved.
- Godfree
  
  See, I would buy a plastic bottle just so I could avoid the whole slimy-mess-on-my-fingers thing.
  - rattypilgrim
    
    Trust me. You won’t have a slimy mess on your fingers. Well, maybe a tiny bit, but cooking is messy. Got any eggs in the house? Why don’t you try it just for the heck of it?
    - chgoliz
      
      Or, Godfree could just use a slotted spoon.
      - rattypilgrim
        
        Why didn’t I think of that? Doh!
  - retepslluerb
    
    Why don’t you cough up $5 for a decent egg divider/separator? They are reasonably small. Even though I actually throw out unneeded things out of my kitchen, I’m considering to get one, if my wife starts craving more waffles.
    - http://twitter.com/annaria Ria V
      
      Buy buy buy buy buy. I think the egg separator is a wholly unnecessary gadget.
- robuluz
  
  Crack the egg in half over a bowl, retaining the yoke in one shell half. Pour yoke into other half, allowing egg white to fall into bowl. Repeat if necessary.
  
  No plastic, one less bowl, no egg on your hands!
  
  Edit: I just noticed who I was replying to. I promise I’m not stalking you! :)
  - rattypilgrim
    
    The problem with the egg shell method is if the yolk touches the ragged edge of the shell while you’re juggling it between the two shell halves, it rips and gets messed up with the white.
    - robuluz
      
      I agree that is an issue. You need a good egg breaking technique to get a cleanish edge, and a little luck. But it works most of the time for me, egg yolks always surprise me by how strong they are, and by how fragile they are.
      - rattypilgrim
        
        Probably the fresher the egg, the more resilient the yolk. Your method used to be mine when I had my own hens and their egg shells were harder, but grocery store egg shells (I find) are thin and brittle and don’t break cleanly. Maybe I don’t have the right technique for the breaking. I probably hesitate at the last nano second.
      - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
        
        @rattypilgrim:disqus
        
        Are you buying decent free range eggs? Not that home ‘grown’ aren’t better either way, but if you’re buying decent eggs the quality shouldn’t be that different.
IndexMe

Yolk manipulator robot arm in 3..2..1.. GO!
Mitch_M

Nice trick. Pressing the bottle neck to the drain and squeezing is a handy way to speed up my kitchen drain after I wash the cat’s food plates, too.
bingobangoboy

At the speed YouTube is choosing to stream this video, watching it all day would take a week.
rtresco

I showed this to my 2yr old who immediately went to the kitchen and started pushing a chair over to the counter which is her signal when she wants to watch us cook, meaning she wanted to try the egg trick she just watched. We decided to sacrifice an egg for fun – and it works! Sorta. Sure enough the yolk sucked up into the bottle, but the woman must be saying something important about transferring it from one bowl to the other becuase although the yolk went in easy enough, it didn’t want to stay there very long. There’s a trick or finesse to it that we were missing.
- rattypilgrim
  
  The woman was saying you have to perform a Kagel while transporting the zygote or you might be shot on the spot by a sheriff from Hew Hampshire.
  - rtresco
    
    Sweet pro tip, I’ll tell my daughter.
- dainel
  
  When she sucks up the yolk with the bottle, notice that she did not release the bottle completely. If the yolk is about to fall out, you release the bottle a little bit more. Repeat a few times, and you’ll make it across to the other bowl. At least that’s what it looked like to me. I haven’t tried it yet.
dragonfrog

Apparently you can get extremely fresh eggs where this lady lives – where I live, the yolks don’t stand so high.
- retepslluerb
  
  Wasn’t there once a thread here on Boing Boing revealing that eggs on the US spend way too much time in storage?
  
  (Though I don’t understand why that would be the case, except for the additional demand around Easter.)
  - dragonfrog
    
    I’m in Canada, where eggs, chicken, and milk are supply-managed – it’s illegal to sell them without purchasing quota from the government, which is prohibitive for small operators.
    
    Aside from the occasional absurd spectacle of police raids on farmers’ markets and roadside egg stands, it apparently means big delays in getting eggs to market – maybe to ensure no one is trying to overproduce the quota the cartel sold them..
    
    EDIT – it also means you basically can’t eat uncommon breeds of chicken. You can get Angus or Simmental or Galloway beef, but there is only one kind of chicken to be had, and it is called chicken.
hassan-i-sabbah

I once saw my Granny do something similar to this, on my brother. On a boil on his neck. yum.
Stephen M

That egg is so not fresh, the white is almost water like. Wonder how well the ‘trick’ works on a fresh egg when the white is gelatinous and bonded to the yolk.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1377907134 Paul Knieste

This is the “science” of de-ova-zation as seen by Todd Akin to prevent unwanted preganavy after a rape