(Editor’s note: Spring is a good time to stock up on eggs, while they are plentiful and fairly inexpensive. You’ll need to find ways to make them last longer with or without a fridge. Making your own powdered eggs is another way. Below is an article by our guest writer J.G. Martinez D. who has experienced economic collapse in Venezuela.)
Written by J.G. Martinez D.
Once hard times arrive, as it seems to be happening, we need to improve our skills and use our time much more efficiently. Using valuable refrigeration space to keep fresh eggs, for example, maybe a waste in the future when finding someone to repair a fridge can be difficult. For those living in climatic conditions allowing food storage at room temps, this is great news. Or even for those looking for a side business. Under the present conditions, anything edible under production is going to find a market.
Powdered eggs are not an exception. In my country, powdered eggs are not a common staple. The only similar product I have found is the egg white powdered, as a protein supplement for sport-practicing people. Mind you, our food industry in Venezuela was never so developed like other countries. The raw materials for our canned staples came mostly from just one large (state-owned) company and this was bombed systematically until destruction, metaphorically speaking. The reasons are plenty. But, as usual, that has left a good business niche for those of us looking to diversify our income sources. People don´t know powdered eggs because, being a semi-rural country with a supposedly “government” regulated price system, and a kidnapped food production chain, from the seized companies (like Purina) which manufacture processed food for poultry, pork and cattle, there were always fresh eggs all over the place. Not everyone could afford them, of course, but there was supply enough. In Venezuela food has never been particularly affordable, just for you to know. Too many mafias, and food supply has been used as a political tool for many years, even in the Hugo era.
This being said, let´s go and cook.
What you’ll need
Non-stick pan
You will need for this a good non-stick frying pan. And I mean a really good one, where nothing gets stuck. Unfortunately, for some reason, the El Cheapo frying pan I got lost the “Teflon” (Yeah,right) coating ages ago. If some time had something similar to Teflon. Using one of those wonderful ceramic non-sticking pans would be cool, although I’ve never used one of those but they seem to be good for our purpose. Or, at least much easier to clean than my piece of junk frying pan. I´ve been tempted to take it to a car bodywork shop and ask for them to electric-mop it. Seriously. But being aluminum I believe this would end by ruining it. So. I prefer to get a few iron cookware pieces and ship them to Venezuela (these are not items you can find anymore there).
You’ll also need a food dehydrator.
And of course, eggs.
Directions
Mix your eggs (or you could just separate the yokes and the white, and make dehydrated powdered whites and yokes, separated from each other, with the exact same process) in a bowl. Say 8 or 10 eggs, or a dozen. It´s up to you. Then you need to cook them scrambled. You can add salt, but NO OIL. Oil fats will become rancid and spoil your mixture, so don´t add anything (that´s why you need a good non-stick pan).
Once you have cooked the mixture, allow them to cool down. Don´t use a lid: this would trap any moisture left and we don´t want that. On the contrary.
Now, take the scrambled eggs and layer a pan of your dehydrator or sun-dryer equipment.
Go for a first few hours of dehydration while you do something else. Once you come back, take the mixture (it should be hard and crumble-like by now) and pour it inside your blender or food processor. Grind it finely.
Repeat the dehydration process with the resulting coarse mixture. After that second dehydration process, repeat the grinding some more time, and you should get a more or less coarse (depends on what you used to grind) of a dark orange/yellow mixture. Intensity of the color will depend on the kind of food the laying hen has. I remember in Venezuela the countryside eggs were preferred, even being smaller, because of their orange-colored yoke, instead of the pale yellow yoke of the industrially produced eggs. Of course, countryside free-roaming hens had a much more natural and organic feeding, including herbs and insects.
This mixture then can be vacuum-packed, and kept outside of the freezer in a plastic bag, provided you did not use any kind of oil.
To regenerate the mixture, just add roughly a cup of boiling water, for every cup of powder. This is a variable that will depend on how much was the degree of the dehydration, of course, so maybe a little more water can be needed in some instances.
I haven´t really tested how much the duration could be, but real tests will be coming in the next few months. After my success with the dried meat, this is encouraging.
You can keep proteins stored in a natural way, for a long time, without any refrigeration even in tropical humid and warm weather like ours.
Stay tuned!
Jose
About the Author: J.G. Martinez D
Jose is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He had a small 4-member family, plus two cats and a dog, an old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose could be considered a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela.
Thanks to your help Jose has gotten his family out of Venezuela. They were trying to continue with their lives in another country, until the SARSCov2 pandemic]s came to change the whole scenario. Decisions now will have to be made, and valuable lessons will be recorded in this journey. You may provide assistance and support to this writer to make a living with your sponsoring on paypal.me/JoseM151 or joining as a patreon at https://www.patreon.com/jmdemunck“
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