Fermentation Support Forum

Does anyone know the concerns about storing pickled eggs at room temperature? My grandmother used to do it but all that I read says not to.

I have made some form of pickled eggs by hard-boiling them, peeling them, and dropping them into lacto-fermented pickle brine after the pickles are gone. I've left them at room temp for several days, but that's all I have personal experience with.

I looked here: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questi ... rigeration for some answers, including some people who keep them for several months in brine, but you'd need to balance that against this: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4934a2.htm

Though I would hasten to note that that CDC article is a single case, specifying that they'd never seen that happen before. So it must be extremely rare. My personal take-away is not to puncture the eggs in an attempt to get the brine at the interior.

Thanks! I contacted a faculty at Penn State and he sent me an study which said that pickling eggs at room temperature is actually better for the pickling process than refrigeration and that the eggs can be stored at about 70 degrees for around a year. The study did follow the pH of the pickling solution for 4 days and it was about 2.13 at that time.

The study is entitled "Validation of a pickling process for controlling pathogens associated with hard cooked eggs" by Angela Richards and Catherine Cutter published in the Journal of Food Safety Volume 31 2011, pages 417-423.

If anyone is interested I can scan and email the study.