Inked egg shells perfect boiling

For the culinary gurus out there, you can probably boil an egg to a desired hardness in your sleep. But for the rest of us, we'll take all the help we can get while manning a stove. Lion Quality, a UK-based company, has devised a tattoo of sorts to be placed on the shells of eggs that remains invisible until dropped into boiling water. The temperature-sensitive "thermochromic" ink displays three different visuals depending on the taste you prefer and the carton you buy: soft, medium, or hard-boiled logos will appear to advise the chef when enough's enough. Apparently there's been an overwhelming quandary in Britain on how to perfect this subtle art, and Lion Quality inked a deal to provide the helpful logos and remove the guesswork previously involved. So if your clientele (or significant other) gets their feathers all ruffled when breakfast is overcooked, these specially marked eggs can get you out of hot water in the next few months.

[Thanks, Stu]

[Paix247 @ Jul 31st 2006 3:58PM]

Wonderful, now its even easier to enjoy one of the nastiest foods on the planet. Not to mention the unthinkable amounts of cruelty behind each and every one of them.

Yay for technology that makes the exploitation of animals even more fun!

[OyoyoY123 @ Jul 31st 2006 4:04PM]

oh boy cyborg egg~~~~~~~
NOW HOW DO you define the existance of an egg??????????

[wes @ Jul 31st 2006 4:17PM]

lol a vegan. how funny ;)
you know some of those chicken are treated rather fair :)
there's nothing against a hardboiled egg for breakfast!

[Jacob @ Jul 31st 2006 4:18PM]

@ Paix247

There are plenty of free range chicken farms in the US, that DON'T feed chickens meat, and DON'T stuff thousands of chickens in small cages.

@ thedvs01

Why don't you try learning what happens to the chickens you eat before replying with such a comment.

They are boiled alive, have their beaks cut of to facilitate forced feeding, fed growth hormones that make them grow so fast their bones break, stuffed into cages barely larger than the chicken itself, fed ground up chicken meal (think about how "mad cow" disease started, by feeding cows, well, cows)

KFC and many other restaurants should be ashamed of themselves for condoning this type of activity.

[Guess who @ Oct 28th 2006 12:11PM]

Chicken is great and good for you I recommend that they do cut off the beaks before selling it other wise you will end up getting it stuck in your throats which is not a good situation we live to eat and chickens dont live for anything but feed our bodies

Signed a chicken lover

[Winstone @ Jul 31st 2006 4:35PM]

well thats a great Idea

[mikep @ Jul 31st 2006 4:46PM]

Stop! you're making me hungry!!

[Bryan Jackson @ Jul 31st 2006 4:47PM]

I really don't care if chickens are force fed, or boiled alive. I know that makes me a 'bad person', but I really don't. There is way too much human suffering in the world for me to even start to think about chicken suffering. Like it or not, chickens are not humans, they can not think, they are creatures of instict. I no more care for chickens feelings, than I do for the ant I just crushed.

[Octavus @ Jul 31st 2006 4:53PM]

Thank god chickens are too stupid to complain, and too tasty to ignore.

[stryker @ Jul 31st 2006 4:55PM]

Telling thedvs01 the cruelty of how chickens are handled probably won't effect him. Judging by his comment, he's a republican and as such doesn't have the ability to see animals as anything other than food for people or something to shoot at for sport.

That being said, I love eggs and meat. Just don't tell me where they come from.

[A-Dog @ Jul 31st 2006 4:56PM]

4 words

Survival of the Fittest

[LittleJoe @ Jul 31st 2006 5:02PM]

Remember when our comment priviliges got taken away not too long ago? Let's try to keep on topic and remain civil.

Soooo on topic... this "logo" goes through different changes while its cooking??? I think thats pretty damn awesome. Another one of those "dammit I wish I thought of that" ideas.

[Craig @ Jul 31st 2006 5:05PM]

They were talking about this on the radio and the 'egg expert' said that the egg cannot be dropped straight into boiling water. The water must be cold, and as the egg cooks the various 'hard' 'soft' 'medium' words appear on the egg.

[Cade @ Jul 31st 2006 5:23PM]

MMMMMMMMMM.... Liquid Chickens

[my_name_is_tudor @ Jul 31st 2006 5:29PM]

All Lion eggs are free range anyway last time I checked. That's their whole thing.

[11 IS louder than 10 @ Jul 31st 2006 6:03PM]

I'm all for anything that makes my food cheaper, faster, more nutricious, more delicious, or (as in this case) easier to cook.

This gives me an idea, though... chickens that lay already hard-boiled eggs. Eureka!

[Eric Cartman @ Jul 31st 2006 6:13PM]

Good one @thedvs01.

[Carnivorous_Hippie @ Jul 31st 2006 6:17PM]

Not too fond of boiled eggs myslef, but it is a pretty ingenius idea. As for chickens, think I'll grab one of those chicken club sandwiches at McD's, and maybe some nuggets. (mmm, artificially white meat..)

[Gene Holman @ Jul 31st 2006 6:27PM]

Yeesh, another way for corporate logos to find thier way into our lives.

[Rich UK @ Jul 31st 2006 6:55PM]

@my_name_is_tudor: Lion Eggs aren't necessarily Free Range its a sign of salmonella free eggs, Lion isn't a corporation its a food standards agency

[tony @ Jul 31st 2006 7:10PM]

Eggs are nothing more than chicken periods. All you egg fans have your red wings on or what?

[Stewart McKane @ Jul 31st 2006 7:10PM]

@Little Joe - I'm guessing the Lion stays Black throughout the process, but the egg timer will switch through along with the wording.

@my_name_is_tudor - No, Lion eggs don't have to eb free range, just meeet production criteria and standards

@Rich UK - Not quite an agency (the FSA (Food Standards Agency) is quite seperate. Lion is a trade body.

@Gene Holman - The Lion logo has been on UK eggs for years - it acts as a 'quality mark'. It's usually stamped on dot-matric style in red ink along with a best before date.

@Jacob - Animal cruelty and Food Standards laws in the UK prohibit that kind of behaviour.

Lord, I never knew a Food GCSE would acutally come in useful!!!

Stu

[TC @ Jul 31st 2006 8:26PM]

This is 'bloke cooking' at its finest! Now if they can just do some stickers for bacon and hash browns I might be able to do myself a breakfast without incinerating it.

[John Stracke @ Jul 31st 2006 9:50PM]

Quality standards. For British eggs.

Um...when I was there in 1998, I saw a news report bemoaning the high rates of salmonella...and then went to the grocery store and saw stacks of *unrefrigerated* egg cartons. Unless that's been fixed, sticking a logo and an expiration date on the egg is like expecting a rad meter to protect you from a nuclear blast.

[x23 @ Jul 31st 2006 10:27PM]

"Judging by his comment, he's a republican and as such doesn't have the ability to see animals as anything other than food for people or something to shoot at for sport."


what does the republican party have to do with being for or against animal cruelty? last i chedk g. gordon liddy was a pretty staunch anti-cruelty advocate and he isn't exactly what i would call a bleeding heart liberal democrat.

stop acting like every ethical or moral viewpoint can somehow be shoved into a little binary classification where you can only agree with others in that group. in the real world no one actually has insanely bifurcated views. the only people that don't think you can mix and match are idiots. or in high school.

[sockatume @ Aug 1st 2006 4:42AM]

Salmonella from eggs isn't much of a problem in the UK. I remember the press doing a doom and gloom story in the late '90s, but bear in mind that's the same press that went to Chemsol "We Work Out of a Shed" Consulting for the MRSA tests. I wouldn't put much stock in the data or the conclusions drawn from it. There hasn't been a serious outbreak of salmonella since the 1980s IIRC.

It seems that you can only get eggs with one indicator on them - so you can buy eggs which tell you when they're soft-boiled, but they'll not tell you when they become hard boiled (you have to buy different eggs for that) which is a bit daft.

Also, nit-picking but Lion Quality is a sort of quality assurance thing rather than a company. They're responsible for pro-egg propaganda on the UK airwaves. "If you don't eat eggs, you're a communist". I'm kidding about that last part, BTW. They just do recipie ideas as adverts.

[zoara @ Aug 1st 2006 7:02AM]

Bryan Jackson...

How about buying free-range for selfish reasons, like them tasting better? Mmmm, tasty chicken.

Call me names if you want, but I would feel bad standing on an ant on purpose. It's got as much right to life as me.

[Rich UK @ Aug 1st 2006 11:37AM]

@ John Stracke: Eggs can be kept unrefrigerated! So thats not the issue, salmonella is passed to eggs from infected hens, and lion quality shows the hens are free of salmonella and hygenic. If you put an egg with salmonella in the fridge its not going to make a bit of difference.

[allthekingsmen @ Aug 1st 2006 12:03PM]

To address quality issues, what about a stamp that appears (permanently) once an egg has reached an unacceptable storage tempurature?

[Ken @ Aug 4th 2006 7:13PM]

To address quality issues, what about a stamp that appears (permanently) once an egg has reached an unacceptable storage tempurature?

Posted at 12:03PM on Aug 1st 2006 by allthekingsmen [ ! ]
There ya go. Thats also a great idea.

I wonder if the dye turns back to the original (soft) once its been refrigerated for awhile? You know hot to cold. I personally don't like hard boiled eggs hot, just cold and mashed, salt n pepper. mmm...

I work in grocery retail and the thing that bothers me is every nite the chickens that are roasted (ready to eat) that don't get bought that day are thrown away. The lived and died for nothing. They could have somehow give them to homeless people, or reprocess them for other foods, or something.
I'm sure that thermocromatic ink should have other uses.