As you continue to bake or cook, you might come across instructions to separate your eggs. Or you might have a recipe that only calls for egg yolks, or only egg whites. Short of hard boiling the eggs and pulling the yolks out that way, how exactly are we supposed to separate those things?
There are several methods. My favorite is what I consider the “old-school” approach, but use whatever seems easiest to you.
Old-School Method
I don’t actually know if this method has a name, I’m just calling it this because it’s the way I learned from the older generation in my life. It doesn’t take any fancy equipment, just the actual eggshell itself. Once the egg is cracked, instead of just dumping the egg into the bowl, you are going to carefully pass the egg yolk back and forth between the two halves. The egg white will fall into the bowl (or whatever you are using the catch it) and you will be left with only the yolk in the shell. This can be tricky, and if you aren’t careful, the yolk may break and you’ll have to start over.
Another Old-School Method
You can do something similar to the previous method, but instead just use your hands. Carefully crack the egg into one of your hands and let the egg white run through your fingers and keep the yolk cradled in your hand. I absolutely hate the way egg feels on my hands, so this is not the method I prefer, but it does work. If you’re less icky about eggs than I am, this method might be easier for you.
Egg Separators
They do make gadgets that are for separating eggs. They work on the same premise of holding back the yolk so that the white falls through to separate them. I personally haven’t used any of those devices so I can’t speak to how effective they might be. I don’t see what they wouldn’t work, but I’m cheap and I’d rather just use the actual eggshell to do the work for me.
There are lots of other methods as well, such as the hacks of using an empty water bottle to suck up the yolk from the white or using something on your fingers to pinch the yolk out of the white. I haven’t tested any of those because they just seem unnecessary to me. I’m a little old-fashioned I suppose, but feel free to try them and see what happens. I’d love to know if they work!