3 Easy Steps to Clean Up Broken Eggs
If butter fingers — or actually buttery fingers — cause an egg to slip from your hands, you know you’ll have a mess before the shell even hits the floor. The slime, the sticky shell bits, the slime! Cleanup isn’t going to be, er, over easy. Here’s how to make it less of a scramble.
1. Scoop it (with a spatula and a sponge).
A sponge and a spatula can make a pretty good brush-and-dustpan stand-in for that gloppy mess on the kitchen floor. (You don’t want to then have to clean up your cleaning tools!) Just use the spatula as if it’s a dustpan and use the sponge to push the egg on board.
2. Sprinkle it (with salt or club soda).
Once you’ve cleaned up much of the mess, a liberal shake of table salt can help to solidify anything that’s left on the floor, making it less of a gloopy mess and easier to get off the floor. Let it sit for a minute before tackling with your sponge or paper towels.
If your egg fell on a rug or carpet, sprinkle it with club soda instead, then blot with your sponge or paper towels. And if the egg that fell was cooked, a little bit of dish soap, like Dawn, on a damp rag should take care of the grease, on floors and furnishings alike.
3. Wipe it (with a damp microfiber cloth).
Raw eggs can breed bacteria if you don’t clean up the mess properly. Don’t worry, though — you don’t have to bust out the bleach- or alcohol-based cleaners (unless you want to). A firm wipe with a microfiber cloth dampened with warm water will do the job.
An exception: If your stovetop is covered in raw eggs and these raw eggs have hardened while you were cooking (think: drips while you were making French toast, messy splatters while you cracking shells, etc.), just leave it be for now. As soon as the stove cools, let a wet dish cloth sit on the splatters for 10 minutes or so, and then simply scrub it off with a dishrag.
Do you agree with this method? What’s your best advice for cleaning up broken eggs?