Gadgets: OXO Egg Separator

I tend to like OXO products. They're well-designed, sturdy, innovative, and ergonomic.

But ... an egg separator?

The egg separator has to be the poster child for the anti-unitasker movement. It has no other purpose than separating whites and yolks. It doesn't open cans or flatten chicken breasts. It does one single thing. Yolk here, white there. That's it. Toss it in the dishwasher.

Talk about egg separators out loud, and it's pretty much guaranteed that half the crowd will talk about using the eggshells to separate eggs, and the other half will talk about scooping out the yolks with their fingers. It's not a difficult task. Does anyone need a gadget for this task?

Scattered among the eggshell people and the grab-the-yolk people, there might be two quiet ones - the person who can't separate an egg without breaking the yolk, and the one who is freaked out about touching raw eggs.

Maybe there are more than a few of those folks. There are a lot of egg separators sold. Someone's buying them.

This one does its job well. It sits nicely on the edge of a fat-edged bowl or a thin bowl. It's got a hard sharp edge where you can crack the egg. And it separates the yolks from the whites.

Is this an earthshaking innovative device? Well, no. Is it a unitasker? Yep, for sure. Does everyone need it? Heck no. Does someone need it? Probably.

Hey, I'm here to review products, not judge users. If you have egg-separation anxiety issues, this product is for you. Otherwise, I'm sure you've got your own favorite method already.

Egg Separator Hack - Better than the water bottle!

You may have seen the video that shows how to separate egg yolks using an empty plastic bottle. If not, here's one version:

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Okay that looks genius, but I never have empty plastic bottles around.

Oh, I suppose I could buy a bottle of water just for this purpose. But then I'd be hand-washing a plastic water bottle and letting it dry, and storing it somewhere. That's not convenient.

Then I saw THIS:

Same concept, but the item is smaller (thus easier to store) and I think it's dishwasher safe. For people who loooove gadgets, or for those who don't want to separate egg yolks with their hands (that's usually what I do) it might be a good buy. But when I posted this on Facebook, the general comment was that it's too expensive for what it does.

Well, okay then. But something about the shape of that separator stuck in my mind, and I had the "aha" moment.

What if you could separate eggs with this method using a kitchen device that you PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE???? And if you don't have one, it's CHEAP. And washable in the dishwasher?

Yes, I'm shouting. This is very very very cool. 

See:

You know what it is? Maybe this will help:

Got it yet?

Another look:

Yup, it's the bulb from a standard turkey baster. Just separate the two pieces and use the bulb to suck the yolk out of the whites. 

And here's the the thing. Not only is this less messy than using your hands, you're less likely to break the yolk than if you're using the shell  - the sharp edges of the shell always thwart me, which is why I use my hands - but the soft rubber of the baster bulb is pretty safe.

The thing that has me totally convinced about using this method instead of using my hands (besides the need for hand-washing) is that the yolk that came out of that baster bulb was the cleanest yolk I've seen. If there's a little bit of egg white in your yolk when you're baking a cake, it's not that much of a big deal. But when I'm making custard for ice cream, I want those yolks as clean as possible - it's the whites that tend to leave bits in the custard that need to be strained out.

And this method gave me very clean yolks.

A cheap turkey baster like the one I used sells for about two dollars. And for that price you get a turkey baster AND an egg separator.

Or just rummage through your junk drawer and see if you happen to have a turkey baster rolling around in there.