Liquid egg for catering kitchens

A café or hotel kitchen can get through a lot of eggs in one breakfast service. Some kitchens buy part of that egg ready cracked and pasteurised. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) sets out when pasteurised egg helps, in its catering advice for England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

The dishes it suits

The FSA says pasteurised egg products suit foods that will not be cooked, or will only be lightly cooked. Fresh mayonnaise, mousses, soufflés and eggs with runny yolks are the dishes it names for extra care.

"Using pasteurised egg products can help reduce food safety risks when preparing foods containing raw or lightly cooked egg."

Thinking about who you are cooking for

The FSA asks caterers to think about who will eat the food. It counts young children, pregnant people, older adults and people with an underlying health condition as more vulnerable to infection.

For raw or lightly cooked dishes served to those groups, the FSA says to use hen eggs from the British Lion Code or Laid in Britain schemes. If a kitchen cannot check that, the FSA says to cook the dish thoroughly or make it with pasteurised egg. For people who are severely immunocompromised and on a medically supervised diet, the FSA says to seek medical advice.

The forms it comes in

The FSA lists chilled liquid whole egg, egg white and egg yolk, as well as frozen and powdered egg products. It notes that commercial mayonnaise is often made with pasteurised egg.

Defra's figures show UK egg processors made 19.4 thousand tonnes of egg products from April to June 2026. Liquid egg was 74.8% of that.

Working out how much you need

UK egg sizes are weight bands for the whole egg in its shell. Medium covers 53 g to just under 63 g. Large runs on from 63 g to just under 73 g. Each grade is a band, so two medium eggs on one tray can differ by almost 10 g.

A kitchen can find its own number by cracking and weighing one tray of its usual eggs. That weight, divided by the number of eggs, shows how much liquid egg replaces each one.

Handling egg in the kitchen

Storage times and temperatures differ from one product to the next, so cooks follow the pack and the supplier's specification.

Shell eggs cracked into a bowl for later use are what the FSA calls pooled egg. It says to keep pooled egg in the fridge and take out small amounts as needed. Kitchens should use it all on the same day and never top it up with new eggs.

The British Egg Industry Council speaks for the UK egg trade. For shell eggs, it suggests storing them in a fridge, away from raw meat and strong-smelling foods. It says hands should be washed before and after handling them. It says cooked egg dishes should be eaten as soon as possible, or kept in the fridge if they are not served straight away.

Spare egg can be frozen out of its shell, with each container labelled. The same council says frozen egg needs to be fully thawed, ideally overnight in the fridge. It goes only into thoroughly cooked dishes.

Telling customers about egg

Egg is one of the 14 allergens that the FSA says food businesses must tell customers about.

Useful links