Can I dissolve eggshells in vinegar, and use the vinegar in a dish? [closed]
Are there other dishes where this is done to increase the bio-availablity of calcium in a dish, such as pork knuckle vinegar stew, which is considered a post-partum dish in Cantonese style cooking.
Best Answer
Addressing the food chemistry aspect:
Vinegar (acetic acid) reacts with calcium carbonate in the eggshells to make calcium acetate (Wikipedia), as in the naked egg experiment. Calcium acetate can be used, among other things, to gel alcohol; in food it can be used to coagulate tofu as well as having a stabilising effect. There's a chance it will act as a thickener depending on quantity depending on what else is present in the sauce; the chemistry is quite intersting.
This chemical reaction means you won't have as much acidity left in the vinegar as when you started but the additional flavour of all but the most refined vinegars should survive, so you can choose one that matches the other ingredients. For a Chinese-inspired dish, rice vinegar would be an obvious choice. It's not clear to me whether the calcium acetate itself would have a flavour, pleasant or otherwise
I can't comment on the nutritional aspect, but will just add a note of caution from a food safety point of view (actually 2):
Calcium acetate has a medicinal use and making and consuming medicinal compounds at home can't be assumed to be safe. In this case it treats cases of excess blood phosphate by preventing the absorption of phosphate in food; how much you'd consume, and how this relates to the levels seen in foods/medicines are not things we can help with.
If you wished to make a vinegar-preserved food (rather different to the example you've added since I started writing this) you'd have to take into account the fact that you've neutralised much of the acid in the vinegar, and therefore much of it's preserving power.
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What happens when you mix eggshell and vinegar?
If you soak this egg shell in vinegar (which is about 4% acetic acid), you start a chemical reaction that dissolves the calcium carbonate shell. The acetic acid reacts with the calcium carbonate in the egg shell and releases carbon dioxide gas that you see as bubbles on the shell.Can you dissolve eggshell with vinegar?
The calcium carbonate in the eggshell reacts with the acetic acid in the vinegar to form a water-soluable compound, calcium acetate, and carbon dioxide (CO2) gas. This reaction dissolves the eggshell, but leaves the inner membrane intact, creating a naked egg.What happens if you leave an egg in vinegar for too long?
What happens? Be careful, the eggshell will be a lot weaker! If you leave the egg in the vinegar for about 36 hours, eventually all the calcium carbonate will be dissolved by the acetic acid, leaving just the soft membrane and yolk behind.How do you liquify egg shells?
If you want to dissolve an eggshell, start by placing an egg in a glass and adding enough vinegar or cola to cover it. Once the egg is submerged, the chemical reaction between the acetic acid in the liquid and the calcium carbonate in the eggshell will cause the shell to dissolve.Egg Shell Science Experiment - Dissolves in Vinegar
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