The Best (and Worse) Ways to Freeze Eggs From the Grocery Store

While freezing can be a great way to preserve many foods before they spoil, some foods simply don’t freeze well. When it comes to freezing eggs, however, the advice is decidedly mixed, even here at Lifehacker. In the past, we once advised that freezing eggs is a giant pain and not worth the effort; we later said that freezing eggs in ice cube trays is effective. But depending on how you freeze the eggs, both statements can be true.

The common complaint about freezing eggs in ice cube trays is that they can get stuck, making it hard to get them back out. But there are a couple of strategies you can use to prevent that: Freeze them in silicone trays or coat the ice cube tray with cooking spray.

To get a sense of how well these suggestions work, I froze four batches of eggs — one dozen in a regular plastic ice cube tray without cooking spray; one dozen in a regular plastic ice cube tray coated with cooking spray; another in a silicone ice cube tray without cooking spray; and the final dozen in a silicone ice cube tray coated with cooking spray. Here’s how each method worked.

Freezing eggs in a plastic tray without cooking spray

This was no good. First of all, the ice cube compartments were a bit too to small contain each egg. But the bigger issue was that, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get the frozen egg to pop out of the compartment — I broke the tray trying. Granted, the plastic was flimsy, but I obviously don’t recommend trying this at home.

Freezing eggs in a plastic tray with cooking spray

The ice cube compartment was still a little too small for the egg, creating more spillover, but it popped out easily enough. I’d use this strategy to freeze eggs in the future, especially if I only had plastic trays at my disposal.

Freezing eggs in a silicone tray without cooking spray

Each individual compartment was a little bit bigger, which meant that it was large enough to hold an entire egg. Taking the frozen eggs out of the tray took some effort, but they did come out, and the result was a nicely frozen block of egg.

Freezing eggs in a silicone tray with cooking spray

This was the best option by far, as each egg froze in a neat block and easily slid out of the compartment.

The takeaway: Freezing eggs in a plastic ice cube tray is doable, as long as you coat it with a little cooking spray before adding in the egg. A silicone ice cube tray (with cooking spray) is ideal, but if all you have is a regular plastic tray, coat it with cooking spray and freeze away.