Hello All,
Don't know if I will get much response on this one, but I sure could use help. I have cured eggs in the past for egg sacks and it must have been beginners luck because the past couple years I have failed each year in making a good bouncy eggs since. But first a little history...
A few years ago I caught a nice female king up in Altmar. I took it to the closest fish cleaner and the guy there started to talking to me about curing eggs. Then he took one of his out of a bucket he had cured and bounced it. The thing bounced from floor to ceiling and all around! I was quite impressed! So I got a very little info out of him about what he did, basically a few ingredients (salt, sugar, cold water). Nothing more than those reticent ingredients would he give me, except that it was an "Old Timers" cure. So I asked for some of the eggs from my fish, I came home, found a similar sounding recipe online and tried it. It worked pretty well, I got a bounce from floor to eye level. Then the following year I lost the recipe and collected about 12 various recipes. I once again hit two that worked fairly well. One was simply soak overnight in ice cold water and then store them salted! I couldn't believe it the next day when I couldn't even pop them between my fingers.
But the past couple years I tried the same recipes and various other ones with well water then spring water and I can't seem to get anything but eggs that pop with the slightest squeeze. So can anyone guess what I am doing wrong? Because I sure can't. I have treated the eggs well from the time I get them out of the fish until later that night when I cure them. Even though the fish stations just keep them in 5 gallon pail all day long...
This year I used a stainless steel bowl to try and cure them which may be a problem, but I also did the plain cold water brine in a ziplok, so the bowl wouldn't have mattered with that one.
Or if someone has an "Old Timers" recipe that is fool proof I sure would be much obliged... I'm certainly willing to post all the recipes I collected since they are all public forum domain. Some are for loose eggs and some are for skeins.
Thanks for any help.
PS... why a DIY cure? Because I really like all things DIY since most everything used to be DIY