Scrambled Eggs

should avoid eating raw or partially cooked eggs, such as those in mayonnaise and softscrambled or poached eggs. Cooking eggs to 160 to 165 degrees (which means fully cooking both the yolk and the white) kills the bacteria.

If you raise chickens, you can mitigate the risk of contracting salmonella by washing your hands after handling your chickens or their eggs, keeping your nesting boxes clean to prevent manure on the eggs, and disallowing your chickens in your house. Discarding cracked or dirty eggs, refrigerating eggs as soon as they are collected, and rinsing them just prior to cooking them will help reduce or eliminate the risk. (Although it's usually safe to store eggs at room temperature for at least two weeks, salmonella bacteria multiply faster at warmer temperatures, so storing eggs in the refrigerator is safer. Eggs should be stored on an interior fridge shelf, not in the door where they will be more susceptible to temperature variations.)

Keep in mind that fresh eggs are less likely to contain large amounts of salmonella because the bacteria haven’t had time to grow. As I mentioned earlier, fresh eggs that haven’t been washed can stay out at room temperature for a couple of weeks thanks to the invisible “bloom” on the shell that protects the inside of the egg from air and bacteria. Washing removes that bloom, so commercial eggs do need to be refrigerated, since they have been washed, and fresh eggs need to be refrigerated if you wash them. Otherwise, you can leave them on the counter, but remember that one day at room temperature ages an egg as much as a week in the fridge, so eggs will last seven times longer if they’re kept chilled. And as I’ve said before, always store eggs pointy end down. This keeps the yolk centered in the middle of the whites, which not only protects the yolk from bacteria but also makes for prettier deviled and hard-cooked eggs.