Dragon Boat Festival is approaching, and your family may be preparing salted duck eggs, zongzi and mung bean cake. How are these foods made? How to ensure safety and health? How much is the cost and profit? Our reporter went deep into the factory workshops, workshops and supermarkets to visit, track the production and sales process, and calculate the economic accounts.

From now on, this newspaper has launched a series of reports on "reporters visiting Dragon Boat Festival food at the grass-roots level". Please pay attention.

How is a small salted duck egg made?

Yesterday, the reporter visited a large poultry and egg products company in Anlu, a salted egg workshop in Wufeng agricultural and sideline market, supermarkets, etc. in several ways to experience the salted egg production process and calculate the "turnaround account" of salted eggs ".

Enterprise Visits: 8 Processes "Roll" into Salted Duck Eggs

At about 10:00 yesterday, four workers were moving egg baskets down from a truck at the exit of a large poultry and egg products company in Anlu. Porter Xiao Chen told reporters that about 25000 catties (170000-200000) of fresh eggs enter the factory every day.

Egg basket into the factory, soon ushered in the first process: spot checks. Quality inspectors randomly took out 12 fresh eggs from each basket and sent them to the quality inspection and control center for weighing, testing the eggshell's resistance to pressure, freshness, pesticide residues and heavy metals.

The reporter saw that in front of a large row of instruments, fresh eggs are like examinees, who have to be scored by the quality department staff, and only 72 points or more are considered qualified. All 12 random eggs in each basket scored above 72 points before the basket of fresh eggs was sent to the production workshop for the second process: cleaning and grading.

After two "brushes", the washed fresh eggs will begin the first "census. Bright incandescent lamps are placed at the bottom of the assembly line to make the slowly rolling eggs yellow and bright. Under the guidance of the staff, the reporter, a layman, also knew at a glance which were waste materials such as scattered egg yolks and black egg yolks.

Good eggs continue to roll forward. At the weighing place, they are classified for the second time: two high-precision electronic scales are guarded on the assembly line, and the rolled fresh eggs are automatically divided into 4 lanes according to their weight. The staff said that only in this way can we ensure that the salt is uniform and the maturity period is consistent, which is difficult for small workshops to control.

Next, it will be the second "census": knock on eggs to listen to the sound. The egg knocker held one in his right hand and two in his left. His hands kept rolling fresh eggs and knocking each other. Guo Huanling, a female employee in her 30 s, knocked for 10 years. She told reporters that the sound of good eggs is crisp and round, while the sound of cracked eggs is hoarse.

The fresh eggs that have passed the second "census" should enter the third and core link-pickling in the jar. The reporter saw that in a 1000-square-meter 24-degree Celsius constant temperature pickling warehouse, hundreds of large water tanks were neatly arranged, covered with a thick layer of plastic film. Open the plastic film and see, there is a layer of thermal insulation film below, and then there are 5000 fresh eggs soaked in salt water.

Yuan Jinyou, the person in charge of the company, said that only preserved eggs and salted eggs pickled under specific constant temperature conditions can ensure stable quality and salty and suitable. The salting warehouse is the first constant temperature egg pickling workshop in the country, which can pickle 0.3 billion salted eggs every year.

After 8 processes and 25 days of pickling, salted eggs out of the jar. After cleaning, vacuum into the bag, sterilization and cooking, air-dried packaging, finished product testing, you can enter the supermarket, into thousands of households.

The reporter experienced several links on the spot: when washing eggs, the reporter carefully poured a basket of eggs into the washing pool and slowly withdrew from the basket by borrowing the buoyancy of water. When sorting eggs, in order not to let the eggs accumulate too much on the assembly line and fall down, the reporter asked each hand to grab three big duck eggs and quickly put them into the egg basket. The most testing part is to knock eggs to distinguish good from bad. The reporter's left hand rotates two eggs, at the same time, one egg of the right hand is used to knock different parts of it. The total number of three eggs is about 20. The most difficult thing to grasp is the strength. If you knock lightly, you may not be able to hear it. If you knock heavily, you may be afraid of breaking it.

Workshop visit: wrapped in mud and marinated for half a month

Different from the strict production process of large poultry and egg products enterprises, the workshop-style salted egg production is slightly simple, but it is also loved by the public. These salted eggs occupy half of the citizens' dining table.

Yesterday, the reporter came to Wufeng Guangda agricultural and sideline products market in Renhe Road near Happy Valley. Li Aimin, the owner of Aimin Egg Shop, is busy making salted eggs, while the big bucket next to him is filled with red mud.

Li Aimin said that the mud is mixed with broken laterite, salt and water, and the amount of salt varies according to temperature. Under normal circumstances, 100kg of eggs need 3 to 4kg of salt. The selected duck eggs are rolled in the well-made mud and then wrapped in a layer of plant ash, which can not only prevent bumping during transportation, but also prolong the storage time. Plant ash is mainly made of rice husk and wheat straw.

The salted duck eggs wrapped in plastic bags were piled up in a basket and waited for the salt to penetrate into the duck eggs. "This batch of salted eggs needs to be marinated for half a month, but the temperature is low in winter, so it needs to be marinated for at least two months."

In the warehouse where salted duck eggs were placed, two big fans were blowing at the piled salted duck eggs. Li Aimin explained: "Pickled eggs also need a suitable temperature, and duck eggs should be properly cooled when the weather is hot."

Calculate the economic account: box value doubled, bulk up a few cents

Yesterday, the reporter saw in Wuchang Fruit Lake Wu Shang hypermarket that salted duck eggs in bulk were 0.9 yuan/piece. In Yangyuan Market, small salted duck eggs are 0.7 yuan each and large 0.9 yuan. However, boxed salted duck eggs cost a lot. For example, a brand of 20 salted eggs 66 yuan, that is, about 3.3 yuan per egg.

According to industry insiders, the cost of bulk salted eggs is mainly concentrated on fresh duck eggs. Data show that in March this year, the purchase price of fresh duck eggs was 4.5 yuan/jin, which fell to 3.7 yuan/jin in April, and now it has risen to about 4 yuan/jin, which is still lower than the purchase price of 5 yuan/jin in the same period last year.

It is understood that each catty of fresh duck eggs about 7-8. According to the purchase price of 4 yuan/kg, the cost of each fresh duck egg is about 0.54 yuan. With the addition of salt, water and electricity, transportation and other expenses, the cost of producing each salted duck egg in a small workshop is about 0.65 yuan to 0.7 yuan, and the price sold to dealers is generally about 0.75 yuan, while the price purchased by citizens in the retail market is generally 0.9 yuan to 1 yuan. According to this calculation, the profit of each egg and retailer is generally about 0.15 yuan to 0.25 yuan.

For those large-scale assembly-line poultry and egg products factories, the production cost of each salted duck egg is about 0.85 yuan to 0.87 yuan, which is packaged and then sent to the supermarket for sale. Some medium and high-end boxed salted eggs are sold for about 3 yuan each, worth three or four times as much as fresh duck eggs.

Industry Scan: Local Eggs Fill Hubei Dining Table This Year

Hubei, the province of a thousand lakes, has good conditions for poultry farming. Data show that at present, only five counties and cities in our province, including Tianmen, Xiantao, Yingcheng, Jianli, and Hanchuan, produce more than 10,000 tons of duck eggs annually, and the province's duck egg production accounts for 6% of the country's total.

This year's Dragon Boat Festival, Hubei people on the table, almost all will be Hubei eggs. Yesterday, the reporter visited several large-scale Zhongbai supermarkets and martial arts dealers in Wuhan. The foreign salted egg brands that were still rampant in Jiangcheng a few years ago have rarely been seen.

A person from the Hubei Poultry Industry Association said that compared with traditional seasonal foods such as glutinous rice balls and moon cakes, our province's brands have been greatly impacted by foreign brands. Hubei Salted Egg has rarely maintained its local monopoly market advantage. However, to continue to grow the egg industry, the key is to scale, deep processing and market segmentation.

Related Links

How to Choose Salted Duck Eggs

Look: Look at the appearance, the shell of the salted duck egg with good quality is clean, smooth and round, there should be no cracks, and the eggshell is cyan; the shell of the salted duck egg with poor quality is gray and dark, with white or black spots.

Shake: Shake the egg lightly. Salted duck eggs of good quality should have a slight tremor. If it feels wrong and has abnormal noise, it means the duck eggs have gone bad.

Peeling: Peeling the eggshell after cooking, the salted duck egg of high quality is clear in yellow and white, the protein is white and condensed, the salty taste is moderate, and the oil is delicious. Butter comes out when you pick it with chopsticks, and the egg yolk is fine and sandy. It is divided into layers, from shallow to deep, with redder egg heart and no hard heart in the middle. The salted duck egg protein with poor quality is rotten, greasy and salty taste.