I got five chickens last year and now have more eggs then I know what to do with (so we give a lot away). Everyone that has them says they are so much better and I have wondered if that is just due to them being able to see the chickens and their home. It is near impossible to hard boil the eggs they lay because the “membrane” (layer between the shell and egg-stuff) is so thick. The yolk is a darker yellow as well. I feed them mid-priced crumbles from tractor supply and give them scraps maybe once per week.
We have backyard chickens and hard-boil a lot of eggs. The biggest effect on peel-ability: Start with boiling water, do not start the eggs in cold water.
For years I started with cold water because that's what Alton Brown said to do in Good Eats. And for years the eggs were a pain to peel. When I read Kenji's article, I switched, and immediately eggs became much easier to peel. Night and day.
No other factor comes close in terms of effect. Not age, not backyard vs store bought. Not the breed (at least, not for any of the dozen chicken breeds we have had). Start with boiling water and 9/10 eggs peel nicely, start with cold water and 9/10 eggs peel terribly.
I steam them to get consistent hot exterior temps. Plus it is easier to rinse them when they are in a steamer basket. And it uses less water. And the water is faster to boil.
I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I was told decades ago that starting with cold water was mostly based wanting to avoid scalded hands when placing the eggs into water or to avoid cracked shells from impact of the raw eggs with the pot or with each other.
This is interesting to me because pressure cooker eggs start cold but after a few dozen batches, fresh eggs or old, I’ve never had a batch that was hard to peel. I do ice bath them though.
Do a blind taste test with store bought and home grown eggs. You will be able to tell. After years of eating home grown eggs, I nearly spit out store eggs when I had them. The texture and flavor is so bad it was an immediate involuntary response. Home eggs are velvety and rich in flavor. Store eggs tasted like bland rubber. I say the difference is as stark as comparing scrambled store eggs and reconstituted powdered eggs.
My wife claimed there was no difference for a very long time. She had the same experience when we needed to buy store eggs last winter.
Strangely, when going from store eggs to home eggs the difference isn't as pronounced.
I have been raising pastured free range egg chicks for years. If I don't see the color of the yolk, I can't tell the difference between mine and store bought.
Oddly enough, others can and cooks say the whites are much easier to whip.
Did I sit down with a blindfold on and eat unknown eggs? No. I will eat anything that is food. I had every intention of eating the store eggs with no hesitation. I even ate them after taking pause at involuntary revulsion to the tasteless gelatinous mass I was chewing on. I grew up eating store eggs. Now I will avoid them when possible.
To be honest, I would also pay attention to the experience. Were you predisposed towards liking your friend's eggs? Were you having a great time? Those things matter -- haven't you ever found yourself enjoying your food because of the mood or your companions?
I think in order to make the comparison fairer, you should do a blind tasting of the two kinds of eggs at your home, in the same sitting, and under the same conditions as much as possible.
Overkill? Maybe, but also warranted, given that there are experiments out there asserting people cannot really tell the difference.
Ok, fair enough. Human perception is subject to all kinds of bias. My perception is that store bought eggs are vastly inferior to home grown. Whether that is just perception or truth matters little to me.
Store bought eggs are older, have the protective mucus coating removed, are washed with chemicals and come from chickens inundated with medication and fed the cheapest feed possible. If you think that none of those things affect flavor or texture I dont know what to say.
A fair comparison would compare home grown with non-premium eggs that most people are eating and are cost comparable. The test must also not be funded by an egg producer or supporter of big egg, if you grant calling egg factories as such.
It's really not. Most scrambled eggs are overcooked, and what you use for oil (or butter) and anything you add (eg milk) has a large effect. Not to mention seasoning correctly.
Research says that the nutritional value is not significantly different between organic and backyard.
However, I expect the fact the backyard eggs are fresh laid is the big differentiator. The supply chain between farm and supermarket is huge, whilst backyard eggs can be laid that day.
In the US farmers have 28 days to get eggs in cartons.
Once in cartoons eggs must be sold in 30 days. Store eggs can be quite old. Freshness is likely a big part of flavor. I suspect that the US egg washing method may affect flavor as well. Home eggs typically aren't washed and are only a few days old. The eggs I sell were laid that week.
Free Range is not the same as organic - if you compare backyard eggs to eggs that are basically someone else’s backyard it’s understandable there’s little difference.
Free range just means the chicken can go outside or turn around. It says nothing about the feed or breed.
My friend had some eggs from his chickens in his backyard and I was surprised I didn’t like them as much as the Happy Egg Co. Heritage Breed eggs I buy at Sprouts. The eggs are $8 a dozen and the only eggs I’ll eat now. Everything else tastes off. Maybe the flavor is from the breed of chicken? The eggs are brown and blue.
They definitely have the same hard boiling issue with a strong membrane.
I want it to be placebo as these eggs are expensive and I spend a few hundred a month on them. But I’ve bought every expensive brand of egg I can (Vital Farms, among others, which _used_ to taste amazing then became popular maybe and tasted like any other egg?) and _only_ this brand tastes different than a bog standard cheap egg.
The same thing happened with Kerrygold butter. Regular cheap butter tastes like I’m eating Crisco now.
Dude get some chickens. My cost per dozen is around $3 at current feed prices and 60% laying rate. If you feed them your kitchen scraps the feed cost is even lower.
The eggs you get that dont peel well are fresh. Less than 2 weeks old. Home grown eggs are the same way until they age and dry out a bit.
I have chickens and while the eggs are great, what you have is new pets that also happen to produce eggs as a side-effect. (Assuming you live in a city and not on a farm) You treat them like any other pet. Chickens will live 3-10 years. One of my chickens died a year or so after she stopped laying, another chicken is now 10 and lays one or two eggs a year but is otherwise looking as healthy as they day we got her. I suppose you could kill them or even try to eat them but most layers are pretty skinny and would not make a great meal.
They will keep producing their whole life. However, production drops way off after 3 years. My wife isn't keen on butchering or I would make soup with old hens. I have some freeloading birds right now that will get to live out their life while only giving me manure and an occasional egg. When they die they become compost.
I do keep dual purpose birds in the event that food supplies require a sacrifice to feed my family. It costs a little more to feed heavier hens but the security is worth it.
It’s not that crazy the more I think about it. If he has a spouse and 2 kids (so 4 people in this house), and each person eats 3 eggs for breakfast everyday for 30 days that’s 360 eggs
also other cultures eat many savory egg dishes as well that makes egg use outside of breakfast quite common. my family of 4 goes through about that many eggs because of many lunch and dinner egg dishes we eat. I've been personally shocked by how many eggs we go through a week, but buying flats at local farmers markets has helped quite a bit.
If you have a reason to think eggs are unhealthy, state the reason so that there can be a discussion. Eggs are as close to a miracle food that I know, and I think it would be a shame to discourage their consumption.
egg consumption may be associated with an increased incidence of type 2 diabetes among the general population and CVD comorbidity among diabetic patients.
Huh. Diabetes is not what I expected. I looked at the discussion section;
>Accumulated epidemiologic evidence generated from this meta-analysis suggests that egg consumption is not associated with an increased risk of overall CVD, IHD, stroke, or mortality. However, compared with those who never consume eggs, those who eat 1 egg per day or more are 42% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Among diabetic patients, frequent egg consumers (ie, ≥ 1 egg/d) are 69% more likely to have CVD comorbidity.
>In the current meta-analysis, we observed a positive association between egg consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes. Although the findings were inconsistent, some animal studies suggested that high cholesterol feeding increased fasting plasma glucose concentrations or induced hyperinsulinemia and impaired glucose tolerance (61–63). Studies have also suggested that elevated serum cholesterol might be associated with an increased islet cholesterol content and directly induce β cell dysfunction by reducing glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (64, 65). In addition, studies have indicated that dietary cholesterol might be associated with chronic, low-grade inflammation (66, 67), which is a mechanism underlying the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Moreover, our results on egg consumption and risk of diabetes are supported by some other human studies (38–40, 68) that do not meet our inclusion criteria... Of note, the possibility cannot be completely excluded that the observed positive associations between egg consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes are explained by residual confounding from unmeasured factors, because diabetes was the secondary outcome in most included studies. Nevertheless, future studies are warranted.
I read through the sample, thank you for referring it to me. I am somewhat familiar with keto/low-carb diets.
In reviewing Gary’s work, I did come across the study he did under Nutrition Science Initiative, and how the results didn’t support his claims. Have you had a chance to look into this?
(Aside: my dad is around your age, and has not yet quit smoking despite science since he doesn’t have any adverse effects. Be well!)
This is very true. Years ago we had chickens, and fresh eggs (laid over the past couple of days) were impossible to peel the shell from after hard boiling.
We started soft boiling, knocking the head off and using a small spoon to eat. It was either that or fried/scrambled.
I never did find out how long a fresh egg would have to age in order to become peelable when hard boiled.
I recently started using a pressure cooker (instant pot brand) to make hard cooked eggs. I use a 4 minute cooking time, instant release the pressure, then plunge the eggs right away into cold water to stop their cooking.
+1 to pressure cooker for a few mins + cold water bath. I tried all the tricks normally stated for hard boiling eggs, and always had half the eggs just refusing to come out of their shell. 100% of the time with my instant pot they just slip out of the shell.
I poach eggs for breakfast in my InstantPot. 3 eggs for 5 minutes on steam. I've found that eggs with orange yolks tend towards a jammy texture, but yellow yolks tend towards a drier texture.
If you're at all interested in storing eggs long term, look up "water glassing". It needs to be done with freshly laid eggs, but the eggs are still edible months later.
We keep ours in a skelter and I boil a dozen of so when it starts to overflow. This has been my experience as well.
I have 17 chickens, 16 of them are hens. I get 9-12 a day and my neighbors love me because we don't eat them. The yolks are big and deep orange/yellow and people seem to love them. I have y purchased an egg in a few years so I have no frame of reference any more. They're free range and they eat everything they can find (snakes, frogs, lizards, bugs, plants) and all the feed and scratch I feed them.
I've seen many amateurs do it. There's been a big uptick over the past decade of people raising chickens in their back yards without having any experience or guidance. Not that you need a lot; just important to do some research.
I think that, separate from any objective difference in "quality" of the eggs, seeing happy chickens is a perfectly fine reason to derive more enjoyment from consuming the eggs in question.
I finally found a full proof way of making any egg easy to peel. I wonder if it would work with eggs like these. I pressure steam then in an instant pot for about three minutes.
> near impossible to hard boil the eggs they lay because the “membrane”
I am curious about this. Is it maybe your boiling technique that is causing this hard membrane? Proteins toughen up if exposed to too much heat.
I get my eggs up to room temperature and drop them into boiling water for 6.5 minutes at sea level. Then I remove the hot water immediately and let them cool. These eggs (no matter where they come from) are always easy to peel and never too tough.
