For the last few days we’ve been feeling pretty lucky about getting one egg per day. Of course, we have 4 presumably female ducks. I’m still looking forward to the days ahead when I get 3 or 4 eggs per day. But at least this is a start. And yesterday I got my first really big one – the equivalent of an extra-large chicken egg. I’ve been really proud of the anonymous duck that made that egg for the last 24+ hours.
But up until now, I’ve only used the duck eggs to bake a cake. (The cake turned out just as expected, by the way. The same as when I used chicken eggs.) So this morning, Arp and I were excited to try frying up some duck eggs for breakfast to see what they taste like in their pure form.
When Arp cracked the first egg into the frying pan, the first thing we noticed was that it held together nice and firm, both the white and the yolk. Of course, this is typical of a really fresh egg, whether chicken or duck. I cringe when I think how old the eggs are when you get them from the supermarket. But what is nice about frying a fresh egg is that the whites don’t get totally overcooked. You see, I like my yolks to be kind of gelatinous, maybe with a little ooze. So that means they have to cook a little longer than when my husband cooks his (he likes his yolks almost totally liquid). When you use supermarket eggs, with their whites that spread out far and wide and thin, the whites get overcooked and rubbery if you cook them too long. When you cook a really fresh egg, the whites don’t spread as much and they stay thicker. This works much better for someone like me that likes their fried eggs cooked a little longer.
Another exciting surprise happened today when we found a double yolk in the largest of the eggs this morning. I have actually never seen a double yolk before, and it was a treat! Does this only tend to happen with larger eggs, or is it result of the ducks’ beginning reproductive cycles? Maybe someone else could shed some light on that.
Anyway, on to the actual taste of the eggs…
Arp and I both came to the conclusion that we could not discern any difference in the taste of our duck eggs from chicken eggs. As far as texture, I’d say there was very little, if any difference. I’ve heard some people say that the whites of duck eggs can be more rubbery than chicken eggs, but I didn’t find this to be the case. As I previously mentioned, since my whites did not turn out as thin and overcooked as a supermarket chicken egg, they actually seemed more tender than I am used to. The yellows were rich and yummy, too.
The New Agrarian alleges that very fresh duck eggs can have a very slight flavor of duck. In our taste test, Arp and I couldn’t taste anything like that. Of course, I don’t think I’ve ever tasted duck meat before, so maybe I missed it. But I really don’t think I tasted any sort of flavor that was different from a farm-fresh chicken egg.
For any curious people, my ducks’ diet includes Mayuri Duck Food, crushed oyster shells, crushed duck-egg shells, and whatever they partially free-range (greens, grass, slugs, bugs…). The one caution that I’ve read about duck eggs and flavor is that ducks that are fed fish can have fishy duck eggs. But my ducks do not have access to any natural bodies of water with fish, so I really can’t test this.
It’s funny – I can’t count the number of times that I’ve told people about my duck eggs and they’ve said, “You mean you can eat them?” It’s like people assume that the only safe egg to eat is a chicken egg. I find that hilarious. I admit, I had no idea in the beginning that ducks were such good egg producers. In my beginning research, it was a wonderful surprise to find that Khaki Campbells will actually outperform many chicken breeds in egg production. But it was never a surprise to me that people can eat duck eggs. I mean, don’t people eat quail eggs at some fancy restaurants? (I seem to remember seeing that on Food TV). People eat goose eggs. People around the world even eat turtle eggs. I’m sure there are a number of other examples. It is a sad testament to how little people know about the food they eat, or farming in general, that so many of them can only imagine eating a dozen, perfectly clean eggs packed in Styrofoam.
