Farm Fresh Egg Recipes

Backyard eggs are different from the ones you purchase in the grocery store in significant ways:

Freshness:  You can reach your hand in the nesting box and use the egg that very day.  The yolk will be high and the white almost cloudy.  This makes for the most amazing poached egg where freshness really matters.  Conversely, you’ll want to age your farm eggs for hardboiled or you’ll never successfully peel the shell.

Nutrition:  As the saying goes, you are what you eat!  If you’re raising your own flock, your management choices directly effects the nutrition of the eggs.  Do you give your hens full access to pasture where they eat weeds, seeds, and bugs?  Are you purchasing organic feed?  Are you supplementing with a natural calcium source?  You’ll see the difference in the health your birds and the superior yolk color, shell strength, and flavor of the resulting eggs.  Most importantly, you’ll know your hens are humanely raised.  Doesn’t breakfast taste better when it’s accompanied by foraging through the garden and the happy clucks when a tasty treat is unearthed?!

Seasonality:   On our mini farm, egg laying varies with the seasons.  Since we don’t use artificial lights, egg laying is at its height in late spring, wanes with the autumn molt, and is rather pathetic in the dark of winter.  When the eggs come pouring in, we’re looking for variety in our recipes and creative ways to use the surplus.

Size, Shape, and Color: Bantam hens and younger birds generally lay smaller eggs.  Our Silkie regular lays “peewee” eggs, which my children love best.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, my Marans chickens usually lay gigantic eggs.  In the stores, these are standardized according to the following weights:

• Peewee:  1.25 oz. or 35 g
• Small:  1.5 oz. or 43 g
• Medium: 1.75 oz. or 50 g
• Large: 2 oz. or 57 g
• Extra-Large: 2.25 oz. or 64 g
• Jumbo: 2.5 oz. or 71 g

Do consider the size of the eggs in recipes.  Most recipes are based on standardized large eggs and your recipes may need to be adjusted accordingly unless you don’t mind the subtle variations. Oddly enough, there isn’t much difference in yolk size from a small to a jumbo egg, but the white part changes in volume rather dramatically. What does this mean? If you are using smaller eggs, this will mean that you will have a richer, yolkier product because the yolk to white ratio is much higher.

It’s not just the weight that varies on the farm; shape and color vary with the individual chicken.  For example, one of our Faverolles lays eggs that are nearly round whereas we have an Orpington that lays long torpedoes.  And color?  Wow!  We raise chickens for the colorful egg basket:  White, brown, tint, cream, chocolate, terra cotta, pink, blue, green.  The color in no way affects the nutrition, which is based on diet.  Instead, color is based on genetics, much like human hair color, and can usually be guessed at by the color of a chicken’s earlobes.  The only variation in color is that sometimes dark egg-layers will lighten as the season progresses.

And now (finally) for the recipes…

Anytime Eggs

Fresh Poached Eggs

Eggs Poached in Wine

Asparagus Bread Pudding

Pasta alla Carbonara

Savory Pancakes

Scotch Eggs

Spinach and Feta Quiche Tart

Egg Drop Soup

Traditional Breakfast-y Eggs

French Toast

Egg-in-the-Hole

Green Eggs and Ham

Dessert Eggs

Traditional Flan (Pudim Flan)

The Yolks and the Whites

Coming soon… Have a recipe that calls for only yolks or whites?  Here’s what to do with the other half of the egg.