good egg, but I’m so absent-minded that I tend to forget they’re ready, which always earns me a snort of contempt at breakfast because Sharon is so competitive about the eggs. Even a hard-boiled has its demands. Here at Trauma Farm our eggs are too fresh to peel. So we plan our hard-boiled dishes like potato salad a week in advance. The interior air pocket expands with age, and the protective skin between the egg and the shell dries, allowing the egg to be peeled aesthetically when it’s several days old.
You can’t make an omelette without cracking an egg, and a real egg is a lovely creation. I can tell what a chicken has been eating and how it’s been raised when I break an egg on the frying pan. The best yolks are a deep orange, almost red. A good yellow yolk derives from corn, which is included in hen scratch. Factory manufacturers generally add dye to food pellets to yellow the yolk. And you have to keep a wary eye out for today’s “organic” factory eggs, because some feed manufacturers jazz up the mash with enough canola oil, high-protein alfalfa, and soy meal to give both the chicken meat and the egg a fishy smell and taste.
Orange yolks come from eating lots of insects, which chickens love. That’s why the rooster will cluck when he finds a treasure of bugs, and the hens will come a-running. Interestingly, if hens discover something delicious, they will eat silently—greedy-gut girls that they are. Chickens are scavengers and will eat almost anything. I’ve fed them the intestines of livestock I’ve slaughtered. They go wild over that, as do traditional Inuit, who balance out their meaty diets with the stomach contents of caribou.
An unfertilized egg is a single cell. An unfertilized ostrich egg is the largest single cell on earth. The white is thick in a fresh real egg and doesn’t slime all over the pan like the store-bought ones—especially since the white becomes thinner as the egg ages. A good diet, freedom, and the sun make both the yolk and the white firmer and more nutritious. We also feed our chickens crushed oyster shells scavenged from the beach and mixed with their grain. This provides calcium, which makes thick, protective eggshells. Sometimes they get a maggoty or wormy vegetable or fruit. They relish compost—every ruined dinner or mouldy green discovered in the fridge is always greeted with the refrain “Happy chickens!”
A homegrown egg that’s fresh will sink if you put it in a bucket of cold water, a test we use when we’re suspicious of any eggs discovered in toolboxes or on a woodpile. Perfectly fresh, it will lie on its side on the bottom. Slightly older ones will stand on end. A dangerous one will float. Don’t crack that egg! Occasionally, we get forgetful or fooled by a broody hen clever at egg-hiding games. Every farmer is eventually caught off guard and cracks one of these skunky things on the frying pan’s rim; the egg will explode over the others and drive everyone retching from the kitchen, especially Sharon, who has such a keen sense of smell. When this happens I hurl the pan right out the door and onto the lawn, to hose down later. Despite the mythologies about the charms of rural life, cooking an egg can have its thrills.
That said, usually we don’t wash eggs for our own use. They are covered with a natural protective bloom. If you keep your nests clean with fresh hay and collect your eggs often, they won’t get soiled, and if they do, we prefer to wipe them with a dry cloth. Eggs for sale we are forced by the law to wash, improving their chances of spoilage, because washing destroys this protective coating. The factories heavily wash their eggs and then spray them with a mineral-oil seal, which causes enthusiasts like me to claim this makes them taste worse. Factories have to treat their eggs because they are so notoriously infected with salmonella and other dangerous bacteria that health agencies now warn everyone to assume cracked eggs are
You can’t make an omelette without cracking an egg, and a real egg is a lovely creation. I can tell what a chicken has been eating and how it’s been raised when I break an egg on the frying pan. The best yolks are a deep orange, almost red. A good yellow yolk derives from corn, which is included in hen scratch. Factory manufacturers generally add dye to food pellets to yellow the yolk. And you have to keep a wary eye out for today’s “organic” factory eggs, because some feed manufacturers jazz up the mash with enough canola oil, high-protein alfalfa, and soy meal to give both the chicken meat and the egg a fishy smell and taste.
Orange yolks come from eating lots of insects, which chickens love. That’s why the rooster will cluck when he finds a treasure of bugs, and the hens will come a-running. Interestingly, if hens discover something delicious, they will eat silently—greedy-gut girls that they are. Chickens are scavengers and will eat almost anything. I’ve fed them the intestines of livestock I’ve slaughtered. They go wild over that, as do traditional Inuit, who balance out their meaty diets with the stomach contents of caribou.
An unfertilized egg is a single cell. An unfertilized ostrich egg is the largest single cell on earth. The white is thick in a fresh real egg and doesn’t slime all over the pan like the store-bought ones—especially since the white becomes thinner as the egg ages. A good diet, freedom, and the sun make both the yolk and the white firmer and more nutritious. We also feed our chickens crushed oyster shells scavenged from the beach and mixed with their grain. This provides calcium, which makes thick, protective eggshells. Sometimes they get a maggoty or wormy vegetable or fruit. They relish compost—every ruined dinner or mouldy green discovered in the fridge is always greeted with the refrain “Happy chickens!”
A homegrown egg that’s fresh will sink if you put it in a bucket of cold water, a test we use when we’re suspicious of any eggs discovered in toolboxes or on a woodpile. Perfectly fresh, it will lie on its side on the bottom. Slightly older ones will stand on end. A dangerous one will float. Don’t crack that egg! Occasionally, we get forgetful or fooled by a broody hen clever at egg-hiding games. Every farmer is eventually caught off guard and cracks one of these skunky things on the frying pan’s rim; the egg will explode over the others and drive everyone retching from the kitchen, especially Sharon, who has such a keen sense of smell. When this happens I hurl the pan right out the door and onto the lawn, to hose down later. Despite the mythologies about the charms of rural life, cooking an egg can have its thrills.
That said, usually we don’t wash eggs for our own use. They are covered with a natural protective bloom. If you keep your nests clean with fresh hay and collect your eggs often, they won’t get soiled, and if they do, we prefer to wipe them with a dry cloth. Eggs for sale we are forced by the law to wash, improving their chances of spoilage, because washing destroys this protective coating. The factories heavily wash their eggs and then spray them with a mineral-oil seal, which causes enthusiasts like me to claim this makes them taste worse. Factories have to treat their eggs because they are so notoriously infected with salmonella and other dangerous bacteria that health agencies now warn everyone to assume cracked eggs are
Similar Books
