12 Types of Eggs, Examined and Cooked | Bon Appétit

These, my friends, are

eggs

. A while ago I looked at almost all the ways you could cook a chicken egg, but it made me curious about all the other

types

of

eggs

out there. How different a chicken egg is from an ostrich egg. How different it is. a bird egg from a fish egg and, most importantly, how they all taste. Today we will look at twelve different

types

of eggs from twelve different animals and use them in twelve distinctly different dishes. Through this, we'll find out what makes each of these The Eggs You Need I'm an editor at large for Stanek, Bon Appetit, and these are twelve types of eggs.

Let's start with some basics. An egg is a container intended to nourish and protect the offspring of an animal until it is better able to survive. own, if the egg is not fertilized, there is no offspring that needs to use all the vitamins, minerals, fats and proteins packaged within that protective shell and another animal, in this case, we can take advantage of them, the egg with which we are most familiar is The pre-domesticated chicken egg, the wild precursor to modern times, had around ten to fifteen eggs a year, but thanks to selective breeding and the use of artificial lighting and temperature control, that number has skyrocketed. two hundred and fifty or three hundred a year. in all different sizes, but the average large egg weighs between fifty-five and sixty grams, they also come in a whole rainbow of colors.

Some people have the idea that brown or green eggs are somehow inherently healthier than white eggs, but in reality the color of the egg has nothing to do with the quality of the egg, the color is determined by the breed. of chicken. Leghorns lay white eggs. Rhode Island Reds lay brown eggs and the descendants of the oricon one breed lay blue or green eggs, let's take a look inside. Let's say that the inside of a chicken egg has practically equal parts of yolk and white. You will notice that the white, also called albumen, is made up of a firm part and a liquid part, which is totally normal, albumen tends to become liquid.

As an egg ages, you will also notice that the color of the yolk can differ between eggs and this has a lot to do with the chickens' diet. A darker yolk doesn't mean the hen it comes from is healthier per se, it just means its diet. It was composed of foods with high levels of yellow pork. Chickens that eat more corn or alfalfa will produce eggs with darker yolks than pigs fed more wheat or barley, okay let's take a look at these once they're

cooked

, here we go. In a fried chicken egg, you can see the yolk in the middle surrounded by the firm white and the runny white that spreads when the egg hits the pan, the yolk is still quite runny, barely

cooked

, while the white has crisped up. nice around the edges when you cut it, the yolk just oozes out like that, it's beautiful.

I'm going to take a bite that has a little bit of yolk and a little bit of white mmm, the rich yolk just coats your mouth and the white is soft, clean and bouncy, who? You don't love a fried egg, and while that's certainly the easiest way to cook an egg, there's probably no more iconic and beloved expression than the French omelet, so what sets a French omelette apart from any other type? of tortilla is that it is perfectly pale and rolled rather than folded when you cut it you can see that the inside is still runny and soft.

The French call it loose Bev, which means something like slime. The whites are completely integrated and cook very gently, making them super tender. There's also a good amount of butter that really supports the grassy creaminess of the eggs. This will go great with a cup of coffee or perhaps a glass of red. wine mmm YUM the next egg we are looking at is the ostrich egg the ostrich is the largest bird in the world so it should come as no surprise that it lays the largest egg in the world the ostrich egg is the equivalent of two dozen eggs chicken and weighs only over three pounds, interestingly, although ostrich eggs are the smallest eggs relative to the size of the bird they come from, you shake it, it feels like something is rattling in there, the shell is soft, hard and very thick, up to three millimeters, so I'm not sure if hitting it against the counter will break it, yes, no.

I'm going to need to bring out the big guns. I'm going to use this hammer to just crumble it in a circle and then remove a A small piece of shell at a time it starts to ooze in a gnarly manner, okay let's throw it away oh dear Lord it's really shocking how much liquid there is here. I made a big bird sized mess, yeah okay, there are a lot of eggs in the making. There is a lot of runny white here and the yolk is strangely firm, almost as if it were already cooked and the firm white is very thick and bouncy.

I'm going to have to use a knife to break this yolk. Wow, it smells very strange. Oh God, the yolk is. really very thick like the yolk of a roma egg almost this is a lot to take in I can't look anymore this okay, here we have our fried ostrich egg look at the size of this thing, it's really crazy, you can see how much of both lighters, the Yolks spread thin and brown significantly, it almost has a dosa-like texture and the rest of the cooked white has an almost bluish greenish-gray tint and feels very firm.

I feel like I need a dagger and a pitchfork to get into this oh yeah, very tough, the yolk is runny but very thick and smells a bit musky, you know, oh, it doesn't taste as crazy as I thought, it will definitely be butterier than an egg standard chicken with a kind of ruminess with a funky aftertaste the texture is disconcertingly meaty no, it's not as strange as I thought it would be for the dish I thought what better to accompany your giant bird than a giant deviled egg this is quite horrible That the texture is really strange, the white is very rubbery, very firm, it doesn't have that tender quality that you expect in a stuffed egg yolk.

I won't care, I'll just use my hands. Well, combining that yolk with mayonnaise really beats it. It's so greasy it's a little nauseating and the hard white texture is almost plastic. I like firm gelatin, don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful deviled egg, but I don't think I'll really want to eat it again next. we have a quail egg, the quail egg is the smallest egg commercially available, it weighs only nine grams, it's about 1/6 the size of a chicken egg and these shells are really beautiful, they have these dark brown specks placed on them on a very nice light brown shell, let's open it.

You know, the membrane under the shell is quite hard, so it's a little difficult to separate it cleanly. Look at this tiny egg. It looks like we've broken the bud a bit. a bit, wow, the yolk to white ratio seems to be skewed in favor of the yolk, there's not a lot of firm white like we're used to with chicken egg, it all seems quite runny, I'm really excited to see this one cooked, like this so here we have our fried quail egg, obviously it's a lot smaller than our chicken egg, we can see that the white spreads quite a bit because it was very loose, you know, cutting this seems a bit silly, you can also eat the whole thing, mmm definitely. a little richer than our chicken egg, which probably has to do with the yolk to white ratio, it has a slightly playful wild bird kind of quality to it, but overall it's quite mild and I think most people will find You would probably have a hard time telling him apart.

This from a standard chicken egg for our plate, we decided to go for a popular Philippine street food, hard boiled quail eggs skewered, battered and fried, yum, this layer is really something else, it is orange because it contains magical Saurabh. a common Filipino spice mix, we're just going to take one of these off the skewer and dip it in our hot sauce which is really tasty. Neither dough is the least bit chewy, which is a great contrast to a slightly bouncy hard-boiled quail egg. the yolk is a little chalky and that's because it's a challenge to boil such a small egg without overcooking it.

Honestly, I'm not tasting a ton of egg here because the flavor of the dough and sauce is pretty strong hmm, it looks like quail. Eggs are more of a novelty here than anything else. It's fun to eat a bunch of small eggs. It makes me feel like a giant. Well, next we will look at the Rhea AG. The Rhea is a bird that looks like an ostrich, only it is a little smaller and is native to South America rather than Africa. This thing is beautiful. I love this buttery, speckled yellow color and the egg shape is quite distinctive too.

It is noticeably pointed at this end. It is the equivalent of about 10 chicken eggs. that makes it about half the size of an ostrich egg, the shell is definitely pretty hard and yes, it looks like I'm going to have to take out the hammer again, yes, this definitely feels like a mini ostrich egg, ooh, gotta a gush Wow, there it is. It's a lot of egg, the yolk feels very firm, very, very firm. I can pick it up and it's not going to break, it almost feels like a yoki water balloon, there's quite a bit of water, but it still has a nice thick albumen the more I touch it.

In this yolk I can tell that the liquid inside is not as thick as the ostrich yolk was, but it's just that the membrane around it is very firm when I pierce it, the liquid just comes out and it's the thickness of a yolk. of medium, wild chicken egg, well now that I made a big mess, we fried one with this fried rhea egg, it looks like you put a chicken egg in some kind of enlarging machine, how perfect is that look, the albumen It stayed nice and tight, but that's what it is. It has a slightly blue-gray sheen and is somewhat wrinkled in appearance, let's take a slice mmm wow, that's really something, it has quite a strong flavor, it was kind of roasted, like a cooked kernel or popcorn, it's really interesting and distinctive but quite unwieldy.

I don't think I could eat a whole one of these for our plate. We prepare a classic Spanish omelette. This is a tapas staple. A beautiful potato and onion frittata often served cold or at room temperature. I can see from the side that there are pieces of tender confit potato and onion that are sort of suspended in the boiled egg situation. Usually you would make this with a bunch of chicken eggs, but a single RIA egg was enough to fill our pan, which is great, let's take a little bite here hmm, I love it, you know, I think the back edge was a very good choice for this, that grainy flavor I was describing goes very well with the earthy flavors of potato and onion, someone delicious. give me a glass of sherry Next on the docket is our duck egg.

On average, duck eggs are about 30% larger than a chicken egg. Their shells are a little thicker than chicken eggs, but this one appears almost translucent, which makes it a good time to talk. Manipulation Manipulation is when you shine a light through the shell of an egg to determine if it has been fertilized or not. This egg clearly has not been fertilized, but if it had been, you could see the outline of the chick inside and check the development of the embryos. Although it has not been fertilized, you can still see some anatomical features of the egg.

You can clearly see the air cell that would provide air to the chick until it is ready to breathe on its own, as well as the yolk floating in the albumen. so now that we have determined that there is no baby duck in this egg, it is safe to open it, the membrane is a little more tenacious than that of a chicken egg and right away you can see that the yolk is much larger than the white , which is actually not white at all, it is almost completely clear, the yolk is quite firm, but not as firm as the rhea egg.

It was fine, anyone order a fried duck egg, what a beauty, what's really notable to me is how white the white is. It was practically clear when it was raw, but now that it's cooked it's bright white, that's really fascinating, okay, let's eat it. Hmm, that's delicious, honestly, it tastes extremely similar to a chicken egg, but much richer and creamier. I think I would find it difficult to eat it. two of these for breakfast, but they are a great addition to an egg dish that you wanted to give a little more richness to. Okay, let's get to our boiled duck egg dish, egg soup, so if you've never had egg soup before, it's a very simple Chinese soup made by pouring beaten egg into a broth so that the egg cooks and forms nice ribbons.

Personally, I love eating it for breakfast because it's like scrambled eggs and soup all in one hmm, it's so good with the duck. Eggs, because they are a little richer, add a little more depth and weight to an otherwise light dish. Like, so now that we've looked at the duck, the goose, the average goose egg is more than twice the average size. chicken egg, it weighs about 140 grams and the shell is much stronger, it has this beautiful matte finish and is a little longer andpointy and it's like a cross between our duck egg and rhea egg, as you can see, the white is thin and almost completely clear, almost like our duck egg, that yolk is a very dense feeling.

I can't wait to see this cooked through, so here we have a big, shiny, beautiful yolk and the thin white run all over the place. I'm going to cut it. Wow. Yes, the yolk is very very slimy, you can see it has a thicker texture than what you would get from a normal fried chicken egg yolk, hmm, mmm, it is very greasy and the white almost has a nutty flavor with a almost mushroom flavor. the flavor is really special. I don't think I expected it to taste so unique. I'm really excited to try this one in Oh, okay guys, I told you.

Cash or check, only eggs in purgatory, so this is a simple rustic Italian dish of poached eggs in a spicy tomato sauce. You crack the eggs directly into the bubbling sauce so that the whites set but the yolk stays nice and runny. I'm going to go deeper here, you know, this dish is really very special with the goose egg, they are so rich and flavorful and that contrasts very well with the aggressive acidity of the tomatoes and the spiciness of the chilies and garlic. I wish I had a piece of focaccia or something to cover up all that runny yolk but this is a real winner YUM now let's take a look at a pheasant egg the pheasant egg is about half the size of a chicken egg it weighs about 30 grams and their shells have this incredible olive color and this great teardrop shape, let's open one.

Wow, this is harder than I thought. The show is thick and the membrane is hard. It's a little difficult to open. Wow, look at that yolk. very yellow and the white is definitely a little looser, the proportion is a little tilted in favor of the yolk, okay, we fried one so it doesn't look so different from a standard chicken egg, just smaller, although the clear definitely ran more, so it has a little bit of a lower profile when cut, the yolk feels quite rich hmm, yes, I'm feeling a kind of wild vibe like this that comes from an animal that feeds on insects and leaves and stuff like that, he definitely knows a little bit. herbaceous type, not domesticated, very tasty, although let's try this one on a plate of Otto's divorced eggs, this is a Mexican dish, a variation of eggs rancheros, the eggs are fried and then placed on top of the tortillas and topped with two different sauces, one red and one green.

I can't wait to try this mmm delicious, the pheasant eggs are creamy and have an earthy flavor that really complements the cheesiness of the omelet and I love the way the tangy sauce cuts the richness of the yolk, I think all the Other flavors in this dish would overpower a more subtle egg. I'm really enjoying the next one on our list is a guinea fowl egg. The guinea fowl is a tough bird, although they are much more domesticated there. Wilder and feistier than the average backyard chicken. they adapt much better to extreme climates this shell is very brown with these kind of uniform spots all over and it's a little smaller than our pheasant egg, let's put this one on the plate wow, it feels almost impossible to open, you know, hands have a habit of hiding their eggs, so I guess that extra hard shell is useful, definitely the yoke is heavy, somewhat shiny and the white is quite firm here I haven't seen much of that today they hardly run on us at all , is similar to a chicken egg.

That way I'm excited to try this cooking. Wow, this almost looks like one of those fried egg shaped jelly beans. It's so perfect it almost seems fake. The white is thick and tightly packed, not runny like our other eggs. The big yolk has energy. Here I am. I'm going to take this whole mmm super super creamy on the richer side but definitely lighter, then we'll say our goose egg, it definitely has a little bit of a herbal quality to it, but not so distinct that I can tell the difference between this. and a very fun chicken egg, although we see this in a tempting egg curry.

Here we have a South Asian curry with potatoes, tomatoes, ginger, garlic and a bunch of spices and then we add our hard-boiled guinea fowl eggs right at the end, smell it. amazing super aromatic, let's put a little piece of egg here, huge flavors here. I feel like the slightly smaller size of the guinea fowl egg works well in this dish, but the flavors are so strong that they overpower the more subtle qualities of the egg. the yolk is also overcooked because the hard-boiled eggs cook back into the sauce, but overall I loved this prep time to move on from the poultry eggs and take a look at the salmon roe.

The word roe simply refers to the unfertilized eggs of fish and other marine animals. The main difference between bird eggs and fish eggs is that fish eggs do not have a shell, it is not so important that fish eggs have shell since they don't have to worry about staying hydrated, the other big difference is that fish eggs are smaller instead of laying one egg at a time, fish lay hundreds or even thousands because instead of having a chicken to take care of them, baby fish are usually left to their own devices so they have a much lower survival rate, so here we have our beautiful salmon eggs, like most other edible fish eggs, they have been cured with salt as a way to season and preserve them, as you can see these beads are an amazing orange-red color and contain a darker part that almost looks like a yolk.

We are using mother of pearl here because certain metals can interact with the RO in a strange way that produces unpleasant flavors. I'm going to take a spoonful here mmm, the eggs are so delicate they just burst at the slightest. pressure and this salty, fishy liquid full of umami oozes out YUM oh that's so tasty there's one more spoonful and since salmon roe is so popular in Japan we decided to make some sushi this is as simple as a little nugget of seasoned sushi rice. as a base with a piece of toasted dried seaweed also known as nori wrapped around it to form a sort of container for a couple of spoonfuls of salmon roe which are known as ikura in Japan for the hatch mmm not a bite, that's so beautiful. about this, these are the eggs that have such a strong salty flavor that pairing them with some soft starchy rice makes so much sense, it really offsets all that richness of the nori and adds a bit of its own oceanic flavor, so delicious, You know?

Salmon roe is excellent, but when it comes to fish roe, the undisputed champion is Osetra caviar. The word caviar refers to the row of salt-cured sturgeon, very specifically, all caviar is roe, but only some roe is caviar, since with salmon roe we taste a very precise amount. A little salt has been added for flavor and preservation. This is some of the most elegant and sought after caviar that money can buy and I am lucky enough to be able to try some as you can see that the individual eggs are much smaller than salmon. eggs and a much darker color, almost grayish green, super delicate and gives it a super salty mmm flavor, but there is also a pronounced butteriness and it has a nutty quality, that's good, sometimes when people eat caviar, they just They put a little on the back of the hand. it actually warms it up a little so it tastes more hmm, I could eat this tall, you know, and although we would never cook them, we can serve them Russian style.

Here we have some blini which are small yeasted pancakes covered with cream. fraiche and some caviar if I splurge on good caviar this is the only way I want to eat it simple elegant delicious I'm going to pop one of these right here mm-hmm amazing acidity from the fresh cream it's so nice with the The shine of the caviar due to the granularity of the blini softens the intensity of the eggs and at the same time brings out some of their nutty flavor. It doesn't get any better than this, friends, for our next egg we'll stay under the sea, but come on. a little weirder with some lobster eggs, there are a lot of fish that lay eggs in the sea, but we wanted to compare that to the eggs of the sea creature Anan fish, this slimy black thing here is lobster eggs, it looks pretty gross , I have to be honest.

Many times people discard these things when cleaning a lobster, but even though it looks gnarly, it actually tastes good. I swear, let's cook this, so the interesting thing about lobster roe is that it turns a bright red color when it's cooked. That is why it is also known as Coral lobster. If you've ever opened a steamed lobster and found something red inside, this is what it is, it smells really good, very aromatic, let's keep it a little flavor mmm, it's really great, great oceanic flavor and surprisingly. It's not salty at all, it really tastes like lobster.

You like a concentrated lobster broth or something and the texture is a little mealy, but you wouldn't normally eat it this way, it's usually incorporated into a sauce or something. exactly what we're going to do, done, so here we have some lobster tails that we steamed cut in half and then what we did is some lobster butter with the roe, we just stirred in some of that blackish green stuff . in some hot brown butter and it immediately turned red and infused with lobster flavor. Lobster loves butter mmm, it's so tasty it's actually quite subtle but the lobster really intensified the natural flavor of the lobster meat.

Really gilt the lily here, this feels like a Really, restaurant two kind of preparation probably isn't the kind of thing I do at home, but it's still an elegant and delicious side dish and last but not least Importantly, we are going to look at some snail eggs, our final egg is neither fish nor bird, these are eggs from the Petit Gris Land Snail, the eggs are an intermediate size between the size of our salmon eggs and our sturgeon caviar, but They are small bright white pearls, they do not have a shell, but they do have a resistant outer membrane that keeps them and their salt intact.

Cured like other caviar-style eggs, this is somewhat expensive, difficult to harvest, and a single snail only lays about four grams of eggs per year. The Romans called them Aphrodite's pearls because they considered them an aphrodisiac. Well we'll see. about that hmm, that's crazy, the beads really roll in your mouth, they're almost hard to pop, much firmer than the Rose fish we've tried and the flavor is wild, really mushroomy, with a distinct earthy, moist flavor from the ground of the moss forest. Wow, I've never tried anything like this in my life. Okay, now let's try this with some snails.

We're doubling up on the snail here with butter-cooked Burgundy snails topped with some of our snail caviar. This smells amazing. Some herbs. and garlic in there. I can't wait to try this really cool look. The eggs give a really interesting textural contrast to that soft, tender snail meat. The delicate flavor of the eggs is being lost a little here due to the snail butter being too strong, but I'm definitely getting some of that earthy, woodsy mushroom equality. Wow, what a treat, and there you have it folks, 12 types of eggs. We tried all kinds of bird eggs, fish eggs, and even snail eggs, and each one was clearly different. delicious in its own way do you have a favorite type of egg that you didn't see here today, let us know in the comments