12 Types of Eggs, Examined and Cooked | Bon Appétit

these my friends are eggs a little while ago I looked at just about every way you could cook a chicken egg but that just made me curious about all the other types of eggs out there how different is a chicken egg from an ostrich egg how different is a bird egg from a fish egg and most importantly how they all taste today we're going to look at twelve different types of eggs from twelve different animals and use them in twelve distinctly different dishes through this we'll discover what makes each of these eggs you need I'm a meal Stanek editor-at-large a Bon Appetit and this is twelve types of eggs let's start with some basics an egg is a vessel meant to nourish and protect an animal's offspring until it's better capable of surviving on its own if the egg isn't fertilized there's no offspring that needs to use all of the vitamins minerals fats and protein packed inside that protective shell and another animal in this case us can take advantage of them the egg that we're most familiar with is the chicken egg before being domesticated the wild precursor to the modern day a around ten to fifteen eggs a year but through selective breeding and the use of artificial lighting and temperature management that number has soared to two hundred fifty to three hundred a year chicken eggs come in all different sizes but an average large egg weighs around fifty five to sixty grams they also come in a whole rainbow of colors some people have an idea that brown eggs or green eggs are somehow inherently healthier than white eggs but in reality the color of the egg doesn't have anything 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 descendants of the oricon a breed lay blue or green eggs let's take a look inside shall we the inside of a chicken egg is pretty much equal parts yolk and white you'll notice that the white also called the albumin is comprised of both a firm part and a runny part which is totally normal the albumin tends to get runny ER as an egg ages you'll also notice that the color of the yolk can differ between eggs and this has everything to do with the chickens diet a darker yolk doesn't mean the chicken it came from was healthier per se it simply means that its diet was made up of foods with high levels of yellow pig hens that eat more corn or alfalfa will produce eggs with darker yolks than those of headings fed more wheat or barley all right let's take a look at these once they've been cooked here we have a fried chicken egg you can see that yolk in the middle surrounded by the firm white and the runny white which spread out as the egg hit the pan the yolk is still plenty runny barely cooked while the White has crisped up nicely around the edges when we cut into it the yolk just oozes out like that it's beautiful I'm gonna get a bite that's got a little yolk and a little white in it mmm the rich yolk just kind of coats your mouth and the white is mild and clean and bouncing who doesn't love a fried egg and while that's certainly the simplest way to cook an egg there's probably no more iconic and beloved expression of it then the French omelette so what distinguishes a French omelette from any other kind of omelette is that it's perfectly pale and rolled rather than being folded when you cut into it you can see that the inside is actually still runny and soft the French call it Bev loose which means something like slobber nice right hmm that is so delicious the richness of the egg yolk and the lightness of the white are fully integrated and cooked ever so gently so they're super tender there's also a good amount of butter in there which really backs up the grassy creaminess of the eggs this will go great with a cup of coffee or maybe a glass of red wine mmm YUM the next egg we're looking at is the ostrich egg the ostrich is the world's largest bird so it should come as no surprise that it lays the world's largest egg the ostrich egg is the equivalent of two dozen chicken eggs and weighs just over three pounds weirdly though ostrich eggs are the smallest egg in relation to the size of the bird they come from you shake it up you kind of feel it something rattling around in there the shell is smooth and hard and really thick up to three millimeters so I'm not sure if banging it on the counter is even gonna break it yeah no I'm gonna need to break out the big guns I'm gonna use this hammer to just kind of chip away in a circle and then peel back a little piece of the shell at a time starting to ooze gnarly okay let's dump it out oh dear Lord it is truly shocking just how much fluid there is in here I made a big bird sized mess yeah okay well there's a whole lot of egg going on here a lot of runny white and the yolk is weirdly firm almost like it's already been cooked and the firm white is very thick and bouncy I'm gonna have to use a knife to break this yolk Wow it smells very odd Oh God the yolk it's really really thick like the yolk of a Romany egg almost this is a lot to take in I can't look at this anymore okay so 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 lighter running your yolks spread out thin and brown significantly it almost has a dosa like texture and the rest of the cooked white has an almost bluish green gray tint to it and feels really firm I feel like I need a dagger and a pitchfork to get into this oh yeah very tough the yolk is runny but crazy thick and it smells kind of musky you know oh it doesn't taste nearly as crazy as I thought it was going to definitely more buttery than a standard chicken egg with a sort of ronique kind of funky aftertaste the texture is disconcertingly meaty no not nearly as weird as I thought it was gonna be for the dish I thought what better to go along with his giant bird than a giant deviled egg this is pretty horrifying that the texture is really weird the white is really rubbery very firm it doesn't have that tender quality you expect in a deviled egg yolk I'm gonna never mind I'm just gonna use my hands oh well combining that yolk with mayonnaise really takes it over the top it's so fatty it's kind of nauseating and the hard boiled white texture is almost plastic II kind of like to firm jello don't get me wrong it's a beautiful deviled egg but I don't think I really want to eat this ever again next up we've got a quail egg the quail egg is the smallest commercially available egg weighing into just nine grams pop they're about 1/6 the size of a chicken egg and these shells are really beautiful they have these dark brown speckles laid over a light brown shell really pretty let's crack it open you know that membrane underneath the shell is actually pretty tough so it's a little bit hard to kind of pull it apart cleanly look at this teeny tiny egg it seems like we may have busted the yolk a little bit oops the ratio of yolk to white seems to be tilted in favor of the yolk there's not a whole lot of the firm white that we're used to with the chicken egg it all seems quite runny really excited to see this one cooked so here we have our fried quail egg obviously there's a lot smaller than our chicken egg we can see the white kind of spread out quite a bit because it was so loose you know cutting into this seems kind of silly may as well eat the whole thing mmm definitely a bit richer than our chicken egg which probably has to do with the yolk to white ratio it has a slightly gamey kind of wild bird quality to it but on the whole it's pretty mild and I think that most people would probably have a hard time distinguishing this from a standard chicken egg for our dish we decided on quick-quick a popular street food from the Philippines hard-boiled quail eggs that have been skewered battered and deep-fried YUM this coating is really something else it's orange because it contains magic Saurabh a common Filipino spice blend we're just gonna take one of these off the skewer go ahead and dip it into our tangy sauce that's really tasty no batter is a little bit chewy which is cool contrast with a slightly bouncy hard-boiled quail egg the yolk is a little bit chalky and that's because it's challenging to boil such a small egg without overcooking it well honestly I'm not tasting a ton of egg here because the flavour of the batter and the sauce is pretty strong hmm it seems like the quail eggs are more of a novelty here than anything else it's fun to snack on a bunch of tiny eggs makes me feel like a giant okay next we're gonna look at the Rhea AG the Rhea is a bird that looks similar to an ostrich only it's a little bit smaller and is native to South America rather than Africa this thing is beautiful I love this buttery yellow speckly color and the shape of the egg is pretty distinctive too it's remarkably pointy on this end this is the equivalent of about 10 chicken eggs so that makes it about half the size of an ostrich egg the shell is definitely quite hard and yep looks like I'm gonna have to get the hammer out again yeah this definitely feels kind of like a mini ostrich egg ooh got a gusher Wow there it is whole lot of egg the yolk feels really firm like really really firm I can pick it up and it's not gonna break it almost feels like a yoki water balloon there's quite a bit of watery business but still has a nice thick albumin the more I touch this yolk I can tell that the liquid inside isn't that thick the way that the ostrich yolk was but it's just that the membrane surrounding it is really firm when I Pierce it the liquid just kind of runs out and has the thickness of an over medium chicken egg yolk wild well now that I made a big mess let's fry one up this fried Rhea egg kind of looks like you put a chicken egg in some kind of enlarger machine how perfect is that look the albumin stayed nice and tight but it does have a slightly gray blue sort of Sheen to it and it's sort of wrinkly looking let's get ourselves a slice mmm wow that's really something it has a fairly strong flavor it was kind of a toastiness going on kind of like a cooked grain or popcorn it's really interesting and distinctive but kind of a lot to handle I don't think I could eat a whole one of these for our dish we prepared a classic Spanish tortilla this is a tapas staple a beautiful potato onion frittata that's often served cold or room temperature you can see from the side that there are pieces of tender confit potato and onion in there that are kind of suspended in the cooked egg situation usually you would make this with a whole bunch of chicken eggs but one single RIA egg was enough to fill up our pan which is pretty cool gonna cut ourselves a little bite here hmm I love that you know I think that the rear edge was a really good choice for this that grain like flavor I was describing plays really nice with the earthy potato and onion flavors delicious somebody give me a glass of sherry next on the docket is our duck egg on average duck eggs are around 30% bigger than a chicken egg their shells are slightly thicker than chicken eggs but this one looks almost translucent which makes this a good time to talk about handling handling is when you shine a light through the shell of an egg to determine if it's been fertilized or not this egg clearly hasn't been fertilized but if it had been you could see the outline of the chick inside and check out the embryos development even though it hasn't been fertilized you can still see some anatomical features of the egg you can clearly see the air cell which would provide the chick with air until it's ready to breathe on its own as well as the yolk floating in the albumin okay so now that we've determined that there's no baby duck in this egg it's safe to crack it open the membrane is a little bit more tenacious than that of a chicken egg and right off the bat you can tell the yolk is much larger than the white which isn't really white at all it's almost completely clear the yolk is quite firm but nowhere near as firm as the Rhea egg was okay anybody order a fried duck egg what a beaut what's really remarkable to me is how white the white is it was practically clear when raw but now that it's cooked it's brilliantly white that's really fascinating all right let's get a bite going hmm that's delicious honestly it tastes extremely similar to a chicken egg but much richer and creamier I think I'd have a hard time eating two of these for breakfast but they make a great addition to an egg dish that you wanted to give a little extra richness to okay let's get to our cooked duck egg dish egg drop soup so if you've never had egg drop soup before it's a very simple Chinese soup made by streaming beaten egg into a broth so that the egg cooks and forms into a cute little ribbons I personally love eating it for breakfast because it's kind of like scrambled eggs and soup all in one hmm it's so good with the duck eggs because they're a little bit richer they add some extra depth and heft to an otherwise light dish I'm into it so now that we've looked at duck duck goose the average goose egg is more than twice the size of the average chicken egg it weighs around 140 grams and the shell is much stronger it has this gorgeous matte finish and it's slightly longer and more pointed and kind of like a cross between our duck egg and the rhea egg as you can see the white is thin and nearly completely clear almost like our duck egg that yolk is very dense feeling I cannot wait to see this one cooked okay so here we have a big bright beautiful yolk and the thin white kind of ran all over the place I'm gonna cut into it Wow yeah that yolk is very very viscous you can see that it has a thicker texture than you'd get from a regular fried chicken egg yolk hmm YUM it's really fatty and the white almost has a kind of nutty sort of flavor with an almost mushroom like savoriness that's really special I don't think it was expecting it to taste quite so unique I'm really excited to try this one in Oh okay guys I told you cash or cheque only all right eggs in purgatory so this is a simple rustic Italian dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce you crack the eggs right into the bubbling sauce so that the whites firm up but the yolk stays nice and runny I'm gonna dig in here you know this dish really is extra special with the goose egg they're so rich and flavorful and that contrasts really nicely with the aggressive acidity of the tomatoes and the sharpness of the chilies and garlic I wish I had a hunk of focaccia or something like that to stop up all of that runny yolk but this is a real winner YUM now we're gonna take a look at a pheasant egg the pheasant egg is about half the size of a chicken egg they weigh about 30 grams and their shells have this amazing olive color and this cool teardrop shape let's get one open wow this is harder than I thought it would be the show is thick and the membrane is tough it's a bit hard to get it open Wow look at that the yolk is so so yellow and definitely the white is kind of on the looser side the ratio is tilted somewhat in favor of the yolk all right let's fry one up so it doesn't look all that different from a standard chicken egg just smaller although the white definitely ran more so it has a bit of a lower profile cutting into it the yolk feels pretty rich hmm yeah I'm getting kind of a a wild vibe like this came from an animal foraging on insects and leaves and things like that it definitely tastes kind of grassy kind of undomesticated really tasty though let's try this one in a platter of huevos divorcee Otto's this is a Mexican dish a variation of huevos rancheros the eggs are fried and then placed on top of tortillas and hit with two different sauces one red one green I can't wait to try this one mmm delicious the pheasant eggs are creamy and they're earthy flavor they have really complements the corniness of the tortilla and I love the way the acidic salsa is cut the richness of the yolk I think all the other flavors in this dish would kind of overpower a more subtle egg I'm really enjoying this next in our lineup is a guinea hen egg the guinea hen is a tough bird while they are domesticated there a lot Wilder and scrappier than your average backyard chicken and they're much better suited to extreme climates this shell is really pretty brown with this kind of uniform speckling all over and it's a little smaller than our pheasant egg let's get this one into the dish wow this feels almost impossible to open you know hands have a habit of hiding their eggs so I guess that extra tough shell comes in handy definitely yoke heavy kind of shiny and the white is quite firm here haven't seen a lot of that today almost no running us at all it's similar to a chicken egg in that way excited to try this one cooked Wow this almost looks like one of those fried egg shaped gummy candies it's so perfect it almost looks fake the white is thick and mounded tightly not runny like our other eggs big yolk energy here I'm just gonna take this one whole mmm super super creamy on the richer side but definitely lighter then say our goose egg this definitely has a little bit of a grassy vegetal quality to it but not so distinct that I'd be able to tell the difference between this and a chicken egg really fun though let's check this out in an enticing egg curry here we have a South Asian curry of potatoes tomatoes ginger garlic and a whole bunch of spices and then we added our hard boiled guinea hen eggs right at the end it smells incredible super aromatic let's get a little piece of egg here huge flavors here I feel like the slightly smaller size of the guinea hen egg works well in this dish but the flavors are so strong that they kind of overpower the more subtle qualities of the egg the yolk is also a hair overcooked because the hard-boiled eggs cook again in the sauce but on the whole I really loved this preparation time to move on from bird eggs and take a look at 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 don't have a shell it's not as important for fish eggs to have a 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 rather than having a mother hen to care for them baby fish are typically left to fend for themselves so they have a much lower survival rate so here we have our beautiful salmon roe like most other edible fish eggs these have been cured with salt as a way of both seasoning and preserving them as you can see these beads have an amazing orange red color and contain a darker part that almost looks like a yolk we're using a mother-of-pearl here because certain metals can interact with the RO in a weird way that produces off-flavors I'm gonna take a spoonful here mmm the eggs are so delicate they just kind of burst at the slightest pressure and this briny fishy umami packed liquid oozes out YUM oh that's so tasty there's one another spoonful and since salmon roe is so popular in Japan we decided to make some sushi this is just about as simple as it gets a little nugget of seasoned sushi rice as a base with a piece of dried toasted seaweed also known as nori wrapped around it to form a vessel of sorts for a couple of spoonfuls of salmon roe which is known as ikura in Japan down the hatch mmm not a mouthful the thing that's so beautiful about this these are the eggs have such a strong salty flavor they're pairing them with some mild starchy rice it makes a lot of sense it really offsets all that richness from the nori adds a little bit of its own oceanic flavor so delicious you know salmon roe is great but when it comes to fish eggs the undisputed champ is Osetra caviar the word caviar refers to salt cured row from sturgeon very specifically all caviar is Roe but only some roe is caviar as with the salmon roe we tried a very precise amount of salt has been added to this for taste and preservation this is one of the fanciest most sought-after caviar as money can buy and I'm lucky enough to get to taste some as you can see the individual eggs are much smaller than the salmon eggs and a lot darker in color almost grey green super delicate and a give it a taste mmm super salty but there's also a pronounced buttery and have nutty quality god that's good sometimes when people eat caviar they just put some onto the back of their hand which actually warms it up slightly to make it taste more hmm I could eat this halt in you know and while we would never cook these we can serve them up in style Russian style that is here we have some blini which are little yeasted pancakes topped with creme fraiche and a nice little plop of caviar if I'm splurge on good caviar this is the only way I want to eat it simple elegant delicious gonna pop one of these right here mm-hmm amazing tartness of the creme fraiche is so nice with the brightness of the caviar from the graininess of the blini mellows out the intensity of the eggs while also playing up some of its nuttiness it doesn't get that much better than this folks for our next egg we're gonna stay under the sea but get a little bit weirder with some lobster Roe there are plenty of egg-laying fish in the sea but we wanted to compare that to the eggs from Anan fish marine creature this black slimy stuff here is lobster Roe it's pretty gross looking I got to be honest a lot of times people would discard this stuff when they're cleaning a lobster but even though it's gnarly looking it actually does taste good I swear let's cook this up so the interesting thing about lobster Roe is that it turns a bright red when you cook it which is why it's also known as lobster Coral if you've ever opened up a steamed lobster and found red stuff inside this is what it is it smells great very aromatic let's keep it a little taste mmm it's really cool big oceanic flavor and surprisingly not salty at all it tastes really Lobster you like a concentrated lobster stock or something like that and the texture is a little mealy but normally you wouldn't eat it in this way it would usually be incorporated into a sauce or something like that which is exactly what we're going to do voila so here we have some lobster tails that we've steamed halved and then what we've made is a little bit of a lobster butter out of the ROE we simply stirred some of that green blackish stuff into some a hot brown butter and it immediately turned red and infused it with lobster flavor lobster loves butter mmm so tasty it's actually pretty subtle but the lobster oh really intensified the natural flavor of the lobster meat really gilding the lily over here this feels like a really restaurant two sort of preparation probably not the kind of thing I do at home but a fancy and delicious garnish nonetheless and last but not least we're gonna check out some snail eggs our final egg is neither fish nor fowl these are eggs from the Petit Gris land snail the eggs are in between the size of our salmon roe and our sturgeon caviar but they're bright white little pearls they don't have a shell but they do have a sturdy outer membrane which keeps them intact and their salt-cured just like a other caviar style eggs this is pricey stuff it's difficult to harvest and a single snail only lays around four grams of eggs per year the Romans called these the pearls of Aphrodite because they considered them to be an aphrodisiac well we'll see about that hmm whoa so crazy the beads really roll around in your mouth they're almost hard to pop so much firmer than the fish Rose we've tried and the flavor is wild really mushroomy with a distinct earthy wet Moss forest floor sort of flavor Wow I've never tasted anything like this in my life okay now we're gonna try this out with some escargot we're doubling down on the snail here with buttery cooked Burgundy snails topped with some of our snail caviar this smells incredible some herbs and garlic going on in there I can't wait to try this one really cool look eggs lend some really interesting textural contrast to that soft tender snail meat the delicate flavor of the eggs is getting lost a little bit here because of the escargot butter which is so strong but I'm definitely picking up some of that woodsy earthy mushroom equality Wow what a treatment 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 was distinctly different and delicious in its own way have a favorite type of egg you didn't see here today let us know in the comments [Music]

Channel: Bon Appétit

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Rating: 4.7255535 out of 5

Keywords: egg, eggs, egg recipe, making eggs, every type of egg, amiel stanek, amiel bon appetit, amiel makes, amiel, 12 types, ostrich egg, amiel eggs, amiel makes eggs, 12 types of eggs, chicken egg, every kind of egg, cooking every type of egg, egg recipes, quail egg, rhea egg, duck egg, goose egg, make ostrich egg, cook duck egg, cook ostrich egg, cooking goose eggs, how to eggs, how to make eggs, pheasant egg, guinea hen egg, salmon egg, fish eggs, food, bon appetit

Id: PKz70B4O4ig

Length: 24min 51sec (1491 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020