What other ingredient deep dives should we do this year? Also thanks again to Made In for sponsoring this one! Head to my link to save on Made In cookware: madein.cc/0124-ethan
Can you do one on fresh vs bottled herbs and spices, and maybe a quick set of tests on a bunch of different ones. Off the top of my mind: pepper, garlic, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, dried herbs (basics like basil, oregano, rosemary, parsley), and so on.
Back in the days my grandmother sold butter and eggs at the local farmer's market. Everyone bought her butter and eggs, and she sold out quickly every time because everyone loved the golden yellow butter and yellow yolks in the eggs compared to the other. The only thing different was she feed her chickens carrot scraps and added a few spoons of carrot juice to the butter mix thus turning it a nice golden color. The orange pigments in carrots turned the butter and yolks this wonderful color. This secret she now shares with you.
@@xxdragonrenderxx That's literally how cheap cheddar cheese got that orange. In the olden days the orange came from the fresh grass that the cows grazed on (as opposed to some cheap feed), but now they just feed some carrots to the cow.
On the opposite side of this, but still in support of your point, my grandma always raised her hens with full access to the garden, free to roam all day and fed with a verity of plants and grains. The only time eggs became less orange and more yellow was in the winter when the feed they got was mostly grains (very colorless). I think diet definitely counts a lot
Personal experience: I eat eggs almost every morning. But for years I've noticed that sometimes, after a while, I can't stand eggs anymore, they start getting a weird aftertaste so I stop eating them for a bit and start again. After switching from cheap eggs to free range/organic eggs, I've never had that sudden change in taste again and I feel like the yolk has a richer flavour.
I’ve had the same thing happen to me. Countless cycles of loving eggs and then being unable to stomach them. If I ever get to a point of being able to stomach the high price of pasture raised I look forward to never having to go on an egg hiatus.
Ethan, I appreciate your deep dives into everything food. The reason we buy the more expensive eggs is because 1) I’d like to think the animals/animal products live a humane life, i.e, get to peck around for their normal foods; plants, insects, seeds, etc. 2)It is hard to imagine that pellet food given to cheap egg layers has all the various nutrients that are available in a pasture. It has not been that long ago since egg producers started feeding “vegetarian foods to chickens and stopped grinding up unmarketable chicken parts; those chicks that are ground up at 2 weeks, feathers, fats and all other “waste chicken”s. All that said, a more useful study would be to examine the difference in available NUTRIENTS in eggs raised in large egg production vs. pasture raised. Thanks to listening, I appreciate your research and hard work.
especially for animal products, quality can really be tasted and is also reflected in the nutritional value. I always pay extra for "happy cows"/eggs etc.
Thanks for the video. I now get my eggs from a local old farmer couple, who only produces a few dozen eggs a day. They are white, brown, blue & green eggs of various sizes (Large to Jumbo) they sell them for $2 a dozen or $3 for 18, which is cheaper than the local WalMart.
I know exactly what you mean. I was getting those same prices but switched to pasture raised after asking what feed they gave the chickens if any. They actually showed me and it was gmo corn which im desperately trying to stay away from...
36 mins I've spent learning about eggs and how they're farmed on a Saturday night in February......this just randomly popped up in my feed. Yet I was thoroughly enthralled, really interesting deep dive on eggs!
In EU (or at least in Poland) every egg sold in store has a code, which denotes whether the farm is using cages, cage-free, pastured etc, and also from which farm the egg comes from. The code is printed on the shell.
The Netherlands also uses a code system. Traditional cages have become illegal several years ago and we also want to ban the ´large cages´. 3 is cage, free range is 2, pasture is 1 and organic is 0. Organic has certain strict rules about space, treatment and feed. But what is more indicative of the quality of their treatment and accommodation is the star grading which goes from 1 better life star up to 3 better life stars. 3 stars is indicative of the best living conditions. Whenever I visit my parents, I buy eggs at an organic farm where they have lots of open space and pasture to roam. Trees provide cover from predator birds. The past several years the livestock has had to sit in the spacious barn a lot of the time though because of bird flu regulations. One sick hen can shut down a farm for several months!
Others have said it, but I want to reiterate - these eggs are all still 'factory farmed'. 'Free Range' just means they have access to the outdoors whether they use it or not. 'Cage Free' chickens can be in massive pens with hundreds or thousands of other chickens, and 'pasture raised' isn't a USDA regulated term, so it really doesn't mean anything without additional labels such as certification by inspection groups. The big difference comes from what they're fed. Local chickens that are free range typically live in a person's back yard, or on their farm and have access to grasses, flowers, and bugs. Chickens are NOT vegetarians, which makes me crazy when I read labels on expensive eggs that say 'Fed a vegetarian diet' like it's a good thing. It's not. I have a number of friends who keep chickens, so I get all the good eggs I want, and I guarantee you, you can taste the difference. You should do that study and compare the flavor of some factory-farmed eggs and some good, local eggs from someone in your community.
I’m a poultry specialist and I love you did such a great job explaining this and then detail you into. The only thing you missed I want to point out is. When it comes to organic vs other eggs. Something that might effect certain people and possibly the taste is how the company clean the eggs before they leave there facilities. The cheaper eggs are cleaned with a solution that is almost like diluted bleach. Eggs have these things called pores on them. And trace amounts can go into the eggs. Now the FDA says it not enough to kill or hurt anyone. But in some case this small amount is enough to effect people giving them a upset stomach when they eat the cheaper eggs.
Very helpful, and as a former small scale chicken farmer and egg supplier I appreciate giving pasture-raised and humanely handled good mention. If you ever revisit this topic consider adding the curious difference between US and EU regs, specifically that US eggs are washed and refrigerated where EU eggs are not washed nor refrigerated. This is one of the advantages a direct-to-consumer egg suppliers in the US can offer, unwashed eggs with the shell membrane intact… less oxidation as the shell is less porous. Then you can always talk about duck eggs… eggs never go out of style :-)
I definitely can tell the difference in taste of eggs, I normally get the best eggs I can get, got a couple of favourites. In between I would try out other eggs, just for experiment & also to see if I can find any tasty eggs at lower prices (eg farmers just starting etc). Only this week I did that with a new brand, it’s cheaper by half the normal price I paid, and it tasted half of my normal tasty eggs. After the first egg, I know I will only use it for baking etc, rather than have them as fried for my toasted egg sandwich lunch.
Eggs from Home grown chikens that feed on actual food they find outside/ bugs and my leftovers but not on commercial chiken food taste 10 times better than any grain feed egg ever.@@H_A_L_7
I believe the stricter regulations are for the same reason that we here in the US have fewer issues with hoof and mouth and mad cow. Our culture tends to be a bit more litigious, even about things that are force majeure, and much less caveat emptor, so refrigeration and washing relate to risk mitigation. Also, it is possible, given that different locales can have different bacterial populations, and given the antibiotic restrictions, it may have something to do with increased instance of naturally occurring microbes, inside of the egg, in addition to on the surface of the egg.
I've always just assumed the only benefit to more expensive eggs was the better treatment of the animal, with no underlying benefit to my health or the taste of my food. Thanks for the highly informative video. These deep dives are always appreciated, its crazy how many things I and many others just take for granted.
The taste can be better since some of those who care enough to go cage free also let the hens eat better, like pecking bugs that give the yolks a rich color. Not all producers do just the minimum required by law for the label. There is a spectrum between cage free and pastured.
@@popeyegordon I have a suspicion that the specific breed and time of year also matters... Less bugs, less foliage, and less willingness for those chickens to utilize their outdoor-access in the winter (or rainy) seasons.
@@Aubreykun When I kept birds I gave them more greens and scraps in winter but keep in mind that I had no day cycle lighting like the factories that adjust the day cycle for maximum production. Long winter nights means less eggs per month.
I remember Kenji Lopez-Alt claiming that the taste was more or less the same, but that high beta carotine eggs look better and that matters a lot for enjoyment.
My grandma used to give me eggs and chickens from her farm. Her chickens just ran around the farm, they weren’t fenced or controlled. The taste of the eggs were really better. The yolks were orange. The chickens were probably older than grocery store chickens, and most were roosters. They too were better tasting and less fatty. I miss Grandma, and not only because of her generosity with chickens and eggs.
@@ClarkIsraeli unfortunately pricing is a result of the grocery retailer, not the egg farmer. We all conventionally produced eggs are priced to the buyer on a commodity egg market quote (Urner Barry) or cage free eggs are often priced on a cost-plus basis which is strongly tied to the commodity corn market. Either way, the grocery store decides what the mark-up will be and many use eggs as a profit maker since COVID rather than the older days of eggs, milk & bread being very often loss leaders for pulling grocery shoppers in the door.
I get mine from a local lady. She has fences but basically they run outside all the time going in and outside as they want. I pay 3$ a dozen. The yokes are a golden orange. They can be white, brown or a pretty blue. They definitely taste better.
We have been keeping hens on our various farms for almost 40 years in central Ontario, Canada. Egg quality depends on many variables. Aside from variables like feed and genetics, there are things like winter eggs vs summer eggs. At our farm, in the winter, our hens are free range. In the summer they are pasture raised. In a couple of weeks, they will be eating toms of dandelions and that will change the colour of their eggs. I don't have the most discerning palate but that must have an effect.
@@66stewi bugs and whatever else they find in the grass and soil. This is why their eggs have a better vitamin & mineral profile than chickens kept in cages, eating commercial feed.
When I worked in a restaurant where we made our own hollandaise sauce (40 years ago) I would occasionally bring eggs from my farmer neighbor. The chickens were out all day in the yard and fields. One of those egg yolks would make a batch of sauce where it would take 3-4 yolks of the store bought eggs. Harder shells, too.
I wish he had included a farmers market egg in this shootout, rather than all store-bought. I’m convinced the results would have been different. My own experience is that supermarket eggs taste very similar, whereas farmers market eggs have better yolks.
@@sub-jec-tiv I think that's mostly down to the difference in breed. Small-farm hens aren't bred to lay the biggest eggs at the fastest rate possible, and their eggs taste noticably different (and are usually smaller too).
That's good those chickens got to run around in the sun. Majority of the poor chickens are stuck in cramped factories. The food industry is out of control. It can't be healthy to consume animals who do not have natural living conditions. Sad
UA-cam is digital library with all types levels of education and horror 😅 it's the beast of knowledge. This digital library can easily be taken down by cutting cable in the ocean. That's why we have spaceX . Unfortunately all space junk needs to be clean up to protect internet. We are doing better than anyone in 1920s . We have more knowledge for better or worse.
@@threewishes777 Yes God bless the navy for guarding the undersea cables. One of our ships was attacked by the Chinese a while back while on guard. The navy covered it up by court martialing the captain of our ship. The Chinese ship first covered its ID ping with the ID of an oil tanker. Then used an EMP weapon to put our ship dead in the water and blind and make the weapons system useless. Also no communications? No excuse for that there should have been a radio on board hardened for that I used to fix that type in the Army. Then boarded our vessel and shot at sailors. There were wounded. I hope we learned from the incident and closed up the vulnerabilities. We cannot always count on satellite communications. Ever had satellite tv (DISH) or internet? Have a good day.
Great video. It’s helpful to have all of this information in one place. As someone who eats eggs most days, the nutritional benefits of the more expensive eggs are worth it to me.
If you store eggs in the refrigerator, keep them in the carton near the back. Storing eggs in the door will vary the temperature and humidity, and so the eggs will age faster.
I actually really love how this video while not directly being about the ethics of the egg industry, it covers the ethical struggles and the reality between different conditions for farmed birds in a non-judgmental way. I think if more videos added details like this, consumers would be a lot more educated on how to make ethical decisions, as well as be more empathetic towards people who make those purchasing decisions.
Ethan, great video! One thing - you were measuring age of eggs from the time you bought them. Eggs in the grocery store are often 3 weeks between the newest and oldest. You can tell the packing date on all US eggs (which is usually the same as the laid-on date) by looking for the three-digit number that represents the day of the year (January 19 would be 019, December 31 would be 365). Once you start looking for it, its amazing how much older some eggs are!
Eggs have a thin film on the exterior, when laid. It comes off when they are washed. Eggs sold in store have, of course, been washed of this film. But, not washing that film off extends the freshness further. So, anyone that raises chickens for personal use should benefit from delaying on the washing, as well as refrigerating asap.
I was amazed he talked about age of eggs without talking about the dates on the side of the cartoons. I noticed at the Sprouts, the other expensive grocery in Arizona, all the organic and free-range eggs were 1 1/2 to 2 weeks older than the cheapest eggs. In NH/MA Pete and Gerry's (NH grown) eggs are about a week newer than other national brand organic eggs.
Exactly, age is the bigger factor with eggs taste. If you can get freshly laid eggs from a caged/cage free commercial operation like Purdue or Tyson they taste just as good as local producers. Because they're weeks fresher than anything on store shelves.
Store bought eggs are a yellowish. My backyard chickens make a deep orange yolk. I feed my chickens feed, grubs, herbs, grass, garden scraps, organic table scraps, fruit from my fruit trees and more. I give my neighbors my extra eggs. 100% of the time my neighbors say the eggs I give them are so much better then store bought and always offer to pay for them. I deny payment... they then return the favor with canned foods, garden food they grew, or even had ppl offer labor for eggs. In the end... I rnjoy knowing my eggs come from happy healthy chickens.
Your neighbors are being nice for free eggs. I was born on a farm and currently have ~700 free range chickens, 27 head of cattle, 73 sheep, and 11 horses. Of all the products we produce, eggs are the one thing where you cannot tell a noticeable difference outside of appearance in the yolk. Meat and dairy on the other hand is drastic. I had a "steak" from the grocery story out of curiosity and it was tough and bland. I had ground beef and it taste exactly like that mystery "impossible beef" they sell. Leads me to believe that consumers are paying for beef and receiving soy alternatives because the commercial farms cannot keep up the demand of the city dwelling renters/leeches.
I don't really taste a huge difference in any store bought eggs. However, the eggs I get from my backyard chickens taste amazing!! I didn't even know eggs could taste that good and flavorful until I tried them. I really believe it's because we give them all our kitchen scraps as well as let them free range. Our chickens eat really good!
i also had Chickens as well and we gave em kitchen scraps as well and leftovers that we didnt eat and the eggs was more flavorful and the yolks more vibrant. dont have any chickens now tho since it can get expensive...... i miss the chickens
Our chickens eat well too, but when I did a blind test with store bought ones, I could detect no difference in flavor whatsoever that wouldn't be drowned out by a tiny amount of salt.
Great presentation! I may have missed it, but one factor important to me is how much a product relies on the transportation system. I own a butcher shop and BBQ restaurant in Denison, TX (north of Dallas), Heritage Butchery & Barbecue, and our eggs are pasture-raised, 15 miles from our restaurant. The rancher drives the eggs to us, often with his kids, and they often have lunch at the shop and occasionally have the chance to speak with our customers. Maybe it’s less efficient, but maybe it improves the customer experience. It definitely allows us to support a local family business. If you’re ever up our way, stop in and say hi!
We have 5 Novagen red laying hens . They're very happy, spoiled hens. My hens were 4 months old when we purchased them, and from day one, they were as lovable and tame as a bunch of puppies! The shells are med brown. I can only say that they're the best eggs for over easy, poached, and hard boiled. I treasure them like pieces of gold. It's about the texture! I'm not sure the 'flavor' is 'different', but I'll say "richer" for certain. (The NOVOgen Brown is a Red Sex-Link. This particular breed has been developed in France, derived from a cross between Rhode Island Red and Leghorn genetics.)
I guess that might be like buying two different brands of heavy cream that both tastes similar but one is just richer and creamier. For a certain dishes or occasions that sounds justifiable to me
It also sounds like you have a strong connection to them, which is naturally going to be a confounding varaible. You love them, so they will taste better to you no matter what. Similar to how darker yellow/orange yolks make people think an egg tastes better when it doesn't.
We have a mixed flock of copper Marans, lavender orpingtons and Americaunas. The Marans lay beautiful dark brown and speckled eggs, the orpingtons are light brown and the Americaunas lay a pastel blue shade. I don't believe that I save any money by owning chickens, but I do believe that they are more nutritious than the alternative, which when I'm shopping I go for the cheapest. I also appreciate that my children get to experience this relationship with animals. They enjoy our table scraps, we enjoy their eggs, there by we are mutually benefitting each other. My kids have the memories of buying them as chicks, building the coup, holding them and watching them grow. I'll pay extra for that.
They absolutely are better texture! When I first got my chickens and scrambled one I was surprised it came together like “a real scrambled egg” - imagine a French omelette type mixture, rather than the clumpy half mixed scramble I was used to.
I used to have a flock (12) of hens that were free to run our 1/2 acre back yard and were fed only organic feed and oyster shells from an organic farmer about 60 miles from our house. We had brown, white, and blue-green eggs (from the Araucana) and they were delicious-all of them.
A point about your Omega 3 statement. While technically true it has been known for years that many modern foods, mostly industrial raised beef, is higher in Omega 6 than naturally raised or grass fed beef, which is higher in Omega 3. This imbalance between Omega 3 and Omega 6 has been linked to inflammation in the body but especially in the blood vessels and can be a contributing factor in clogged arteries. Inflammation is also at the heart of many other illnesses so while there isn't technically a defined Omega 3 deficiency, the imbalance in the modern diet between 3 and 6 causes many health issues. Great video, just wanted to point that out. Keep up the excellent work!
My favourite story.....my grandmother was raised on a farm her entire life. My memories of her started when she was in her age 60s. Her kitchen window overlooked the pasture where the chicken flock foraged. And Grandma could tell which hen ran back to the hen house to lay. If one hen missed laying for 3 days she was either into the stove / oven or freezer the next day
@@Shmooper_Dooper ...Which is why Mee Maw would be just fine during some apocalyptic disaster and millions of city slicker consumers would discover how useless, savage and feeble they really are and how thin their veneer of civility actually was. Talk about 'social constructs', woah.
My wife can tell with our 40 hens, but they will “live out their lives here forever” because they have names and we love them. “How would you feel if you couldn’t work anymore so we murdered you!?!” 😂
One of my elderly customers is extreeeemly wealthy. They've build a very nice chicken house. I guess its one of those things that transcends. As a child in the 60's we had chickens and I wish the kids today would go outside and touch the grass.
I had a flock of about 20 chickens and one year there was a population explosion of little frogs and toads from our pond... the chickens had a FEAST and a few days later I had the most rich looking (and tasting) egg yolks I've ever experienced lol. I miss having egg laying hens :( . I'm left with post menopausal hens now lol.
I have to agree. My chicken eggs looked darker and more orange when we allowed them to run around and forage for bugs rather than eat a lot of corn and grain.
@@jim73challenger Ethan was right that the egg white will taste exactly the same, but the egg yolk will have a deeper flavor if they're foraging for themselves instead of being force-fed one type of feed.
your channel has single handedly gotten me interested in cooking and i cannot thank you enough for all the help understanding the science behind cooking techniques!!!!
You know, not only are these videos informative af, you're very personable without being showy or fake. If you made full length food documentaries, I think they would be regarded as some of the best.
Would be interesting to see this experiment with another group of eggs that are freshly laid. Like from a local farmer/homeowner that lets them roam. Would like to see the freshness taste, vs a grocery store egg that had to be shipped from a pasture raised farm.
From experience with having my own chickens, farm fresh/small farm/home chicken eggs are much firmer. They usually have the best possible living conditions and are able to be individually treated for issues. You can get them on average $3-5 per dozen, in fun colours. The egg shells are thicker from being able to forage for more varied foods, food scraps, and a feed supplimented diet. Obviously how people raise their own chickens will vary by individual but IMHO If you dont want to pay $10 a dozen for certifications for how kindly they are raised, go find a local farmer. You wont be dissapointed. They are also almost always fresh, and if they dont wash them they can be counter stable for a month or more stored roughly like squashes and the like (cool, dry). Depending on how they are collected there may be some small amount of poop on the shell which can be washed off, but worth noting for people who are severely immunocomrpomised or who have small kids who may be prone to it (I think concerns end around age 3 but dont take my word for it exactly, I dont have kids just know its a thing)
Oh, and the males are usually not killed after hatching, they tend to be raised to make more babies, or turned into cooking chicken, and slaughtered as humanely as possible. While its again varied farm to farm, still a win IMHO
I have a relative who keeps chickens, and honestly their eggs tasted really good compared to the grocery store eggs. They tasted a lot richer and more savory.
I would say you will see a difference, as everyone I know that either gets fresh eggs or sells them says they see a huge difference. From the reading I have done before this video, the majority of eggs we are buying in the grocery store are four to six months old if you can believe that! Absolutely must degenerate quality
I worked for a large egg plant in Boulder CO back in the 70's and they sent old hens and/or dead hens to Campbell soup company. They came with a large open bed tractor and trailer with a tarp to cover after filling with the old hens. The plant was torrid hot during summer and hen death would increase at this time of year. The hens would be tossed in a pile until pick up on Fridays with flies all over them. By the way, Campbells boils the chick meat until it's safe to eat, but often tough. If I hadn't seen this first hand I'd never believe it. The laying house was elevated high above the cement floor below where a loader constantly scraped up the waste into piles for fertilizer production. The driver had cardboard on top to prevent getting splattered throughout the day. The laying hens were in cages in rows as far as you can see with augers running down the line to bring in food and/or ground calcium. The calcium was added when the eggs began to break due to thin shells. Water was provided in troughs next to the food auger troughs. There was a boardwalk for workers to cull sick or dead hens. Each cage had from 6 to 8 hens per and no place to lay down. The rows ran along side each boardwalk on either side. It was very smelly with lots of ammonia in the air. The cages were tilted towards the back where a conveyor belt ran constantly bringing in laid eggs gradually downhill to a wash/inspection/packing room. Eggs were candled for blood then washed an packed in cartons.
yeah expensive eggs aree about sustainable and morale farming not this mechanized hell food production. Now the FDA is being deregulated and defunded like many other gov agencies so the rich can get rich while the peasants eat tainted food!
Yeah, this is very typical still around the world. In most parts of the western worlds standards have increased a bit, but its still horrid in those facillities. The thing is though, for your personal consumption, you can easily buy the "mid" tier priced eggs without losing too much money and you're still going to to do a lot for the animals. Here in germany you're going to pay 1.80-2.00€ for the cheapest eggs (10 pieces), just paying like 0.40-0.60€ more will guarantee free ranging chickens. That's something everyone can pay, eventhose with minimum wage imo. Atleast I can.
A friend of mine worked at a small chicken farm in the '90's and the stories she tells are just sickening. I always shop for eggs marked "certified humane." I hope those birds have a better life.
Ethan: Great video! Informative and concise, it answered my questions about a staple of my diet, and illuminated a number of misconceptions. One thing I want to mention, a bit off-topic, to be sure, but my way of informing people of another popular misconception: "Penultimate" (Although it may sound like it,) is not an amplification of "Ultimate." Penultimate refers to the next-to-the-last thing before the Ultimate. We are all expert in something, and can learn much from each other. Keep up the great work!
The dark greenish-gray ring around the yolk in boiled eggs is due to iron compounds from the egg yolk combining with sulfur ions from the egg whites (ferrous sulfide). Cooking slowly and immediately cooling boiled eggs in ice water (as you did) allows the iron ions to diffuse back into the yolk and the sulfur back into the egg white, preventing the unsightly blue green color and avoiding the stink of ferrous sulfide when eating them. Love your videos, great job once again!
We started eating Vital Farms during covid when there was a run on eggs, leaving only the more expensive eggs left, never going back. I hear Ethan that he didn't see a difference, but we found the Vital farms eggs to be better tasting, and have a better texture. We're eating eggs prepared several different ways weekly. We can tell the difference.
@@marcopinchetti5872 Exactly. I would have to prove it to myself because I know I can easily fool myself into believing something. Although most people are perfectly happy being biased, and love to tell others about it, because they like the idea of the thing they are biased about.
This was the most useful thing to pop up in my feed in a while. I recently(ish) transferred to the dairy department and have been asked many questions that I don’t know how to answer. Like, “Why are these eggs brown?” and, “What does “Cage Free" mean?” Thanks so much, for your very detailed yet clear explanation.
@@ArtisChroniclesThank you. I was so confused. Yes, I work at a place where the eggs are in the same cooler as the milk. Sometimes, I am again reminded that the inter-webs ARE a global phenomenon.
For me, the real difference was discovered eating a farm fresh egg straight from the hen house to the plate after a week of hard work. The color was rich, the yolks clear, the smell more pronounced, the flavor obviously full. The energy received was evident during our days work. Eggs can be compared to petrol grades in a cars octane. Everyone I talked to said the same thing, you can tell a noticeable difference in farm foods in your body and egg difference was an easy indicator.
The only eggs I could substantially taste a difference in were ones that I had gotten from a roadside store on the way to the Oregon Coast. They had almost a metallic undertone and a richness that was unlike any egg I've gotten from a regular grocery store. I was told that they fed their chickens oyster shells for calcium, and they were free range. I don't get them often because they're expensive and out of the way, but I always pick up a carton when I pass by.
Oyster shells are a wonderful source of calcium for chickens. Add some live grub worms and it’s a great snack for them and gives the egg shells more density, keeping them from cracking as easily.
I grew up in Europe, lived in Africa and have travelled in Asia and the eggs there have so much more a darker yellow yolk and to my mind tasted better than US eggs. Recently I started buying Pasture raised, specifically Vital Farms, and these just like those in the rest of the world.
@@eily_b This is from the Times of India and seems right. Eggs with a dark orange yolk are mostly laid by pasture-raised hens. The colour of the yolk is influenced by a healthy and well balanced diet. Pasture-raised hens are allowed to roam on outdoor pastures, where their diet is supplemented by fresh grass and nutritious omnivorous foods like worms, beetles, grasshoppers, and spiders. This diet is rich in carotenoids, which gives living organisms a red or orange colour, therefore causing the dark orange yolk colour. However, a hen doesn’t have to be pasture-raised to lay an egg with a dark orange yolk. Any hen can lay such an egg if fed nutritious food.
Thanks for the in depth video. What I felt was missing though is antibiotics use and hormones added to the chicken feed and their effects on the egg and the health of the consumer.
Do more expensive eggs contain less antibiotics or other potentially harmful ingredients(like chemicals) for long term consumption, especially for kids? This is the main point my wife insist on buying the most expensive eggs she can find, and I was hoping this video can confirm or deny that argument. :(
Fantastic video, thanks! I only eat pasture raised eggs, and Vital Farms is a mainstay as well as a neighbor, who has a small farm with the best eggs which she sells even more expensive than Vital Farms. Even though they’re expensive it is important to support your local Farms and look out for the well-being of the animals that feed us. Additionally, besides any taste differences pasture raised eggs are nutritionally superior to caged raised. They are much better for you.
@ Hashimoto comment… I’m gonna give that a try. I know organic (in everything else) has made a difference for me, as well as increasing my “healthy” fat consumption.
I raise a few hens and definitely much more orange yolks, and fresher eggs taste better. Between harvest, pasturizing, shipping, and making it to the floor of the market, fresher eggs do taste better. Orange scammble definitely turns some heads, but it definitely aligns in the taste with everybody. Besides the fact that the natural curiosity and personality of the hens definitely blends well with the overall calming effect of the yard/garden. Keeping chickens is one of the most rewarding things I have ever taken on.
Same. Honestly before I got chickens I thought eggs were meh. After eating my own backyard eggs I can’t get enough of them. I’m replacing 2 dinners a night with eggs as it is and the whole family loves it. We eat so many eggs now days, they are so much better than store bought.
I used to have 6 chickens (now it's down to 3) and I'm an egg addict. The taste is slightly different but in no way "better". And they also vary a lot while store bought caged eggs are consistent. The only advantage is that my chickens make way bigger eggs. You people clearly have a bias that doesn't have anything to do with taste. You could pick the ones you own but only because you are used to the taste (leaving aside salt and pepper). Cuz I could. But give me free range eggs from other chickens and it's a zero from me. And I'm VERY picky with my eggs. I used to eat an unhealthy amount cuz we were swimming in them. Once we had over 80 eggs and they kept laying them, so we gave 40 away and cooked a bunch of them in all kinds of ways and recipes, eating 6-8 eggs a day (and I'm not a fat american)
I have an orange tree and can definitely say my oranges taste better than store-bought. Same goes with my eggplants, broccoli, etc.. I am sure an outsider may or may not agree. As proven in this video, there is a very big psychological aspect to taste. Your eggs taste better to you, no doubt about it. You raised them, you know what your chicken eat, you care for them, etc etc.
Funny story when we got the first egg from our chickens. I cracked it open and called my mother m saying the yolk was the wrong color. She laughed and said that is how they are supposed to look. Fried it and ex and I shared it. Best egg ever.
@moolipit It's an anecdotal observation. A placebo requires a preconceived expectation. An anecdotal report, or study, is about an experience that can be repeated by others and their comparative experience can be investigated further in order to create a proper experiment to garner causal or correlative data sets.
There was a lady at my previous job that would occasionally bring me egg salad sandwiches and they were the most delicious ones I had ever had, and one day I asked her what her secret is, and she said that she just literally has chickens so these are just fresh eggs. There is definitely a difference between those and the ones you just get at a store.
Most eggs you get at the store are already two to three months old, and the pointiest side of the egg should be pointed downwards so the air sac is on the top side of the egg, help preserving it better.
our family farm in now-Zimbabwe, yes. Warm eggs right from the hen's bottom and you could not beat the taste. When I was young nobody was commercially selling eggs, because what is the point when raising them is free money and taste so good?
They have dates on each individual egg as well as the carton. They could be 2 months old but they aren't. There is a date on your carton that says when it was packed. They are washed and packed pretty much immediately at any egg plant of size. Maybe the brown eggs nobody buys or places that don't sell much eggs. No real grocery store will have that problem. As an example, my current eggs, from Walmart, were packed on 017(1/17), I bought them almost a week ago. They were literally packed only days before I bought them. No egg plant is letting eggs sit around unprocessed for a month though 30 days is legal from my understanding. They go pretty much directly to wash and packaging. I have farm fresh free range eggs from my chickens, I don't enjoy them fried though. I can tolerate them as an ingredient or even scrambled but I find the yolks to be gamey when over medium. @@allouttabubblegum1984
I kept laying hens and meat birds for over 20 years. Thanks for a great look at the intricacies of hens and eggs. The only thing I think you could have added to your study is the variation between refrigerated and unrefrigerated eggs. Otherwise, flawless.
should be good as long as the eggs are chilled without ice crystals forming within the cells resulting in protein degradation etc. Consistency varies according to egg temp during use. varying temperatures may cause a rupture/microtears to the membrane separating the liquid from the shell due to thermal contraction/expansion which could affect the taste because the shell is semipermeable. refrigerated eggs experience less degradation and oxidation because the shell becomes less semipermeable due to thermal contraction.
We used to have eggs growing up. Just a couple, but enough that all the eggs we ate came from them. One thing I noticed that while I was used to eating "our" eggs the store bought eggs tasted slightly metallic and strange to me. But going the other way, from being used to store bought and eating "our" eggs I couldn't tell the difference. Have you noticed anything like that?
LLDR, TLDW: I watched the whole video, and he concluded that there was: no “Better tasting” egg, but as you go up in price, you do get a “better looking” egg.
Having grown up on a small farm, and eating farm fresh, completely free range eggs, I can tell you for 100% sure the flavour is extremely different. When I was used to farm fresh eggs and I'd eat non farm eggs, it would taste to me like I was eating plastic. I must say, that I believe the diet of mass production layer chickens must be improving, as I feel like over the past 20 years mass produced egg flavour has improved.
depends what you buy, I normally buy free range, but once i bought shitty standard farmed wal-mart eggs... I could barely finish the carton, they were just so flavourless and kinda gross.
We had free range chickens for 30 years, it's a difference like night and day. I sometimes have to deal with that industrial whole egg stuff out of the bag/tetra pack and just the smell makes me gag uncontrollably. I couldn't eat that.
These are so satisfying. You're answering all of the food questions I've wanted answers to. The fact that a research video on eggs is currently #43 on UA-cam Trending speaks to the great quality of your work. Keep it up!
Hi Ethan❣️ I was brought up on a small farm in Norway ages ago, and we had lots of chickens. My dad told me the best eggs should have a hard shell and a deep yellow yolk. We had all the neighbors buying our eggs in those days. Great video👍😎❤ subbed.......
Your Dad was right! the colour of the yoke is decided by the diet. Free range hens roam and eat green plants which make the yoke a richer deeper yellow. Hens that are not free are fed on gains which make the yoke more pale. Free range hens also can find grit and eat as much as they like this forms the shell . Battery hens have to be fed it. The way we treat animals affects the quality of the food they produce as well as their quality of life. They are not separate they are part of the same thing.
I will ticket my friends truely free range eggs from coco morans and other heritage breed chickens. The only ones you tested are all hybrid breeds. But a good video packed with useful info thanks.
The 1st time I tried organic cage free eggs I was quite surprised in the difference of taste. It was easy to notice the difference in a better way IMO.
The real difference is in small local farm eggs. My restaurant staff and I compared them and it’s like night and day. The local farm eggs had a deeper savory flavor to it compared to the typical bland ones we used for orders. Can’t eat regular eggs anymore, they taste watered down.
I switch back and forth from backyard raised to the nicer grocery store eggs all the time... i can definitely tell a visual difference but after they are cooked the difference is subtle to me. I'd bet money the backyard eggs are going to be healthier in the long run however.
I'm pretty sure if you regularly eat one type of egg, you would easily taste the difference. You won't see much if you start with low quality to high quality but you will notice it way more from high quality to low.
So basically like all the industrialised crap they vomit on us. I could say the same for the Edible Styrofoam that is sold to the people. My bad, I meant "bread".
Another great video! In my experience, there is a huge difference in flavor and texture between different kinds of eggs, however the problem is that this typically has no correlation to any of the US standards such as cage free or pasture raised. Most expensive eggs in my experience taste identical to the cheap Aldi's ones, however there are 1 or 2 brands that stand out as being comparable to fresh eggs that eat a varied diet. I think that chicken diet and egg age contribute to 100% of the flavor differences, but again the problem is that 90% of the expensive eggs I've tried are no better tasting than the bottom dollar ones. In addition to deep yellow/orange yolks, fresher eggs with a better diet have a much more delicate and fluffier texture when scrambled compared to regular eggs. This is almost always true of fresh eggs we get from neighbors and the like, as those are the golden standard imo. I'm someone who actually doesn't typically salt their eggs or add spices, as a good scrambled egg or sunny side up doesn't need it, and I usually eat a dozen or 2 eggs a week so I'm fairly sensitive to small differences. Outside of fresh eggs from chickens I know, the only brand I've found that consistently produces a product that's similar in texture and flavor is the Happy Egg Co, which comes in a yellow carton. I've come to this conclusion after trying literally dozens of different overpriced brands that in almost all cases taste nothing like fresh eggs and are indistinguishable from the factory farmed ones.
One *VERY IMPORTANT* thing to note that many Free Range egg producers tend to cheat, meaning they have a backdoor to an outdoor space but the chickens often won't know where it is or don't have access to it at all. So basically you're paying a $3-5 premium for those top-shelf "free range" eggs that are actually closer to "cage free". Which is why I always go for Pasture Raised eggs instead, only $4.99 from Aldi. Just a dollar more but the quality difference is pretty significant.
To boil eggs (Jacques Pepin?): I put a pin hole in the end, drop into simmering water for 12min, crack once before I drop into ice/cold water. The pin hole forces extra air out as they cook, making the egg fill up the whole shell with no air pockets. Cracking before ice bath makes it easier to peel - the ice water seeps in between the egg and shell . Also, i never get the green ring around the yolks or a sulfur smell/taste. I’ve been cooking eggs this way for years, works every time. 😁
I start my eggs in cold water, then set the timer for 10 minutes after the bubbles start to form on the bottom of the pan. I boil them at medium heat to avoid overcooking, because I have 75 year old memories of Mom's boiled eggs with the khaki lining on the yolks. I thought then that it was because she bought them at the Army PX.
@@chezmoi42 This is all about controlling your variables: starting egg and water temperature, water and egg volume, applied heat, and time. My tap water temperature fluctuates a lot, so boiling is nice because it's always the same - but 15 seconds makes a big difference when aiming for a ramen egg.
One big aspect that's missing in this video is that large eggs can never be ethical. Many modern hens have been selectively bred to produce eggs which are too large for their own body and many of them experience immense pain during egg-laying and some even die during the process. So if you care about the animals, never buy large eggs.
I think that a lot of commercial eggs, even the pasture raised ones, will ultimately have a very similar diet. I'd like to see a comparison with some home raised or small farm eggs. Places where the chickens will get a much more varied diet. I can definitely taste a difference between those and any grocery store eggs I've had.
I have backyard hens that eat layer pellets and as much grass, bugs and garden produce as they want. Their eggs are comparable to the pasture raised ones at the stores. It's the beta carotene in the plants that really makes difference. In my opinion, pasture raised eggs are worth it, but cage free tastes the same as the cheapest eggs.
That may be true but its also not useful information for a lot of people because the extra cost and living situation can easily make it impossible to get fresh eggs at a reasonable price
It probably varies from farm to farm and time of year. I definitely notice with my parents chickens that the eggs have a deeper orange yolk in spring/summer when they are out foraging for bugs and weeds and such versus winter when they are eating more layer pellet feed and spending more time indoors (chickens prefer heated barn to snow and ice on ground).
As much as my wife and I can, we try to buy eggs from local farmers who just set them out for sale on the honor system. They're generally in the range of $3-$5 per dozen. The only real downside is that they tend to vary in size by quite a bit. Honestly never noticed a difference other than the size.
Great video. Very informative. Making mayo with pasture raised and caged eggs with the other ingredients the same, has shown to yield very different consistencies. Perhaps pasture raised eggs had more lecithin, which helped emulsify the oils better. Taste-wise, the pasture raised egg mayo was way tastier.
@@jpq21 I'm not some snob or some person who likes to think they're 'fancy'. I also love myth-busting on high priced stuff in order to save money. But I know 100% that when I splurge on some eggs at the farmer's market here, those eggs are typically(though not always 100%) noticeably better and richer than my typical store bought eggs. Like, it's completely undeniable. So there absolutely can be differences. I'd bet there's just generally more inconsistency in local farm produce than there is with large scale chicken egg facitilies and whatnot.
@@maynardburgerI agree 100%, I was being sarcastic. The guy in the video has no taste buds if he thinks all those eggs taste the same. When I was a kid I literally hated any uncooked egg yolks because I thought they all tasted like the cheap ones- now I only buy the expensive ones and when I have to stomach through some cheap ones like at a Dennys or something I have to actively try not to throw up.
I will say, as someone with all sorts of fowl things afoot amongst his yard, the diet of the birds can make a drastic texture and - not so much taste, more mouth feel and richness. Good backyard eggs are like those pasture raised ones, but when fresh are very very thick, difficult to hard boil unless you wait that month or use a salt to help disassociate the membrane, shell, and albumen, and are absolutely divine when sunny side up on some homemade toast. Also, there are way more than just white, brown, and sometimes blue - there are greens, reds, blacks, and probably many other colors I have not personally seen. Thanks for the good work! Find a cooler at the end of a driveway next time, and compare them to the grocery store's finest - you will be surprised! That's not even counting eggs from ducks, geese, muscovies, and quail. Yum!
The same principal, by the way, definitely applies to the meat. Backyard chicken (and other birds) are so much richer, as in you need less to be satisfied, even though you want more, denser, often fattier, and have a certain tingle when freshly processed, which any hunter should be able to describe for you. Good meat and eggs come from animals that had a long, happy life with one bad day that goes by quickly and humanely.
As a baker who uses egg whites to make meringue as a part of my main product, I have noticed a significant difference in the end result depending on the type of eggs I use. The actual age of the egg has the largest impact. Shells are porous and will absorb odors of anything else in the fridge (like meat or fish). So fresh eggs are best. But then the texture of the meringue will differ with the type of egg. Just look at the meringue in this video... it's kind of chunky and gritty and not a proper meringue, but that could come down to technique.
If your chickens are fed oyster shells along with their feed, their shells will be stronger and harder. We also feed ours lots of fresh kale we grow because they produce more often and more colorful shells with strong, golden yellow yolk. If you buy farm fresh eggs, DO NOT REFRIDGERATE. They stay best on the counter...might help to know.
High omega 3 eggs have a distinctly different taste that I would not describe as being better. In fact, I wouldn't use them for some recipes and for general baking because omega 3 fats degrade in heat. Just because he can't taste the difference doesn't mean they don't. It's also possible that the eggs he used didn't have the claimed omega 3 content. Omega 3 eggs are useful if one poaches the yolk and then cooks the white more fully (to destroy the anti-nutrient in it). For baking and cooking, more omega 3 is actually a drawback, since the omega 3 degrades in heat.
Excellent video! Thank you for all the research you did and explaining everything so well. (One picky little thing though, the word “penultimate” is not a synonym for ultimate or most important. It means second to last. Like, in a 10 page paper, page 9 would be the penultimate page.)
THANK YOU! I try not to let it, but that one really just bugs the hell out of me. Like, "ultimate but with emphasis" or "ultimate but I want to sound cool saying it", and it's just like nails on a chalkboard
Man, your videos started out good and have just improved so much. No other youtuber can compete for thorough research and clearly delineated and thoughtfully analyzed information. Keep it up. We see the work and appreciate it! I've been especially enjoying these deep dives on basic ingredients.
@@erms111 I don't think that Ragusea competes with Ethan's content. That's why I said it. I think Ragusea gets in his own way a lot and is a little to apt to just get on his soap box.
@@Slinkylinky179 cool, respect your opinion, just disagree with it. Ethan has a degree in finance, Adam is a journalist, and I prefer his way of conveying information.
@@erms111 all good. Sorry if my comment came off as blunt. I do like ragusea and he would definitely have the market if Ethan wasnt making videos. I'm just happy to have someone making videos that are in a similar vein to Adam's that kind of address some of the criticisms I have with his content (whether intentional or not, of course). I think a lot of the differences im thinking about come down to personality and information processing. I like that Ethan is a little more transparent in how he presents a topic. Adam tends to want to tell you how to feel and tbh I just end up disagreeing with his opinions most of the time and find that he offers too many opinions when he could just give me more information. May also be a side effect of the content machine demanding weekly content though.
I went through a similar process last year, and came to a similar conclusion for all but one application: onsen tamago. Onsen tamago is a soft slow cooked egg with slightly hardened yolk and mostly runny white served in a very mild sweet fish sauce with scallion garnish. The lack of butter and sulfuric smell you get from other egg preparations really makes the quality of the egg pop. I'd say caged eggs are about 80% as good as pasture in this use case, with cage free landing very close to caged and free range landing very close to pasture (maybe 80-85-95-100). My taste tests weren't blind, but my wife immediately noticed one morning when I ran out of pasture eggs after several days and fell back to cage free. Ultimately, we decided that free range is good enough for onsen tamago, which we eat about 5 mornings per week, and caged is fine for everything else.
I tried doing a taste test before with cages eggs and pasture raised eggs. I made scrambled eggs multiple times with both and the pasture raised always tasted far better to me.
yeah I've definitely had the cheap eggs from Aldi and then pasture raised eggs and noticed a difference in taste Thou that could be because the Aldi eggs aren't as fresh? I do wonder how their produce can go bad so quick and it often looks questionable in the stores lol so maybe the same is true for their eggs.
@@brewtalityk if ur from the UK then i spose Aldi is on the sort of lower end. caged Aldi eggs vs, say, Tesco "free range" - decent difference in taste! not toooo much price difference. you will end up paying more. I'm feckin obsessed with eggs. I swear that if the hens are fed better, it just "tastes more right". I get through so many eggs I thought it was placebo. It's really not - but with that said No point seeking eggs that have marketing gimmicks on them, like overdesigned packaging is also a decent indicator that the eggs are... average. We still macerate our male chicks in the UK, quite often :/ When you start getting into the fancy "I live in a six bedroom house in Devon" eggs, delivered online from Ocado or something, they all taste the same even when they are mega expensive. Some expensive brands taste worse than cheaper ones! they're just ripping us off sometimes.
@@goldenant9450no and no. It seems people don't understand the meaning of bias. 1. It's not the same in everyone, just as if every person puts exactly +2 on the taste. In this case it might be the opposite, expecting no difference and decreasing taste sensitivity. 2. the existence of bias does not deny the existence of difference, as in this case taste/aroma difference. If you actually want to bring in scientific terms, you should also add these: randomization and n=30. Meaning, one person does not give a conclusive result, in fact even as scientific this test appereared it is statistically pointless. It may have dozens of reasons why one individual can/cannot taste the difference and condensing all of these into a bias can by itself be confirmation bias, trying rationalize your own believe and lack of understanding In the end: ignoring empiric data of people who have differing experience is bad scientific practice
One thing I think you missed here is how some cheap eggs can be difficult to cook with. My experience is that many cheap eggs yolks are very fragile, and so they break when I try to separate them for a meringue or emulsion, or if I put them in a pan to fry them. While I think your criteria (ethics, health, and taste) are important, I think cheap eggs can be a barrier to entry to new or occasional cooks because they can make essential cooking techniques seem really difficult.
I switched to brown eggs because the white egg shells were thinner and kept cracking when I boiled/steamed them. I get the cheapest brown eggs which are about 2x more expensive than the cheapest white. Still like $3 though…
I find the size of the egg is a much greater factor in consistency of behavior between specimens. Large eggs have a bit of variation, while XL and jumbo are wildly inconsistent. Similarly, small and medium eggs are very easy to get consistent results with.
My chickens butt nuggets need to rest for about a week or be put into the fridge before I can fry one without breaking the yolk. If I try and eat same day, the yolk almost always breaks when flipped.
@@lamebear1000I'm having the opposite experience lol always buy white shells and last week bought brown by accident and yesterday it took 4 attempts to successfully boil an egg. They all kept cracking immediately
It's defiantly nice that the chickens are humanely treated but the thing is I used to have my own chickens and I wanted to see dark orange yolks because they taste better and have more vitamin content owing to the greens and bugs and worms in the diet of the chickens which they get while scratching and searching in pasture
I’ve been raising laying hens for 2 years. These eggs taste so much better than store bought eggs but end up costing a lot more than store bought eggs by the time you add up everything it takes to raise and feed them, not counting my time. I’ve also started raising meat birds. There is no comparison in taste in those chickens either. They are the best tasting chickens I’ve ever eaten.
During the lock down in the us back in 2020 my family started buying farm fresh eggs ( we live in a very agricultural area) and I noticed a massive difference in any dish I would use them in. Since then I actually have almost completely stopped eating store bought eggs. The farm fresh eggs were no more than 24 hours old when we would get them and had such a better flavor. I know it’s next to impossible for most people to get access to those sorts of eggs but in my opinion they are much better. Love your content man!
I work with guy that has about 70 hens. He brings in eggs for sale every week. They are excellent and at $4 a dozen, a really good value for the product received.
When I lived in Texas one of my friends had chickens and ducks on her farmbthat were free range. Best eggs ever, except for the free range eggs we got from the egg truck that visited our German village once a week.
Not trying to be a jerk, but is it possible that this is more confirmation bias than an actual difference? Ethan's video (and previous testing by Kenji L-A at Serious Eats) has shown that well versed tasters can't distinguish between egg types and ages when tasted blind. I'll add myself to that camp, as we have some backyard chickens, and while I love their egss, I can't tell any difference in "quality" between their eggs and store bought caged eggs.
The chalaza! My mom always told me it was the “unformed spine of the chicken” and I’d always feel nauseous if I saw them in my cracked eggs. Super happy to know what they actually are!
Meanwhile I'm over here eating sardines with the entire spine and rib cage included. You gotta toughen up if that's enough to make you physically sick.
Lol you're adorable, I work in construction and am very confident in my 'toughness' but I'll for sure reach out if I need any help in eating whole sardines.@@GruppeSechs
@@CarlaQuattlebaum the simplest way to separate the eggs is to empty the shell into the palm of your hand over a bowl. Let the whites run through your fingers, and when you get the chalaza at the end squeeze it between your fingers and transfer the yolk to your other hand. It will separate from the yolk easily. My grandma showed me this when I was a child and it's easier and I rarely break a yolk with this technique. I hope this made sense. (I'm sure there's a video showing this, lol.)
I can't taste any difference, but the price difference between caged chicken's eggs and free range's is about the same as a coffee. I go for the "expensive" ones for ethical reasons cause, honestly, they aren't really that much more expensive.
@@GerackSerack just know that "free range" just means "have access to the outdoors for 6 hours a day." Some never go out. They are chickens, they are going to go where the food and water is.
It would have been interesting to do a chemical test also, as well as antibiotic content. I usually get the more expensive eggs (meats and produce as well) to support more sustainable farming practices also.
When there was an egg shortage, we were forced to buy the more expensive, small farm, pasture raised eggs because those were the only ones available. There was such a huge difference in taste and satiety level. Whereas before, I'd make an omelet with 3-4 eggs, I only need 1-2 to feel full because it packs quite the punch. Those yolks are liquid gold! We've never gone back. (Besides, the price evens out if you need less to make you full) Side note: I still do keep some cheaper eggs for baking.
Yes. I used to buy both kinds of eggs. I would add one or two "fancy" eggs for cooking up egg dishes and use the cheaper eggs for any recipe that just required eggs. Prices have gone up enough that I'm out of the habit of buying both though.
The difference is drastic, I can't go back lol.The best eggs are the pasture raised eggs.. not a fan of vegan fed chickens, no matter if they're organic..
I’ve come to really appreciate the value of an individual egg with my daughter’s ventures into growing her flock. She really struggled in the beginning, hens just didn’t produce(may have been an older flock-came with the farm they bought.) added new birds to her flock and lots of learning with pecking order then roosting pens seemingly secure from predators & lost their flock. Spent tons more on feed and shoring up everything to piddling returns. Gave it a year and started from scratch. Winter chicks raised to spring and her first eggs. It is going so much better this round. I buy from her and she’s now begun to sell locally. Doubling her flock this year. It’s really become more than ‘just an egg’. When supply is low and I buy I went back to el cheapo eggs and it was super different for me. I used to say the same, I couldn’t tell the difference in taste. It’s subtle but once you’ve acclimated and become accustomed to a specific taste and quality, store bought doesn’t taste so good. So I buy pastured and find they’re pretty close.
When i used to get my eggs from out in the country, many were double yolkers and even triple. No mention in this u.s based forum, is this rare in u.s.?
@@EmeraldHill-vo1cs it depends. Some breeds are more apt to mult yolks. My daughter had an egg inside an egg, with the internal smaller egg without a shell. The whole thing (tiny egg only)was the size of your thumb. It can also be something as fickle as the wind blew and scared the hen so her whole cycle got reset mid production, she skipped a day and threw a double. They’re moody creatures.
You buy from your daughter? What’s with America? Asians would feed our moms, aunts, uncles, and the whole extended family. Never takes money from family.
I try to go to local farms where I know that the chickens are kept more humanely. Seeing the conditions that the caged animals are kept in make it a struggle to stay with meat based products.
I do the same thing. Eggs are one of the main sources of protein for me, and knowing the hens are treated well and personally knowing the farmer is good to them is a little piece of mind. yes they are a bit more expensive, but I don't really buy meat, so that money I save, I am more than happy to put towards high-quality eggs and supporting local businesses
I raise hens - and let me tell you - they have acres to roam - they eat bugs - they jump in the air to catch flies - they barely touch their feed until the snow covers the ground - this tells you a lot about what grocery hens eat eh? Mine eat clover, flowers, worms - a factory hen usually lives 2-3 years ..... My head rooster is 7 years old !!!!! and I have many 6 year old hens .... Please buy directly from a farmers market from someone who brags about their hens - some of the farmers are still old school and don't really free range but just have a dirt fenced in yard - the nutrition difference is huge
Excellent Video. Although there are millions of videos on UA-cam, i feel like i haven't seen a video in long time where i actually learned something. So Refreshing, Good Job Ethan.
Interesting video, thanks 👍 Our free range backyard chicken provides us with a steady supply of fresh eggs, often more than we can eat. The eggs are a bit smaller than the large commercial eggs, but they are super fresh and taste delicious.
My farm fresh eggs are much larger than the ones in the store. In fact they are so large I was worried about how that big egg passed through the poor hen. Often times a couple would be so large I have to put a rubber band around the egg carton in order to close it.
@@thecargotsold Everything. Similar to a pig the chicken is your compost compactor, don't forget to feed them their own egg shells as well. A pig is the best compost compactor but it's a little less urban friendly, however you can just dump whatever in the pen and know it's not going to be left to rot.
My tiny addition is there was a polish study that found significantly more folate in organic eggs than regular eggs (double the amount, and eggs are rich in folate). Unfortunately folate was not measured in the study you linked, and I haven't found any other data sources
Since organic is a meaningless marketing term I would highly doubt the validity of that study if that was the conclusion. There's no difference between hens given regular chicken feed and those given so called "organic" feed.
@@spike_spencer Except that even in the US (not otherwise known for stringent food standards), when it comes to eggs, organic ones cannot be produced by caged hens, and that may be important, depending on what “regular” eggs were being used for comparison in the study.
@@spike_spencer Calling bullshit on spike_spencer's false premise. Under USDA Organic Certification Requirements: "Antibiotics, GMO derived products, animal by-products and synthetic preservatives are not permitted in any feed products." This is a far cry from marketing jargon, making spike's premise-and conclusion-completely false.
@@tolerbearALTIITheres no use for them. They cannot lay eggs and their meat is tougher and rubbery so not as popular as hen meat. Its just more efficient for companies to kill them off. The eggs we eat are not fertilized so they don’t need them as mates either. They just grind them up and process them into other food stuff.
There's an important health issue that has not been discussed in this video. When the hens get sick in cages, they all get fed anti-biotics so diseases don't spread. This is scary because as humans we will consume these anti-biotics.. My primary search on the carton is NO USE OF ANTIBIOTICS, which I sometimes find in France, don't know about the US though
Great video man! Cheap eggs always break up really easy. In italy they have packets which are eggs just for sauce basically cheap ones, we have them here to in Malta. Organic eggs and free range eggs have a completely different taste. The yellow is yellower and tastes completely different Cheaper eggs when fried have a different texture and consistency. I also prefer the fact Organic Free range eggs at least give the chicken a little more space to move Yeah but mainly whenever I have normal eggs they tend to be crapper .
Best way to taste difference in egg yolks is with a soft boiled egg, such that the yolk is still creamy but firm. I can definitely taste the difference in pasture raised vs caged eggs with soft boiled eggs, and pasture raised tastes much better.
It’s wild he didn’t test for this. Absolute negates this entire video. Pretty huge over site and makes me question his entire thinking for his videos in general.
Thank you for this comparison. When I looked at other places on the internet, some are swearing that the ones they get from their local farmers tasted so much better, but they were bringing in the visuals. So much of our "taste" is visual.
I don't refrigerate eggs. On the farm we gathered them in a root cellar and rotated them. Mom put a silver dollar in the milk jug too. we consumed all of the milk within 3 days but sometimes some eggs could be 2 weeks old. If they don't have a crack and sink to the bottom of a pot of water they just fine. Fine job doing all those test Ethan! Just buy the cheapest eggs. Sometimes the jumbos are cheaper because people have a habit of reaching for large.
Thank you for this deep dive into eggs! I do personally have an appreciation for specific eggs, and I do feel they have a richer yolk flavor. I've done blind taste tests with them, including with some disbelieving family members, and they have come out ahead. However, I agree that the differences are not significant for most. For me, I vote with my wallet for more humane treatment of the hens/chickens and so purchase only Pasture Raised eggs. I'm glad to see the change to more humane eggs is becoming widespread here and in other nations. My favorite are Happy Eggs Heritage (blue container -- the yellow container are more "standard"). If you haven't had them, and you are a fan of pasture raised eggs, I strongly recommend them. Vital Farms are a distant second for me, and I haven't really found too many others that I appreciate as much.
Yes. Did the blind taste test, and those same eggs. (But in the black box) came out hands down the winner. However, unlike you the taste of the egg is extremely important to me and I budget for them appropriately. They taste like eggs!
I watched a video from a Canadian TV channel, where they blind testing different eggs with 5-6 people. The winner was eggs from a small farm, where hens received plenty of sunlight during the day. They then told the farmer about how the eggs from farm won the blind test. The farmer cried because he didn't think people could tell the difference.
Oh this is going to be fun. Ive done this experiment too out of curiosity and I found that while there is a little bit of difference between expensive and cheap eggs, the difference between fresh and older (within expiration date ofc) eggs are much bigger. Will be fun to see what conclusion Ethan comes to!
3 years ago I went on my own study buying different eggs for an entire year. I was ready to give up as all eggs were equivalent. Then I tried Happy Eggs blue and brown that uses a different type of chicken (Heritage breed). They were much taster and yes their yoke was orange but that can be done by feeding red color to the chicken. It was that they tasted much better.
Agree! I still remember what eggs were like when I was little. My grandma used to raise hens and my egg source were mostly from those hens. They were very aromatic and yolks were quite orange. I thought those delicious eggs were long gone in my life. Then I found Happy eggs. I love their medium sized eggs in blue package. My boyfriend used get cheaper eggs from other brands so I get to compare those brands. Happy eggs in blue package are a lot better. Plus, I have Hashimoto’s so bad/average quality eggs gives me inflammation. But I usually don’t feel bad after eating Happy eggs. So, I’m gonna stick with this brand. 😊
Are you sure about the 'feeding red color' statement? While I know that the chicken's diet will affect the colour, if it were as simple as using something obscenely cheap like red food colouring, it seems to me that every major manufacturer would be doing this, since it's almost universally agreed that a more colourful yolk is more appealing to the customer?
@@ph0end I know that farmed salmon are naturally near colorless and turned pink by supplementing their feed with ingredients like astaxanthin, so i wouldn't be surprised at all if a similar practice was used for eggs. Edit: I looked it up, and yup, they do use exactly the same thing to make a richly colored egg!
Loved this test! Would have been interesting to have poached eggs as one of your tests. I know it’s not as common as the other methods but it basically removes any small differences in flavour that each eggs would get from Maillard browning when fried or scrambled. Poaching also allows you to control temperature if using a sous vide
Thanks for your good assessment and presentation. I love yolks with darker color which have stronger aroma and taste. The intense color is due to the carotene, a pre-courser for vitamin A biosynthesis. Feeding chickens with leftovers of carrots would enrich the carotene, so it could happen in any raising facility.
It's interesting you had such a hard time pulling out the pasture raised eggs. I've never bought them because of cost, but they visually look very similar to the eggs I occasionally buy from my neighbor who raises a few dozen hens on his farm/bed and breakfast and to me there is a VERY marked difference between those and commercial eggs, even the free range ones. The yolks have a richer taste and more umptuous mouth feel, and like in your fried egg experiment they tend to cook up better (though that could be due to age since they're hours to at most 2 days old when i get them).
1. There is a difference between the fresh eggs I get from my free roaming chickens and store bought. However, the difference is fairly small. Most of the difference is in the yolk, it is bright yellow, more aromatic and has more intense flavor. But even then, as I've said the difference is small. 2. Most people don't know this but eggs typically spend 4-12 months at warehouses before being sold. So, a few weeks in your fridge will not make any difference. 3. The taste of eggs depends a lot on what the chickens eat. Store eggs will have a more consistent taste, as those chickens eat the same thing all the time. My own eggs change taste according to season. Fall eggs generally tend to be the best tasting, while winter eggs are closer to store bought.
Nothing left unanswered except the main reason people want pasture raised eggs Chickens are monogastric so their meat and their eggs are a product of what they are fed If they are fed corn and soy, they are trash.
What other ingredient deep dives should we do this year?
Also thanks again to Made In for sponsoring this one! Head to my link to save on Made In cookware: madein.cc/0124-ethan
Butter!
ANYTHING! I'm a new fan of yours, but these types your videos are one of my absolute nerdy favorite!!
Can you do one on fresh vs bottled herbs and spices, and maybe a quick set of tests on a bunch of different ones. Off the top of my mind: pepper, garlic, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, dried herbs (basics like basil, oregano, rosemary, parsley), and so on.
Soy sauce :))
Yes, butter would be great!!
Ethan, have you thought about making a deep dive on rice? The various types of rice, how it's farmed, how and why (!) to cook it for various recipes.
I agree!
That's a deeper topic than you can imagine.
@@AsdayasmanThat's what makes it perfect for a Ethan Chlebowski video 🤣
Eggcelent idea! (sorry) lol.
and he should collab with uncle roger
Back in the days my grandmother sold butter and eggs at the local farmer's market. Everyone bought her butter and eggs, and she sold out quickly every time because everyone loved the golden yellow butter and yellow yolks in the eggs compared to the other. The only thing different was she feed her chickens carrot scraps and added a few spoons of carrot juice to the butter mix thus turning it a nice golden color. The orange pigments in carrots turned the butter and yolks this wonderful color. This secret she now shares with you.
So she basically dyed her butter. Literally a scam, legit butter is 100% Milk and salt.
@@02artiom yeah probably could have fed her cows a bunch of carrot and actually gain a similar effect without adulteration
@@xxdragonrenderxx That's literally how cheap cheddar cheese got that orange. In the olden days the orange came from the fresh grass that the cows grazed on (as opposed to some cheap feed), but now they just feed some carrots to the cow.
@@commenter4898 100% bullshit
On the opposite side of this, but still in support of your point, my grandma always raised her hens with full access to the garden, free to roam all day and fed with a verity of plants and grains. The only time eggs became less orange and more yellow was in the winter when the feed they got was mostly grains (very colorless). I think diet definitely counts a lot
Personal experience: I eat eggs almost every morning. But for years I've noticed that sometimes, after a while, I can't stand eggs anymore, they start getting a weird aftertaste so I stop eating them for a bit and start again.
After switching from cheap eggs to free range/organic eggs, I've never had that sudden change in taste again and I feel like the yolk has a richer flavour.
Yeah, better quality eggs are way better tasting and even cook better
I’ve had the same thing happen to me. Countless cycles of loving eggs and then being unable to stomach them. If I ever get to a point of being able to stomach the high price of pasture raised I look forward to never having to go on an egg hiatus.
my take is that eggs behave like breast milk. what you produce is heavily influenced by diet, stress, environment, etc.
Placebo or mental illness.
@@cuy50i bet you got 4 covid injections.
Ethan, I appreciate your deep dives into everything food. The reason we buy the more expensive eggs is because 1) I’d like to think the animals/animal products live a humane life, i.e, get to peck around for their normal foods; plants, insects, seeds, etc. 2)It is hard to imagine that pellet food given to cheap egg layers has all the various nutrients that are available in a pasture. It has not been that long ago since egg producers started feeding “vegetarian foods to chickens and stopped grinding up unmarketable chicken parts; those chicks that are ground up at 2 weeks, feathers, fats and all other “waste chicken”s. All that said, a more useful study would be to examine the difference in available NUTRIENTS in eggs raised in large egg production vs. pasture raised. Thanks to listening, I appreciate your research and hard work.
especially for animal products, quality can really be tasted and is also reflected in the nutritional value.
I always pay extra for "happy cows"/eggs etc.
Thanks for the video. I now get my eggs from a local old farmer couple, who only produces a few dozen eggs a day. They are white, brown, blue & green eggs of various sizes (Large to Jumbo) they sell them for $2 a dozen or $3 for 18, which is cheaper than the local WalMart.
Wow! Where do you live? So inexpensive!!
I know exactly what you mean. I was getting those same prices but switched to pasture raised after asking what feed they gave the chickens if any. They actually showed me and it was gmo corn which im desperately trying to stay away from...
Where. Do. You. Live!? Where I live, northern Virginia, it is very expensive
@@Gohad158. I live in farm country, NE Indiana, where Beef is $3.99/lb.
@@abav811 I live in farm country, NE Indiana, where Beef is $3.99/lb.
36 mins I've spent learning about eggs and how they're farmed on a Saturday night in February......this just randomly popped up in my feed. Yet I was thoroughly enthralled, really interesting deep dive on eggs!
I was here with you my internet friend 😊
Oh my. God someone tell me what this says so I don't have to watch it. If you can get here in less than 30mins, I'd be happy
@@dudedavid522 conclusion starts at 34:36
I’m here waiting for the SuperBowl 😊
You posted this yesterday (my time) and it's now Sunday night where I am in Southern Ontario, Canada. So we are half a world apart. 🙂🙃😊
In EU (or at least in Poland) every egg sold in store has a code, which denotes whether the farm is using cages, cage-free, pastured etc, and also from which farm the egg comes from. The code is printed on the shell.
Same in the uk, so I imagine its the same in all European markets. EU kicking ass for consumers yet again.
Here in America we can't get a straight answer on our food supply.
The Netherlands also uses a code system. Traditional cages have become illegal several years ago and we also want to ban the ´large cages´. 3 is cage, free range is 2, pasture is 1 and organic is 0. Organic has certain strict rules about space, treatment and feed. But what is more indicative of the quality of their treatment and accommodation is the star grading which goes from 1 better life star up to 3 better life stars. 3 stars is indicative of the best living conditions.
Whenever I visit my parents, I buy eggs at an organic farm where they have lots of open space and pasture to roam. Trees provide cover from predator birds. The past several years the livestock has had to sit in the spacious barn a lot of the time though because of bird flu regulations. One sick hen can shut down a farm for several months!
@@TheRealTMar Excellent!
@@TheRealTMar I'd have liked Ethan to say something about organic eggs - especially for flavour.
Others have said it, but I want to reiterate - these eggs are all still 'factory farmed'. 'Free Range' just means they have access to the outdoors whether they use it or not. 'Cage Free' chickens can be in massive pens with hundreds or thousands of other chickens, and 'pasture raised' isn't a USDA regulated term, so it really doesn't mean anything without additional labels such as certification by inspection groups. The big difference comes from what they're fed. Local chickens that are free range typically live in a person's back yard, or on their farm and have access to grasses, flowers, and bugs. Chickens are NOT vegetarians, which makes me crazy when I read labels on expensive eggs that say 'Fed a vegetarian diet' like it's a good thing. It's not. I have a number of friends who keep chickens, so I get all the good eggs I want, and I guarantee you, you can taste the difference. You should do that study and compare the flavor of some factory-farmed eggs and some good, local eggs from someone in your community.
Yeah, but when I can see all the chickens running in the field mostly they bunch together) before I buy the eggs it gives me a better feeling.
I’m a poultry specialist and I love you did such a great job explaining this and then detail you into. The only thing you missed I want to point out is. When it comes to organic vs other eggs. Something that might effect certain people and possibly the taste is how the company clean the eggs before they leave there facilities. The cheaper eggs are cleaned with a solution that is almost like diluted bleach. Eggs have these things called pores on them. And trace amounts can go into the eggs. Now the FDA says it not enough to kill or hurt anyone. But in some case this small amount is enough to effect people giving them a upset stomach when they eat the cheaper eggs.
Why are male baby chickens killed without regard? Ugh.
Thanks for this info
@@tolerbearALTII because they can't produce eggs
Same reason human babies are, duh. They're not wanted by some.@@tolerbearALTII
Rooster is mentioned in the Bible..
Very helpful, and as a former small scale chicken farmer and egg supplier I appreciate giving pasture-raised and humanely handled good mention. If you ever revisit this topic consider adding the curious difference between US and EU regs, specifically that US eggs are washed and refrigerated where EU eggs are not washed nor refrigerated. This is one of the advantages a direct-to-consumer egg suppliers in the US can offer, unwashed eggs with the shell membrane intact… less oxidation as the shell is less porous. Then you can always talk about duck eggs… eggs never go out of style :-)
hit us with some bubba shrimp vibes. all the things you can do with eggs! they really are a great food & so versatile.
I definitely can tell the difference in taste of eggs, I normally get the best eggs I can get, got a couple of favourites. In between I would try out other eggs, just for experiment & also to see if I can find any tasty eggs at lower prices (eg farmers just starting etc).
Only this week I did that with a new brand, it’s cheaper by half the normal price I paid, and it tasted half of my normal tasty eggs. After the first egg, I know I will only use it for baking etc, rather than have them as fried for my toasted egg sandwich lunch.
Eggs from Home grown chikens that feed on actual food they find outside/ bugs and my leftovers but not on commercial chiken food taste 10 times better than any grain feed egg ever.@@H_A_L_7
@@jennifermarlow.Dang, I sell my organic pasture-raised eggs for $8 a dozen, but then again, people don't appreciate it much out here
I believe the stricter regulations are for the same reason that we here in the US have fewer issues with hoof and mouth and mad cow. Our culture tends to be a bit more litigious, even about things that are force majeure, and much less caveat emptor, so refrigeration and washing relate to risk mitigation. Also, it is possible, given that different locales can have different bacterial populations, and given the antibiotic restrictions, it may have something to do with increased instance of naturally occurring microbes, inside of the egg, in addition to on the surface of the egg.
I've always just assumed the only benefit to more expensive eggs was the better treatment of the animal, with no underlying benefit to my health or the taste of my food. Thanks for the highly informative video. These deep dives are always appreciated, its crazy how many things I and many others just take for granted.
The taste can be better since some of those who care enough to go cage free also let the hens eat better, like pecking bugs that give the yolks a rich color. Not all producers do just the minimum required by law for the label. There is a spectrum between cage free and pastured.
@@popeyegordon I have a suspicion that the specific breed and time of year also matters... Less bugs, less foliage, and less willingness for those chickens to utilize their outdoor-access in the winter (or rainy) seasons.
@@Aubreykun When I kept birds I gave them more greens and scraps in winter but keep in mind that I had no day cycle lighting like the factories that adjust the day cycle for maximum production. Long winter nights means less eggs per month.
That's why I buy them, and for Hollandaise sauce. In Winco Foods, the pasture raised are only $2 more.
I remember Kenji Lopez-Alt claiming that the taste was more or less the same, but that high beta carotine eggs look better and that matters a lot for enjoyment.
My grandma used to give me eggs and chickens from her farm. Her chickens just ran around the farm, they weren’t fenced or controlled. The taste of the eggs were really better. The yolks were orange. The chickens were probably older than grocery store chickens, and most were roosters. They too were better tasting and less fatty. I miss Grandma, and not only because of her generosity with chickens and eggs.
Eggs, from supermarkets, are the expensive eggs really worth it?
@@ClarkIsraeli unfortunately pricing is a result of the grocery retailer, not the egg farmer. We all conventionally produced eggs are priced to the buyer on a commodity egg market quote (Urner Barry) or cage free eggs are often priced on a cost-plus basis which is strongly tied to the commodity corn market. Either way, the grocery store decides what the mark-up will be and many use eggs as a profit maker since COVID rather than the older days of eggs, milk & bread being very often loss leaders for pulling grocery shoppers in the door.
I get mine from a local lady. She has fences but basically they run outside all the time going in and outside as they want. I pay 3$ a dozen. The yokes are a golden orange. They can be white, brown or a pretty blue. They definitely taste better.
Buy from your local chicken farmer ( organic) Help them continue to produce REAL food..
Colour of the yolk depends on chickens food, nothing more.
We have been keeping hens on our various farms for almost 40 years in central Ontario, Canada. Egg quality depends on many variables. Aside from variables like feed and genetics, there are things like winter eggs vs summer eggs. At our farm, in the winter, our hens are free range. In the summer they are pasture raised. In a couple of weeks, they will be eating toms of dandelions and that will change the colour of their eggs. I don't have the most discerning palate but that must have an effect.
I remember a family friend telling me when I was about 12 that he added barley to his feed and he had the deepest orange yolks I've ever seen
Eggs, at the supermarkets, are the expensive eggs really worth it?
What do pasture raised chickens eat mostly?
@@66stewi grass and bugs, as well as regular chicken feed.
@@66stewi bugs and whatever else they find in the grass and soil. This is why their eggs have a better vitamin & mineral profile than chickens kept in cages, eating commercial feed.
When I worked in a restaurant where we made our own hollandaise sauce (40 years ago) I would occasionally bring eggs from my farmer neighbor. The chickens were out all day in the yard and fields. One of those egg yolks would make a batch of sauce where it would take 3-4 yolks of the store bought eggs. Harder shells, too.
I wish he had included a farmers market egg in this shootout, rather than all store-bought. I’m convinced the results would have been different. My own experience is that supermarket eggs taste very similar, whereas farmers market eggs have better yolks.
I've tried both. Local farmers market eggs and Top-shelf pasture raised eggs look and taste exactly the same. No difference.@@sub-jec-tiv
@@sub-jec-tiv I think that's mostly down to the difference in breed. Small-farm hens aren't bred to lay the biggest eggs at the fastest rate possible, and their eggs taste noticably different (and are usually smaller too).
Wonder what the omega 3-6-9 profile and other inflammatory markers look like.
That's good those chickens got to run around in the sun. Majority of the poor chickens are stuck in cramped factories. The food industry is out of control. It can't be healthy to consume animals who do not have natural living conditions. Sad
Videos like this are exactly why UA-cam is one of the best tools ever created. Sincere thanks for sharing!
UA-cam is digital library with all types levels of education and horror 😅 it's the beast of knowledge. This digital library can easily be taken down by cutting cable in the ocean. That's why we have spaceX . Unfortunately all space junk needs to be clean up to protect internet. We are doing better than anyone in 1920s . We have more knowledge for better or worse.
@@threewishes777 Yes God bless the navy for guarding the undersea cables. One of our ships was attacked by the Chinese a while back while on guard. The navy covered it up by court martialing the captain of our ship. The Chinese ship first covered its ID ping with the ID of an oil tanker. Then used an EMP weapon to put our ship dead in the water and blind and make the weapons system useless. Also no communications? No excuse for that there should have been a radio on board hardened for that I used to fix that type in the Army. Then boarded our vessel and shot at sailors. There were wounded.
I hope we learned from the incident and closed up the vulnerabilities. We cannot always count on satellite communications. Ever had satellite tv (DISH) or internet? Have a good day.
Source?@@JoyPeace-ej2uv
Great video. It’s helpful to have all of this information in one place. As someone who eats eggs most days, the nutritional benefits of the more expensive eggs are worth it to me.
If you store eggs in the refrigerator, keep them in the carton near the back. Storing eggs in the door will vary the temperature and humidity, and so the eggs will age faster.
I actually really love how this video while not directly being about the ethics of the egg industry, it covers the ethical struggles and the reality between different conditions for farmed birds in a non-judgmental way. I think if more videos added details like this, consumers would be a lot more educated on how to make ethical decisions, as well as be more empathetic towards people who make those purchasing decisions.
And empathetic towards animals as well…they are living, breathing creatures with blood, nerves, emotions and feeling of pain.
I wish there would be an expose about food prices, who is committing the outrageous pricing, supplier or seller?
I will continue to buy humanely raised and organic eggs. Not because of the taste, but because of the way the hens are treated.
@@Figgatella Me too.
@@laars0001 Why not both?
Ethan, great video! One thing - you were measuring age of eggs from the time you bought them. Eggs in the grocery store are often 3 weeks between the newest and oldest. You can tell the packing date on all US eggs (which is usually the same as the laid-on date) by looking for the three-digit number that represents the day of the year (January 19 would be 019, December 31 would be 365). Once you start looking for it, its amazing how much older some eggs are!
Eggs have a thin film on the exterior, when laid. It comes off when they are washed. Eggs sold in store have, of course, been washed of this film. But, not washing that film off extends the freshness further. So, anyone that raises chickens for personal use should benefit from delaying on the washing, as well as refrigerating asap.
I was amazed he talked about age of eggs without talking about the dates on the side of the cartoons. I noticed at the Sprouts, the other expensive grocery in Arizona, all the organic and free-range eggs were 1 1/2 to 2 weeks older than the cheapest eggs. In NH/MA Pete and Gerry's (NH grown) eggs are about a week newer than other national brand organic eggs.
@@rogelioortiz3003 Unwashed eggs that still have the bloom do not require refrigeration.
Exactly, age is the bigger factor with eggs taste. If you can get freshly laid eggs from a caged/cage free commercial operation like Purdue or Tyson they taste just as good as local producers. Because they're weeks fresher than anything on store shelves.
Awesome, thanks.
Store bought eggs are a yellowish. My backyard chickens make a deep orange yolk. I feed my chickens feed, grubs, herbs, grass, garden scraps, organic table scraps, fruit from my fruit trees and more. I give my neighbors my extra eggs. 100% of the time my neighbors say the eggs I give them are so much better then store bought and always offer to pay for them. I deny payment... they then return the favor with canned foods, garden food they grew, or even had ppl offer labor for eggs. In the end... I rnjoy knowing my eggs come from happy healthy chickens.
Your neighbors are being nice for free eggs. I was born on a farm and currently have ~700 free range chickens, 27 head of cattle, 73 sheep, and 11 horses. Of all the products we produce, eggs are the one thing where you cannot tell a noticeable difference outside of appearance in the yolk. Meat and dairy on the other hand is drastic. I had a "steak" from the grocery story out of curiosity and it was tough and bland. I had ground beef and it taste exactly like that mystery "impossible beef" they sell. Leads me to believe that consumers are paying for beef and receiving soy alternatives because the commercial farms cannot keep up the demand of the city dwelling renters/leeches.
I don't really taste a huge difference in any store bought eggs. However, the eggs I get from my backyard chickens taste amazing!! I didn't even know eggs could taste that good and flavorful until I tried them. I really believe it's because we give them all our kitchen scraps as well as let them free range. Our chickens eat really good!
Totally agree!
i also had Chickens as well and we gave em kitchen scraps as well and leftovers that we didnt eat and the eggs was more flavorful and the yolks more vibrant.
dont have any chickens now tho since it can get expensive...... i miss the chickens
Our chickens eat well too, but when I did a blind test with store bought ones, I could detect no difference in flavor whatsoever that wouldn't be drowned out by a tiny amount of salt.
The only store bought eggs that taste different to me are Vital Source. They’re as close to backyard chicken eggs as you can buy.
Just trying to figure out if they are actually healthier to eat than store bought eggs or if the difference in health is negligible.
Great presentation! I may have missed it, but one factor important to me is how much a product relies on the transportation system. I own a butcher shop and BBQ restaurant in Denison, TX (north of Dallas), Heritage Butchery & Barbecue, and our eggs are pasture-raised, 15 miles from our restaurant. The rancher drives the eggs to us, often with his kids, and they often have lunch at the shop and occasionally have the chance to speak with our customers. Maybe it’s less efficient, but maybe it improves the customer experience. It definitely allows us to support a local family business. If you’re ever up our way, stop in and say hi!
This is amazing! Thanks for sharing
We have 5 Novagen red laying hens . They're very happy, spoiled hens. My hens were 4 months old when we purchased them, and from day one, they were as lovable and tame as a bunch of puppies! The shells are med brown. I can only say that they're the best eggs for over easy, poached, and hard boiled. I treasure them like pieces of gold. It's about the texture! I'm not sure the 'flavor' is 'different', but I'll say "richer" for certain.
(The NOVOgen Brown is a Red Sex-Link. This particular breed has been developed in France, derived from a cross between Rhode Island Red and Leghorn genetics.)
I guess that might be like buying two different brands of heavy cream that both tastes similar but one is just richer and creamier. For a certain dishes or occasions that sounds justifiable to me
It also sounds like you have a strong connection to them, which is naturally going to be a confounding varaible. You love them, so they will taste better to you no matter what. Similar to how darker yellow/orange yolks make people think an egg tastes better when it doesn't.
We have a mixed flock of copper Marans, lavender orpingtons and Americaunas. The Marans lay beautiful dark brown and speckled eggs, the orpingtons are light brown and the Americaunas lay a pastel blue shade. I don't believe that I save any money by owning chickens, but I do believe that they are more nutritious than the alternative, which when I'm shopping I go for the cheapest. I also appreciate that my children get to experience this relationship with animals. They enjoy our table scraps, we enjoy their eggs, there by we are mutually benefitting each other. My kids have the memories of buying them as chicks, building the coup, holding them and watching them grow. I'll pay extra for that.
@@taylorsessions4143 That's the spirit! Awesome and a great lesson for your children
They absolutely are better texture! When I first got my chickens and scrambled one I was surprised it came together like “a real scrambled egg” - imagine a French omelette type mixture, rather than the clumpy half mixed scramble I was used to.
I used to have a flock (12) of hens that were free to run our 1/2 acre back yard and were fed only organic feed and oyster shells from an organic farmer about 60 miles from our house. We had brown, white, and blue-green eggs (from the Araucana) and they were delicious-all of them.
A point about your Omega 3 statement. While technically true it has been known for years that many modern foods, mostly industrial raised beef, is higher in Omega 6 than naturally raised or grass fed beef, which is higher in Omega 3. This imbalance between Omega 3 and Omega 6 has been linked to inflammation in the body but especially in the blood vessels and can be a contributing factor in clogged arteries. Inflammation is also at the heart of many other illnesses so while there isn't technically a defined Omega 3 deficiency, the imbalance in the modern diet between 3 and 6 causes many health issues. Great video, just wanted to point that out. Keep up the excellent work!
My favourite story.....my grandmother was raised on a farm her entire life. My memories of her started when she was in her age 60s. Her kitchen window overlooked the pasture where the chicken flock foraged. And Grandma could tell which hen ran back to the hen house to lay. If one hen missed laying for 3 days she was either into the stove / oven or freezer the next day
MEE MAW SHOWED NO MERCY
@@Shmooper_Dooper ...Which is why Mee Maw would be just fine during some apocalyptic disaster and millions of city slicker consumers would discover how useless, savage and feeble they really are and how thin their veneer of civility actually was. Talk about 'social constructs', woah.
My wife can tell with our 40 hens, but they will “live out their lives here forever” because they have names and we love them. “How would you feel if you couldn’t work anymore so we murdered you!?!” 😂
One of my elderly customers is extreeeemly wealthy. They've build a very nice chicken house. I guess its one of those things that transcends. As a child in the 60's we had chickens and I wish the kids today would go outside and touch the grass.
@@Yensen2020 Probably wouldn't feel anything if you're dead.
I had a flock of about 20 chickens and one year there was a population explosion of little frogs and toads from our pond... the chickens had a FEAST and a few days later I had the most rich looking (and tasting) egg yolks I've ever experienced lol. I miss having egg laying hens :( . I'm left with post menopausal hens now lol.
I have to agree. My chicken eggs looked darker and more orange when we allowed them to run around and forage for bugs rather than eat a lot of corn and grain.
@@jim73challenger Ethan was right that the egg white will taste exactly the same, but the egg yolk will have a deeper flavor if they're foraging for themselves instead of being force-fed one type of feed.
The post menopausal hens is hilarious.
OK, I'm feeding my fucking chickens frogs.
Buy dry insects for your hens 😊👍
your channel has single handedly gotten me interested in cooking and i cannot thank you enough for all the help understanding the science behind cooking techniques!!!!
You know, not only are these videos informative af, you're very personable without being showy or fake. If you made full length food documentaries, I think they would be regarded as some of the best.
Would be interesting to see this experiment with another group of eggs that are freshly laid. Like from a local farmer/homeowner that lets them roam. Would like to see the freshness taste, vs a grocery store egg that had to be shipped from a pasture raised farm.
From experience with having my own chickens, farm fresh/small farm/home chicken eggs are much firmer. They usually have the best possible living conditions and are able to be individually treated for issues. You can get them on average $3-5 per dozen, in fun colours. The egg shells are thicker from being able to forage for more varied foods, food scraps, and a feed supplimented diet. Obviously how people raise their own chickens will vary by individual but IMHO If you dont want to pay $10 a dozen for certifications for how kindly they are raised, go find a local farmer. You wont be dissapointed. They are also almost always fresh, and if they dont wash them they can be counter stable for a month or more stored roughly like squashes and the like (cool, dry). Depending on how they are collected there may be some small amount of poop on the shell which can be washed off, but worth noting for people who are severely immunocomrpomised or who have small kids who may be prone to it (I think concerns end around age 3 but dont take my word for it exactly, I dont have kids just know its a thing)
Oh, and the males are usually not killed after hatching, they tend to be raised to make more babies, or turned into cooking chicken, and slaughtered as humanely as possible. While its again varied farm to farm, still a win IMHO
I would like to see a video comparing month old unwashed eggs not refrigerated vs washed and refrigerated eggs.
I have a relative who keeps chickens, and honestly their eggs tasted really good compared to the grocery store eggs. They tasted a lot richer and more savory.
I would say you will see a difference, as everyone I know that either gets fresh eggs or sells them says they see a huge difference. From the reading I have done before this video, the majority of eggs we are buying in the grocery store are four to six months old if you can believe that! Absolutely must degenerate quality
I worked for a large egg plant in Boulder CO back in the 70's and they sent old hens and/or dead hens to Campbell soup company. They came with a large open bed tractor and trailer with a tarp to cover after filling with the old hens. The plant was torrid hot during summer and hen death would increase at this time of year. The hens would be tossed in a pile until pick up on Fridays with flies all over them. By the way, Campbells boils the chick meat until it's safe to eat, but often tough. If I hadn't seen this first hand I'd never believe it. The laying house was elevated high above the cement floor below where a loader constantly scraped up the waste into piles for fertilizer production. The driver had cardboard on top to prevent getting splattered throughout the day. The laying hens were in cages in rows as far as you can see with augers running down the line to bring in food and/or ground calcium. The calcium was added when the eggs began to break due to thin shells. Water was provided in troughs next to the food auger troughs. There was a boardwalk for workers to cull sick or dead hens. Each cage had from 6 to 8 hens per and no place to lay down. The rows ran along side each boardwalk on either side. It was very smelly with lots of ammonia in the air. The cages were tilted towards the back where a conveyor belt ran constantly bringing in laid eggs gradually downhill to a wash/inspection/packing room. Eggs were candled for blood then washed an packed in cartons.
yeah expensive eggs aree about sustainable and morale farming not this mechanized hell food production. Now the FDA is being deregulated and defunded like many other gov agencies so the rich can get rich while the peasants eat tainted food!
Yeah, this is very typical still around the world. In most parts of the western worlds standards have increased a bit, but its still horrid in those facillities.
The thing is though, for your personal consumption, you can easily buy the "mid" tier priced eggs without losing too much money and you're still going to to do a lot for the animals. Here in germany you're going to pay 1.80-2.00€ for the cheapest eggs (10 pieces), just paying like 0.40-0.60€ more will guarantee free ranging chickens. That's something everyone can pay, eventhose with minimum wage imo. Atleast I can.
In the near future, humans will be eating bugs for protein.
This canned food sounds awesome in comparison.
wow! i've been vegan for over 40 years, but stiull, it's good/horrific to read a first hand account.
A friend of mine worked at a small chicken farm in the '90's and the stories she tells are just sickening. I always shop for eggs marked "certified humane." I hope those birds have a better life.
Ethan: Great video! Informative and concise, it answered my questions about a staple of my diet, and illuminated a number of misconceptions. One thing I want to mention, a bit off-topic, to be sure, but my way of informing people of another popular misconception: "Penultimate" (Although it may sound like it,) is not an amplification of "Ultimate." Penultimate refers to the next-to-the-last thing before the Ultimate. We are all expert in something, and can learn much from each other. Keep up the great work!
The dark greenish-gray ring around the yolk in boiled eggs is due to iron compounds from the egg yolk combining with sulfur ions from the egg whites (ferrous sulfide). Cooking slowly and immediately cooling boiled eggs in ice water (as you did) allows the iron ions to diffuse back into the yolk and the sulfur back into the egg white, preventing the unsightly blue green color and avoiding the stink of ferrous sulfide when eating them. Love your videos, great job once again!
Great info.
We started eating Vital Farms during covid when there was a run on eggs, leaving only the more expensive eggs left, never going back. I hear Ethan that he didn't see a difference, but we found the Vital farms eggs to be better tasting, and have a better texture. We're eating eggs prepared several different ways weekly. We can tell the difference.
Indeed!
100% difference in Taste..
So much better..😂..Seriously..
did you make a test like this? tasting both kind of eggs in the same situation?
how can you be sure you're not just biased?
Eat both
@@marcopinchetti5872 Exactly. I would have to prove it to myself because I know I can easily fool myself into believing something. Although most people are perfectly happy being biased, and love to tell others about it, because they like the idea of the thing they are biased about.
They feed their eggs soy. Soy is an estrogen.
This was the most useful thing to pop up in my feed in a while. I recently(ish) transferred to the dairy department and have been asked many questions that I don’t know how to answer. Like, “Why are these eggs brown?” and, “What does “Cage Free" mean?” Thanks so much, for your very detailed yet clear explanation.
See my post above, "A historical fact..."
cow eggs?
@@7jcjg A lot of places sell dairy products and chicken eggs near each other. So it's not unusual for me to hear this in a comment.
@@ArtisChroniclesThank you. I was so confused. Yes, I work at a place where the eggs are in the same cooler as the milk. Sometimes, I am again reminded that the inter-webs ARE a global phenomenon.
For me, the real difference was discovered eating a farm fresh egg straight from the hen house to the plate after a week of hard work. The color was rich, the yolks clear, the smell more pronounced, the flavor obviously full. The energy received was evident during our days work. Eggs can be compared to petrol grades in a cars octane. Everyone I talked to said the same thing, you can tell a noticeable difference in farm foods in your body and egg difference was an easy indicator.
The only eggs I could substantially taste a difference in were ones that I had gotten from a roadside store on the way to the Oregon Coast. They had almost a metallic undertone and a richness that was unlike any egg I've gotten from a regular grocery store. I was told that they fed their chickens oyster shells for calcium, and they were free range. I don't get them often because they're expensive and out of the way, but I always pick up a carton when I pass by.
Oyster shells are a wonderful source of calcium for chickens. Add some live grub worms and it’s a great snack for them and gives the egg shells more density, keeping them from cracking as easily.
Is this west of Eugene on the way to Florence? I may have to check it out if so
@@sharpcookie791 yup! It's Morning Glory Farm & Espresso.
Most chicken feed has oyster shells in them. Adds zero taste, is just for shell production.
@@quengafarm could be something else, I'm not sure. All I know is there is something qualitatively different about them.
Ethan, your level of details in this series is something I admire and appreciate. Amazing job. Forever a fan!
I grew up in Europe, lived in Africa and have travelled in Asia and the eggs there have so much more a darker yellow yolk and to my mind tasted better than US eggs. Recently I started buying Pasture raised, specifically Vital Farms, and these just like those in the rest of the world.
Agreed. VITAL Farms' PASTURE raised are THE way to go. If it were only for ethics I would BUT they really do look and taste better also. 🥚 🐔 😊 🙏
Just got back to the US from Spain. In the US, scrambled and fried eggs have always been barely palatable but in Spain it was great
Yes, this is one of my favorite brands, and I believe it’s called the happy hen company brand. Those are my two go too.
Egg yolks are naturally a light yellow. If you have a dark yellow or even orange yolk it is because the chickens get fed colorings.
@@eily_b This is from the Times of India and seems right.
Eggs with a dark orange yolk are mostly laid by pasture-raised hens. The colour of the yolk is influenced by a healthy and well balanced diet. Pasture-raised hens are allowed to roam on outdoor pastures, where their diet is supplemented by fresh grass and nutritious omnivorous foods like worms, beetles, grasshoppers, and spiders. This diet is rich in carotenoids, which gives living organisms a red or orange colour, therefore causing the dark orange yolk colour. However, a hen doesn’t have to be pasture-raised to lay an egg with a dark orange yolk. Any hen can lay such an egg if fed nutritious food.
I love your deep dives, Ethan. They are always so well researched and informative.
Thanks for the in depth video. What I felt was missing though is antibiotics use and hormones added to the chicken feed and their effects on the egg and the health of the consumer.
YES!!! That’s a HUGE part and I’m surprised this man didn’t elaborate on that major part of information!
I was looking for this part, too! I would like to know if he would notice a difference between hormone-free eggs vs cage eggs.
I was looking for this part plus, a quantitative chemical analysis of the trace minerals and vitamins in the eggs.
This is my main reason for getting the more expensive eggs
Do more expensive eggs contain less antibiotics or other potentially harmful ingredients(like chemicals) for long term consumption, especially for kids? This is the main point my wife insist on buying the most expensive eggs she can find, and I was hoping this video can confirm or deny that argument. :(
Fantastic video, thanks! I only eat pasture raised eggs, and Vital Farms is a mainstay as well as a neighbor, who has a small farm with the best eggs which she sells even more expensive than Vital Farms. Even though they’re expensive it is important to support your local Farms and look out for the well-being of the animals that feed us. Additionally, besides any taste differences pasture raised eggs are nutritionally superior to caged raised. They are much better for you.
It’s not as good as Happy eggs. And, not as expensive as Happy eggs. 😂 Happy is the only brand that does not trigger my Hashimoto’s problems.
@@AnotherWorld_DeepRestLove Happy eggs, but, no joke, I wish the yolks were runnier. But are they delicious !🎉
@ Hashimoto comment… I’m gonna give that a try. I know organic (in everything else) has made a difference for me, as well as increasing my “healthy” fat consumption.
Eggs kill hens and male chicks. None of it's humane where a female animal's reproductive system is exploited for profit. Disgusting.
@@r0nea Wanna give you a hug. Hashimoto’s literally makes us live in a different dimension. 😂
I raise a few hens and definitely much more orange yolks, and fresher eggs taste better. Between harvest, pasturizing, shipping, and making it to the floor of the market, fresher eggs do taste better. Orange scammble definitely turns some heads, but it definitely aligns in the taste with everybody. Besides the fact that the natural curiosity and personality of the hens definitely blends well with the overall calming effect of the yard/garden. Keeping chickens is one of the most rewarding things I have ever taken on.
The taste is drastic.
Same. Honestly before I got chickens I thought eggs were meh. After eating my own backyard eggs I can’t get enough of them. I’m replacing 2 dinners a night with eggs as it is and the whole family loves it. We eat so many eggs now days, they are so much better than store bought.
Yes! 💯
I used to have 6 chickens (now it's down to 3) and I'm an egg addict.
The taste is slightly different but in no way "better".
And they also vary a lot while store bought caged eggs are consistent.
The only advantage is that my chickens make way bigger eggs.
You people clearly have a bias that doesn't have anything to do with taste.
You could pick the ones you own but only because you are used to the taste (leaving aside salt and pepper). Cuz I could.
But give me free range eggs from other chickens and it's a zero from me. And I'm VERY picky with my eggs. I used to eat an unhealthy amount cuz we were swimming in them. Once we had over 80 eggs and they kept laying them, so we gave 40 away and cooked a bunch of them in all kinds of ways and recipes, eating 6-8 eggs a day (and I'm not a fat american)
I have an orange tree and can definitely say my oranges taste better than store-bought. Same goes with my eggplants, broccoli, etc.. I am sure an outsider may or may not agree. As proven in this video, there is a very big psychological aspect to taste. Your eggs taste better to you, no doubt about it. You raised them, you know what your chicken eat, you care for them, etc etc.
Eating old eggs, man you are brave and dedicated. I ate a bad egg and had a stomach bug for 4 days. Couldn’t even leave the house.
The first time I had an egg from my free range chickens at home. I definitely noticed it taste a lot better.
Same. I have about 70 chickens that are more like pets and eat like kings (queens). The eggs DEFINITELY taste better.
Funny story when we got the first egg from our chickens. I cracked it open and called my mother m saying the yolk was the wrong color. She laughed and said that is how they are supposed to look. Fried it and ex and I shared it. Best egg ever.
That's called placebo 👍🏻
@moolipit It's an anecdotal observation.
A placebo requires a preconceived expectation. An anecdotal report, or study, is about an experience that can be repeated by others and their comparative experience can be investigated further in order to create a proper experiment to garner causal or correlative data sets.
Likely the breed of hen has an effect on the taste. Those bred for the industrial production are probably not bred for the taste.
There was a lady at my previous job that would occasionally bring me egg salad sandwiches and they were the most delicious ones I had ever had, and one day I asked her what her secret is, and she said that she just literally has chickens so these are just fresh eggs. There is definitely a difference between those and the ones you just get at a store.
Most eggs you get at the store are already two to three months old, and the pointiest side of the egg should be pointed downwards so the air sac is on the top side of the egg, help preserving it better.
With the egg salad, the biggest difference could WELL be what she makes the egg salid WITH, re dressing, spices, etc.
our family farm in now-Zimbabwe, yes. Warm eggs right from the hen's bottom and you could not beat the taste. When I was young nobody was commercially selling eggs, because what is the point when raising them is free money and taste so good?
I like the eggs at the store better than my own farm fresh eggs. I find free range eggs to taste bad whether they are my own or from someone else.
They have dates on each individual egg as well as the carton. They could be 2 months old but they aren't. There is a date on your carton that says when it was packed. They are washed and packed pretty much immediately at any egg plant of size.
Maybe the brown eggs nobody buys or places that don't sell much eggs. No real grocery store will have that problem. As an example, my current eggs, from Walmart, were packed on 017(1/17), I bought them almost a week ago. They were literally packed only days before I bought them. No egg plant is letting eggs sit around unprocessed for a month though 30 days is legal from my understanding. They go pretty much directly to wash and packaging.
I have farm fresh free range eggs from my chickens, I don't enjoy them fried though. I can tolerate them as an ingredient or even scrambled but I find the yolks to be gamey when over medium.
@@allouttabubblegum1984
I kept laying hens and meat birds for over 20 years. Thanks for a great look at the intricacies of hens and eggs. The only thing I think you could have added to your study is the variation between refrigerated and unrefrigerated eggs. Otherwise, flawless.
should be good as long as the eggs are chilled without ice crystals forming within the cells resulting in protein degradation etc. Consistency varies according to egg temp during use. varying temperatures may cause a rupture/microtears to the membrane separating the liquid from the shell due to thermal contraction/expansion which could affect the taste because the shell is semipermeable. refrigerated eggs experience less degradation and oxidation because the shell becomes less semipermeable due to thermal contraction.
We used to have eggs growing up. Just a couple, but enough that all the eggs we ate came from them. One thing I noticed that while I was used to eating "our" eggs the store bought eggs tasted slightly metallic and strange to me. But going the other way, from being used to store bought and eating "our" eggs I couldn't tell the difference. Have you noticed anything like that?
spittin facts! thanks for the info @@BxBxProductions
LLDR, TLDW: I watched the whole video, and he concluded that there was: no “Better tasting” egg, but as you go up in price, you do get a “better looking” egg.
Having grown up on a small farm, and eating farm fresh, completely free range eggs, I can tell you for 100% sure the flavour is extremely different. When I was used to farm fresh eggs and I'd eat non farm eggs, it would taste to me like I was eating plastic. I must say, that I believe the diet of mass production layer chickens must be improving, as I feel like over the past 20 years mass produced egg flavour has improved.
depends what you buy, I normally buy free range, but once i bought shitty standard farmed wal-mart eggs... I could barely finish the carton, they were just so flavourless and kinda gross.
Very true, okay for cooking, but I'd rather support a farm that is free range@@Jordonzo
We had free range chickens for 30 years, it's a difference like night and day. I sometimes have to deal with that industrial whole egg stuff out of the bag/tetra pack and just the smell makes me gag uncontrollably. I couldn't eat that.
These are so satisfying. You're answering all of the food questions I've wanted answers to. The fact that a research video on eggs is currently #43 on UA-cam Trending speaks to the great quality of your work. Keep it up!
Hi Ethan❣️ I was brought up on a small farm in Norway ages ago, and we had lots of chickens. My dad told me the best eggs should have a hard shell and a deep yellow yolk. We had all the neighbors buying our eggs in those days.
Great video👍😎❤ subbed.......
Your Dad was right! the colour of the yoke is decided by the diet. Free range hens roam and eat green plants which make the yoke a richer deeper yellow. Hens that are not free are fed on gains which make the yoke more pale. Free range hens also can find grit and eat as much as they like this forms the shell . Battery hens have to be fed it. The way we treat animals affects the quality of the food they produce as well as their quality of life. They are not separate they are part of the same thing.
Some children are born with intelligent/entrepreneurial dads.
I will ticket my friends truely free range eggs from coco morans and other heritage breed chickens. The only ones you tested are all hybrid breeds. But a good video packed with useful info thanks.
Ticket should read stick to.
Why are male baby chickens killed without regard?
The 1st time I tried organic cage free eggs I was quite surprised in the difference of taste. It was easy to notice the difference in a better way IMO.
The real difference is in small local farm eggs. My restaurant staff and I compared them and it’s like night and day.
The local farm eggs had a deeper savory flavor to it compared to the typical bland ones we used for orders. Can’t eat regular eggs anymore, they taste watered down.
I agree. You really can taste the difference.
I switch back and forth from backyard raised to the nicer grocery store eggs all the time... i can definitely tell a visual difference but after they are cooked the difference is subtle to me. I'd bet money the backyard eggs are going to be healthier in the long run however.
I'm pretty sure if you regularly eat one type of egg, you would easily taste the difference. You won't see much if you start with low quality to high quality but you will notice it way more from high quality to low.
So basically like all the industrialised crap they vomit on us. I could say the same for the Edible Styrofoam that is sold to the people. My bad, I meant "bread".
@@Steinmetal4Doesn’t get any fresher.
Another great video! In my experience, there is a huge difference in flavor and texture between different kinds of eggs, however the problem is that this typically has no correlation to any of the US standards such as cage free or pasture raised. Most expensive eggs in my experience taste identical to the cheap Aldi's ones, however there are 1 or 2 brands that stand out as being comparable to fresh eggs that eat a varied diet.
I think that chicken diet and egg age contribute to 100% of the flavor differences, but again the problem is that 90% of the expensive eggs I've tried are no better tasting than the bottom dollar ones. In addition to deep yellow/orange yolks, fresher eggs with a better diet have a much more delicate and fluffier texture when scrambled compared to regular eggs. This is almost always true of fresh eggs we get from neighbors and the like, as those are the golden standard imo.
I'm someone who actually doesn't typically salt their eggs or add spices, as a good scrambled egg or sunny side up doesn't need it, and I usually eat a dozen or 2 eggs a week so I'm fairly sensitive to small differences. Outside of fresh eggs from chickens I know, the only brand I've found that consistently produces a product that's similar in texture and flavor is the Happy Egg Co, which comes in a yellow carton. I've come to this conclusion after trying literally dozens of different overpriced brands that in almost all cases taste nothing like fresh eggs and are indistinguishable from the factory farmed ones.
I have def noticed that happy eggs are significantly tastier
The Heritage Blue and Brown eggs of Happy Egg are my go to. So delicious.
One *VERY IMPORTANT* thing to note that many Free Range egg producers tend to cheat, meaning they have a backdoor to an outdoor space but the chickens often won't know where it is or don't have access to it at all. So basically you're paying a $3-5 premium for those top-shelf "free range" eggs that are actually closer to "cage free".
Which is why I always go for Pasture Raised eggs instead, only $4.99 from Aldi. Just a dollar more but the quality difference is pretty significant.
To boil eggs (Jacques Pepin?): I put a pin hole in the end, drop into simmering water for 12min, crack once before I drop into ice/cold water. The pin hole forces extra air out as they cook, making the egg fill up the whole shell with no air pockets. Cracking before ice bath makes it easier to peel - the ice water seeps in between the egg and shell . Also, i never get the green ring around the yolks or a sulfur smell/taste. I’ve been cooking eggs this way for years, works every time. 😁
I start my eggs in cold water, then set the timer for 10 minutes after the bubbles start to form on the bottom of the pan. I boil them at medium heat to avoid overcooking, because I have 75 year old memories of Mom's boiled eggs with the khaki lining on the yolks. I thought then that it was because she bought them at the Army PX.
I use the ATK method of steaming - cold from the fridge - eggs and then the ice bath. Steaming prevents overcooking which I like a lot.
That pinhole method is how all those hard boiled egg makers at stores work. I pop in 7 of them and they are ready in like 2 min.
@@uli3119 I’ve never seen those things. I learned the pinhole method many years ago. What’s nice is the eggs are perfectly formed for deviled eggs.
@@chezmoi42 This is all about controlling your variables: starting egg and water temperature, water and egg volume, applied heat, and time. My tap water temperature fluctuates a lot, so boiling is nice because it's always the same - but 15 seconds makes a big difference when aiming for a ramen egg.
One big aspect that's missing in this video is that large eggs can never be ethical. Many modern hens have been selectively bred to produce eggs which are too large for their own body and many of them experience immense pain during egg-laying and some even die during the process. So if you care about the animals, never buy large eggs.
I think that a lot of commercial eggs, even the pasture raised ones, will ultimately have a very similar diet. I'd like to see a comparison with some home raised or small farm eggs. Places where the chickens will get a much more varied diet. I can definitely taste a difference between those and any grocery store eggs I've had.
that could be a point
I have backyard hens that eat layer pellets and as much grass, bugs and garden produce as they want. Their eggs are comparable to the pasture raised ones at the stores. It's the beta carotene in the plants that really makes difference. In my opinion, pasture raised eggs are worth it, but cage free tastes the same as the cheapest eggs.
That may be true but its also not useful information for a lot of people because the extra cost and living situation can easily make it impossible to get fresh eggs at a reasonable price
It probably varies from farm to farm and time of year. I definitely notice with my parents chickens that the eggs have a deeper orange yolk in spring/summer when they are out foraging for bugs and weeds and such versus winter when they are eating more layer pellet feed and spending more time indoors (chickens prefer heated barn to snow and ice on ground).
As much as my wife and I can, we try to buy eggs from local farmers who just set them out for sale on the honor system. They're generally in the range of $3-$5 per dozen. The only real downside is that they tend to vary in size by quite a bit. Honestly never noticed a difference other than the size.
Great video. Very informative. Making mayo with pasture raised and caged eggs with the other ingredients the same, has shown to yield very different consistencies. Perhaps pasture raised eggs had more lecithin, which helped emulsify the oils better. Taste-wise, the pasture raised egg mayo was way tastier.
No it didn’t taste better, they all taste basically the same, didn’t you watch the video????
@@jpq21 I'm not some snob or some person who likes to think they're 'fancy'. I also love myth-busting on high priced stuff in order to save money. But I know 100% that when I splurge on some eggs at the farmer's market here, those eggs are typically(though not always 100%) noticeably better and richer than my typical store bought eggs. Like, it's completely undeniable. So there absolutely can be differences. I'd bet there's just generally more inconsistency in local farm produce than there is with large scale chicken egg facitilies and whatnot.
@@maynardburgerI agree 100%, I was being sarcastic. The guy in the video has no taste buds if he thinks all those eggs taste the same. When I was a kid I literally hated any uncooked egg yolks because I thought they all tasted like the cheap ones- now I only buy the expensive ones and when I have to stomach through some cheap ones like at a Dennys or something I have to actively try not to throw up.
@jpq21 its not just about taste. It's also about what is actually good for us!
@@angelrebekah9153Read my second comment re: the sarcasm in my first comment. The expensive eggs taste waaaay better, and are healthier to boot.
I will say, as someone with all sorts of fowl things afoot amongst his yard, the diet of the birds can make a drastic texture and - not so much taste, more mouth feel and richness. Good backyard eggs are like those pasture raised ones, but when fresh are very very thick, difficult to hard boil unless you wait that month or use a salt to help disassociate the membrane, shell, and albumen, and are absolutely divine when sunny side up on some homemade toast. Also, there are way more than just white, brown, and sometimes blue - there are greens, reds, blacks, and probably many other colors I have not personally seen. Thanks for the good work! Find a cooler at the end of a driveway next time, and compare them to the grocery store's finest - you will be surprised! That's not even counting eggs from ducks, geese, muscovies, and quail. Yum!
The same principal, by the way, definitely applies to the meat. Backyard chicken (and other birds) are so much richer, as in you need less to be satisfied, even though you want more, denser, often fattier, and have a certain tingle when freshly processed, which any hunter should be able to describe for you. Good meat and eggs come from animals that had a long, happy life with one bad day that goes by quickly and humanely.
As a baker who uses egg whites to make meringue as a part of my main product, I have noticed a significant difference in the end result depending on the type of eggs I use. The actual age of the egg has the largest impact. Shells are porous and will absorb odors of anything else in the fridge (like meat or fish). So fresh eggs are best. But then the texture of the meringue will differ with the type of egg. Just look at the meringue in this video... it's kind of chunky and gritty and not a proper meringue, but that could come down to technique.
Glad I wasn't the only one giving that meringue the stank eye. 😂😂😂
We do not wash the eggs in Europe -> eggs stop absorbing smells from fridge... and we don't even need to refrigerate them.
If your chickens are fed oyster shells along with their feed, their shells will be stronger and harder. We also feed ours lots of fresh kale we grow because they produce more often and more colorful shells with strong, golden yellow yolk. If you buy farm fresh eggs, DO NOT REFRIDGERATE. They stay best on the counter...might help to know.
@@Mtaalasintelligent Americans/farmers don’t wash their fresh eggs either… Americans know nothing about food 🤦♀️
High omega 3 eggs have a distinctly different taste that I would not describe as being better. In fact, I wouldn't use them for some recipes and for general baking because omega 3 fats degrade in heat. Just because he can't taste the difference doesn't mean they don't. It's also possible that the eggs he used didn't have the claimed omega 3 content. Omega 3 eggs are useful if one poaches the yolk and then cooks the white more fully (to destroy the anti-nutrient in it). For baking and cooking, more omega 3 is actually a drawback, since the omega 3 degrades in heat.
Excellent video! Thank you for all the research you did and explaining everything so well. (One picky little thing though, the word “penultimate” is not a synonym for ultimate or most important. It means second to last. Like, in a 10 page paper, page 9 would be the penultimate page.)
THANK YOU! I try not to let it, but that one really just bugs the hell out of me. Like, "ultimate but with emphasis" or "ultimate but I want to sound cool saying it", and it's just like nails on a chalkboard
Man, your videos started out good and have just improved so much. No other youtuber can compete for thorough research and clearly delineated and thoughtfully analyzed information. Keep it up. We see the work and appreciate it! I've been especially enjoying these deep dives on basic ingredients.
No other youtuber is a bit of an exaggeration, see Adam Ragusea for example.
@@erms111 indeed, I follow both of those guys too
@@erms111 I don't think that Ragusea competes with Ethan's content. That's why I said it. I think Ragusea gets in his own way a lot and is a little to apt to just get on his soap box.
@@Slinkylinky179 cool, respect your opinion, just disagree with it. Ethan has a degree in finance, Adam is a journalist, and I prefer his way of conveying information.
@@erms111 all good. Sorry if my comment came off as blunt. I do like ragusea and he would definitely have the market if Ethan wasnt making videos. I'm just happy to have someone making videos that are in a similar vein to Adam's that kind of address some of the criticisms I have with his content (whether intentional or not, of course).
I think a lot of the differences im thinking about come down to personality and information processing. I like that Ethan is a little more transparent in how he presents a topic. Adam tends to want to tell you how to feel and tbh I just end up disagreeing with his opinions most of the time and find that he offers too many opinions when he could just give me more information. May also be a side effect of the content machine demanding weekly content though.
I really appreciate the work you put into this video
I went through a similar process last year, and came to a similar conclusion for all but one application: onsen tamago. Onsen tamago is a soft slow cooked egg with slightly hardened yolk and mostly runny white served in a very mild sweet fish sauce with scallion garnish. The lack of butter and sulfuric smell you get from other egg preparations really makes the quality of the egg pop. I'd say caged eggs are about 80% as good as pasture in this use case, with cage free landing very close to caged and free range landing very close to pasture (maybe 80-85-95-100).
My taste tests weren't blind, but my wife immediately noticed one morning when I ran out of pasture eggs after several days and fell back to cage free. Ultimately, we decided that free range is good enough for onsen tamago, which we eat about 5 mornings per week, and caged is fine for everything else.
Exactly what I thought barely cooked eggs and raw eggs have the most egg yolk taste and it's def different
Shame you don't have a bit more compassion for the totally abused caged hens when they are good enough for you 😢
I tried doing a taste test before with cages eggs and pasture raised eggs. I made scrambled eggs multiple times with both and the pasture raised always tasted far better to me.
yeah I've definitely had the cheap eggs from Aldi and then pasture raised eggs and noticed a difference in taste
Thou that could be because the Aldi eggs aren't as fresh? I do wonder how their produce can go bad so quick and it often looks questionable in the stores lol so maybe the same is true for their eggs.
you expect the pasteurized to taste better, so it does.
confirmation bias
@@brewtalityk if ur from the UK then i spose Aldi is on the sort of lower end.
caged Aldi eggs vs, say, Tesco "free range" - decent difference in taste! not toooo much price difference. you will end up paying more. I'm feckin obsessed with eggs. I swear that if the hens are fed better, it just "tastes more right". I get through so many eggs I thought it was placebo. It's really not - but with that said
No point seeking eggs that have marketing gimmicks on them, like overdesigned packaging is also a decent indicator that the eggs are... average. We still macerate our male chicks in the UK, quite often :/
When you start getting into the fancy "I live in a six bedroom house in Devon" eggs, delivered online from Ocado or something, they all taste the same even when they are mega expensive. Some expensive brands taste worse than cheaper ones! they're just ripping us off sometimes.
@@goldenant9450no and no.
It seems people don't understand the meaning of bias.
1. It's not the same in everyone, just as if every person puts exactly +2 on the taste. In this case it might be the opposite, expecting no difference and decreasing taste sensitivity.
2. the existence of bias does not deny the existence of difference, as in this case taste/aroma difference.
If you actually want to bring in scientific terms, you should also add these: randomization and n=30.
Meaning, one person does not give a conclusive result, in fact even as scientific this test appereared it is statistically pointless.
It may have dozens of reasons why one individual can/cannot taste the difference and condensing all of these into a bias can by itself be confirmation bias, trying rationalize your own believe and lack of understanding
In the end: ignoring empiric data of people who have differing experience is bad scientific practice
One thing I think you missed here is how some cheap eggs can be difficult to cook with. My experience is that many cheap eggs yolks are very fragile, and so they break when I try to separate them for a meringue or emulsion, or if I put them in a pan to fry them. While I think your criteria (ethics, health, and taste) are important, I think cheap eggs can be a barrier to entry to new or occasional cooks because they can make essential cooking techniques seem really difficult.
Just in your head.
I switched to brown eggs because the white egg shells were thinner and kept cracking when I boiled/steamed them. I get the cheapest brown eggs which are about 2x more expensive than the cheapest white. Still like $3 though…
I find the size of the egg is a much greater factor in consistency of behavior between specimens. Large eggs have a bit of variation, while XL and jumbo are wildly inconsistent. Similarly, small and medium eggs are very easy to get consistent results with.
My chickens butt nuggets need to rest for about a week or be put into the fridge before I can fry one without breaking the yolk. If I try and eat same day, the yolk almost always breaks when flipped.
@@lamebear1000I'm having the opposite experience lol always buy white shells and last week bought brown by accident and yesterday it took 4 attempts to successfully boil an egg. They all kept cracking immediately
It's defiantly nice that the chickens are humanely treated but the thing is I used to have my own chickens and I wanted to see dark orange yolks because they taste better and have more vitamin content owing to the greens and bugs and worms in the diet of the chickens which they get while scratching and searching in pasture
I’ve been raising laying hens for 2 years. These eggs taste so much better than store bought eggs but end up costing a lot more than store bought eggs by the time you add up everything it takes to raise and feed them, not counting my time. I’ve also started raising meat birds. There is no comparison in taste in those chickens either. They are the best tasting chickens I’ve ever eaten.
Same. And when they stop laying, you also have meat. My lavendar orpington is mean and constantly challenging me. Love her, can't wait to eat her 😂
@@petitemaam yep, I understand. I’ve had a few Roos and an egg eating hen go in the freezer.
Meat hens are amazing. I don't like chicken usually, but I love "home grown" chicken.
During the lock down in the us back in 2020 my family started buying farm fresh eggs ( we live in a very agricultural area) and I noticed a massive difference in any dish I would use them in. Since then I actually have almost completely stopped eating store bought eggs. The farm fresh eggs were no more than 24 hours old when we would get them and had such a better flavor. I know it’s next to impossible for most people to get access to those sorts of eggs but in my opinion they are much better. Love your content man!
I raise hens. You are correct. The fresher the egg, the better it taste.
I work with guy that has about 70 hens. He brings in eggs for sale every week. They are excellent and at $4 a dozen, a really good value for the product received.
When I lived in Texas one of my friends had chickens and ducks on her farmbthat were free range. Best eggs ever, except for the free range eggs we got from the egg truck that visited our German village once a week.
@@gozer87 Duck eggs are delicious.
Not trying to be a jerk, but is it possible that this is more confirmation bias than an actual difference?
Ethan's video (and previous testing by Kenji L-A at Serious Eats) has shown that well versed tasters can't distinguish between egg types and ages when tasted blind. I'll add myself to that camp, as we have some backyard chickens, and while I love their egss, I can't tell any difference in "quality" between their eggs and store bought caged eggs.
The chalaza! My mom always told me it was the “unformed spine of the chicken” and I’d always feel nauseous if I saw them in my cracked eggs. Super happy to know what they actually are!
Yeah, now I know what that squiggly thing is called! That makes separating eggs hard when I'm trying to remove that chalaza from the yolk.
Meanwhile I'm over here eating sardines with the entire spine and rib cage included. You gotta toughen up if that's enough to make you physically sick.
Lol you're adorable, I work in construction and am doing just fine.@@GruppeSechs
Lol you're adorable, I work in construction and am very confident in my 'toughness' but I'll for sure reach out if I need any help in eating whole sardines.@@GruppeSechs
@@CarlaQuattlebaum the simplest way to separate the eggs is to empty the shell into the palm of your hand over a bowl. Let the whites run through your fingers, and when you get the chalaza at the end squeeze it between your fingers and transfer the yolk to your other hand. It will separate from the yolk easily. My grandma showed me this when I was a child and it's easier and I rarely break a yolk with this technique. I hope this made sense. (I'm sure there's a video showing this, lol.)
First time viewer here, you came up in my feed. Really enjoyed the content. Liked and Subscribed.
How ethan manages to keep his mustache clean despite aggressively chomping so many different foods is nothing short of amazing.
I think in the taste test he couldn't tell a difference because he kept tasting his mustache and not the eggs. 😄
not only have you helped me choose what eggs to buy, I have renewed and deepened my appreciation of this foodstuff.
Thank you!
which ones u gonna be buying?
I already leaned toward pasture raised,@@chronicillz1879 . I was just not sure the phrase meant anything until now.
Have always been curious about this but have bought expensive eggs for ethical reasons. Thanks for your hard work!
I can't taste any difference, but the price difference between caged chicken's eggs and free range's is about the same as a coffee. I go for the "expensive" ones for ethical reasons cause, honestly, they aren't really that much more expensive.
@@GerackSerack Yeah but a cup of coffee is ungodly expensive.
@@GerackSerack just know that "free range" just means "have access to the outdoors for 6 hours a day." Some never go out. They are chickens, they are going to go where the food and water is.
It would have been interesting to do a chemical test also, as well as antibiotic content. I usually get the more expensive eggs (meats and produce as well) to support more sustainable farming practices also.
When there was an egg shortage, we were forced to buy the more expensive, small farm, pasture raised eggs because those were the only ones available. There was such a huge difference in taste and satiety level. Whereas before, I'd make an omelet with 3-4 eggs, I only need 1-2 to feel full because it packs quite the punch. Those yolks are liquid gold! We've never gone back. (Besides, the price evens out if you need less to make you full)
Side note: I still do keep some cheaper eggs for baking.
Amen! I finally bought 5 chickens last yr and now have fresh eggs daily....I'll never go back to the flavorless store eggs.
Yes. I used to buy both kinds of eggs. I would add one or two "fancy" eggs for cooking up egg dishes and use the cheaper eggs for any recipe that just required eggs. Prices have gone up enough that I'm out of the habit of buying both though.
The difference is drastic, I can't go back lol.The best eggs are the pasture raised eggs.. not a fan of vegan fed chickens, no matter if they're organic..
So why did Ethan f this up then? I do agree, there's a MAJOR difference to me.
I plan on keeping my girls till the day I die...they make great company as well as great eggs! @@esm1817
I’ve come to really appreciate the value of an individual egg with my daughter’s ventures into growing her flock. She really struggled in the beginning, hens just didn’t produce(may have been an older flock-came with the farm they bought.) added new birds to her flock and lots of learning with pecking order then roosting pens seemingly secure from predators & lost their flock. Spent tons more on feed and shoring up everything to piddling returns. Gave it a year and started from scratch. Winter chicks raised to spring and her first eggs. It is going so much better this round. I buy from her and she’s now begun to sell locally. Doubling her flock this year. It’s really become more than ‘just an egg’. When supply is low and I buy I went back to el cheapo eggs and it was super different for me. I used to say the same, I couldn’t tell the difference in taste. It’s subtle but once you’ve acclimated and become accustomed to a specific taste and quality, store bought doesn’t taste so good. So I buy pastured and find they’re pretty close.
When i used to get my eggs from out in the country, many were double yolkers and even triple. No mention in this u.s based forum, is this rare in u.s.?
@@EmeraldHill-vo1cs it depends. Some breeds are more apt to mult yolks. My daughter had an egg inside an egg, with the internal smaller egg without a shell. The whole thing (tiny egg only)was the size of your thumb.
It can also be something as fickle as the wind blew and scared the hen so her whole cycle got reset mid production, she skipped a day and threw a double. They’re moody creatures.
You buy from your daughter? What’s with America?
Asians would feed our moms, aunts, uncles, and the whole extended family. Never takes money from family.
I try to go to local farms where I know that the chickens are kept more humanely. Seeing the conditions that the caged animals are kept in make it a struggle to stay with meat based products.
I do the same thing. Eggs are one of the main sources of protein for me, and knowing the hens are treated well and personally knowing the farmer is good to them is a little piece of mind. yes they are a bit more expensive, but I don't really buy meat, so that money I save, I am more than happy to put towards high-quality eggs and supporting local businesses
Yeah agreed - I do it for the ethics
I feel so nauseated seeing so many chickens crammed indoors in terrible condition 😢😢 and the male baby chicks.. why are humans like this
I raise hens - and let me tell you - they have acres to roam - they eat bugs - they jump in the air to catch flies - they barely touch their feed until the snow covers the ground - this tells you a lot about what grocery hens eat eh? Mine eat clover, flowers, worms - a factory hen usually lives 2-3 years ..... My head rooster is 7 years old !!!!! and I have many 6 year old hens .... Please buy directly from a farmers market from someone who brags about their hens - some of the farmers are still old school and don't really free range but just have a dirt fenced in yard - the nutrition difference is huge
@@TwistedRootsVanVelzerPress that sounds amazing! I definitely must look closer. And hopefully have my own chickens some day
Excellent Video. Although there are millions of videos on UA-cam, i feel like i haven't seen a video in long time where i actually learned something. So Refreshing, Good Job Ethan.
Interesting video, thanks 👍 Our free range backyard chicken provides us with a steady supply of fresh eggs, often more than we can eat. The eggs are a bit smaller than the large commercial eggs, but they are super fresh and taste delicious.
My farm fresh eggs are much larger than the ones in the store. In fact they are so large I was worried about how that big egg passed through the poor hen. Often times a couple would be so large I have to put a rubber band around the egg carton in order to close it.
What do you feed your chicken?
@@thecargotsold Everything. Similar to a pig the chicken is your compost compactor, don't forget to feed them their own egg shells as well.
A pig is the best compost compactor but it's a little less urban friendly, however you can just dump whatever in the pen and know it's not going to be left to rot.
My tiny addition is there was a polish study that found significantly more folate in organic eggs than regular eggs (double the amount, and eggs are rich in folate). Unfortunately folate was not measured in the study you linked, and I haven't found any other data sources
Since organic is a meaningless marketing term I would highly doubt the validity of that study if that was the conclusion. There's no difference between hens given regular chicken feed and those given so called "organic" feed.
@@spike_spencer Except that even in the US (not otherwise known for stringent food standards), when it comes to eggs, organic ones cannot be produced by caged hens, and that may be important, depending on what “regular” eggs were being used for comparison in the study.
its ok im to poor to afford organic to @@spike_spencer
There are many other foods that have much a higher amount of folate than eggs; relying on eggs for it is kind of silly.
@@spike_spencer Calling bullshit on spike_spencer's false premise. Under USDA Organic Certification Requirements: "Antibiotics, GMO derived products, animal by-products and synthetic preservatives are not permitted in any feed products." This is a far cry from marketing jargon, making spike's premise-and conclusion-completely false.
Thank you for this. I let every commercial play through as gratitude for your thoroughness.
Why are male baby chickens killed without regard?
@@tolerbearALTIITheres no use for them. They cannot lay eggs and their meat is tougher and rubbery so not as popular as hen meat. Its just more efficient for companies to kill them off. The eggs we eat are not fertilized so they don’t need them as mates either. They just grind them up and process them into other food stuff.
No kidding commercial every few seconds!
👍🏿
Commercial on UA-cam? I've never seen one
There's an important health issue that has not been discussed in this video.
When the hens get sick in cages, they all get fed anti-biotics so diseases don't spread. This is scary because as humans we will consume these anti-biotics..
My primary search on the carton is NO USE OF ANTIBIOTICS, which I sometimes find in France, don't know about the US though
I do not think he is the best person to do this kind of videos. In addition his stupid hair in his mouth made me switch the channel.
mis or uninformed... no antibiotics used in laying chickens in commercial U.S. family farms.
Great video man!
Cheap eggs always break up really easy. In italy they have packets which are eggs just for sauce basically cheap ones, we have them here to in Malta.
Organic eggs and free range eggs have a completely different taste. The yellow is yellower and tastes completely different
Cheaper eggs when fried have a different texture and consistency.
I also prefer the fact Organic Free range eggs at least give the chicken a little more space to move
Yeah but mainly whenever I have normal eggs they tend to be crapper .
Best way to taste difference in egg yolks is with a soft boiled egg, such that the yolk is still creamy but firm. I can definitely taste the difference in pasture raised vs caged eggs with soft boiled eggs, and pasture raised tastes much better.
I can too, I believe its possible here that Ethan just had a fantastic batch of both.
@@mohitbhole6781Or maybe he just isn't an eggspert on eggs.
This. The yolks just taste a lot yolkier
It’s wild he didn’t test for this. Absolute negates this entire video. Pretty huge over site and makes me question his entire thinking for his videos in general.
@@whatwhatwhat7 I agree and not only that, when I was young the eggs you purchased were fertile. Not even mentioned here.
Thank you for this comparison. When I looked at other places on the internet, some are swearing that the ones they get from their local farmers tasted so much better, but they were bringing in the visuals. So much of our "taste" is visual.
I don't refrigerate eggs. On the farm we gathered them in a root cellar and rotated them. Mom put a
silver dollar in the milk jug too. we consumed all of the milk within 3 days but sometimes some eggs could be 2 weeks old. If they don't have a crack and sink to the bottom of a pot of water they just fine.
Fine job doing all those test Ethan! Just buy the cheapest eggs. Sometimes the jumbos are cheaper because people have a habit of reaching for large.
Thank you for this deep dive into eggs! I do personally have an appreciation for specific eggs, and I do feel they have a richer yolk flavor. I've done blind taste tests with them, including with some disbelieving family members, and they have come out ahead. However, I agree that the differences are not significant for most. For me, I vote with my wallet for more humane treatment of the hens/chickens and so purchase only Pasture Raised eggs. I'm glad to see the change to more humane eggs is becoming widespread here and in other nations.
My favorite are Happy Eggs Heritage (blue container -- the yellow container are more "standard"). If you haven't had them, and you are a fan of pasture raised eggs, I strongly recommend them. Vital Farms are a distant second for me, and I haven't really found too many others that I appreciate as much.
Yes. Did the blind taste test, and those same eggs. (But in the black box) came out hands down the winner. However, unlike you the taste of the egg is extremely important to me and I budget for them appropriately. They taste like eggs!
I watched a video from a Canadian TV channel, where they blind testing different eggs with 5-6 people. The winner was eggs from a small farm, where hens received plenty of sunlight during the day. They then told the farmer about how the eggs from farm won the blind test. The farmer cried because he didn't think people could tell the difference.
Oh this is going to be fun. Ive done this experiment too out of curiosity and I found that while there is a little bit of difference between expensive and cheap eggs, the difference between fresh and older (within expiration date ofc) eggs are much bigger. Will be fun to see what conclusion Ethan comes to!
3 years ago I went on my own study buying different eggs for an entire year. I was ready to give up as all eggs were equivalent. Then I tried Happy Eggs blue and brown that uses a different type of chicken (Heritage breed). They were much taster and yes their yoke was orange but that can be done by feeding red color to the chicken. It was that they tasted much better.
Agree! I still remember what eggs were like when I was little. My grandma used to raise hens and my egg source were mostly from those hens. They were very aromatic and yolks were quite orange. I thought those delicious eggs were long gone in my life. Then I found Happy eggs. I love their medium sized eggs in blue package. My boyfriend used get cheaper eggs from other brands so I get to compare those brands.
Happy eggs in blue package are a lot better.
Plus, I have Hashimoto’s so bad/average quality eggs gives me inflammation. But I usually don’t feel bad after eating Happy eggs. So, I’m gonna stick with this brand. 😊
Are you sure about the 'feeding red color' statement?
While I know that the chicken's diet will affect the colour, if it were as simple as using something obscenely cheap like red food colouring, it seems to me that every major manufacturer would be doing this, since it's almost universally agreed that a more colourful yolk is more appealing to the customer?
True. I buy my eggs from a farmer and the egg yolk more of an orange color. Her chickens have a big area to run and be happy and I support that!
@@ph0end I know that farmed salmon are naturally near colorless and turned pink by supplementing their feed with ingredients like astaxanthin, so i wouldn't be surprised at all if a similar practice was used for eggs. Edit: I looked it up, and yup, they do use exactly the same thing to make a richly colored egg!
I like Happy Eggs too. Blue and brown ones and also regular white or brown ones. And they're a reasonable price.
Again, another great, relatable test! I would only ask if you could do another egg test and compare these vs locally raised eggs.
Your work has really convinced me to spend more for Pasture Raised! I have been buying free range, but the ethics certainly make it worth it.
Loved this test! Would have been interesting to have poached eggs as one of your tests. I know it’s not as common as the other methods but it basically removes any small differences in flavour that each eggs would get from Maillard browning when fried or scrambled. Poaching also allows you to control temperature if using a sous vide
Thanks for your good assessment and presentation. I love yolks with darker color which have stronger aroma and taste. The intense color is due to the carotene, a pre-courser for vitamin A biosynthesis. Feeding chickens with leftovers of carrots would enrich the carotene, so it could happen in any raising facility.
Thank you for making this so nice and clear! Really needed this info!
It's interesting you had such a hard time pulling out the pasture raised eggs. I've never bought them because of cost, but they visually look very similar to the eggs I occasionally buy from my neighbor who raises a few dozen hens on his farm/bed and breakfast and to me there is a VERY marked difference between those and commercial eggs, even the free range ones. The yolks have a richer taste and more umptuous mouth feel, and like in your fried egg experiment they tend to cook up better (though that could be due to age since they're hours to at most 2 days old when i get them).
1. There is a difference between the fresh eggs I get from my free roaming chickens and store bought. However, the difference is fairly small. Most of the difference is in the yolk, it is bright yellow, more aromatic and has more intense flavor. But even then, as I've said the difference is small.
2. Most people don't know this but eggs typically spend 4-12 months at warehouses before being sold. So, a few weeks in your fridge will not make any difference.
3. The taste of eggs depends a lot on what the chickens eat. Store eggs will have a more consistent taste, as those chickens eat the same thing all the time. My own eggs change taste according to season. Fall eggs generally tend to be the best tasting, while winter eggs are closer to store bought.
Thorough, well planned, super informative, nothing left unanswered. As always, Ethan, top notch.
no no no no and no.. u needz brain.
Bro didn’t mention anything but macros 😭 what about vitamin, mineral and micronutrient differences???
lol. A lot things missed. Main one being presence of antibiotics and other crap in non-organic, GMO grain fed eggs.
Nothing left unanswered except the main reason people want pasture raised eggs
Chickens are monogastric so their meat and their eggs are a product of what they are fed
If they are fed corn and soy, they are trash.
Not well researched! Conventional eggs are grossly inferior, not healthy.