Alien Ingredient #30: Goose Eggs

Here at the restaurant, we use a lot of eggs as you might imagine. We are very fortunate to use duck eggs almost exclusively in our pastries and as a result, our pastries are killer rich and delicious. As an aside, all our recipes specify eggs by weight, so it is trivial for us to substitute an equivalent weight of duck eggs for chicken eggs. Doing things by weight, besides being how professional kitchens do things, has always been a necessity for us because we have never used standardized eggs. When our supplier's chickens were young, we would receive tiny pullet eggs and later on, as the Rhode Island Reds got to maturity, we'd get honking great eggs that were twice the size of pullet eggs and half again bigger than a store-bought extra large egg.

Goose, Extra Large Duck, Duck, Extra Large Chicken, Quail

We are super fortunate that our duck egg supplier has a goose or two that are laying eggs, so she brought us some goose eggs for grins. As you can see in the photo, goose eggs run about three times the size of an extra large egg. Besides being huge, the yolks are very different from chicken or duck eggs, almost custardy or pasty. When cooked, goose eggs are much more similar to duck eggs than chicken eggs in that they are intensely eggy and rich. We easily prefer duck or goose eggs to chicken eggs for scrambled eggs, and that is saying something because our fresh chicken eggs taste awesome.

Duck, Duck, Goose

Here you see one application of our goose eggs in a dish that we call Duck, Duck, Goose. On the plate is a slab of sourdough bread French toast made with a goose egg custard and fried in foie gras fat. On top of this is what we call duck bacon, breast tenders that we cure in salt, sugar, and pink salt and then smoke. The next layer is scrambled goose egg with chives, done in the classic French preparation oeufs brouillés, whisked over a water bath until creamy and custardy. On top are threads of duck confit that we have shredded and deep fried. Maple syrup completes this delicious and over the top decadent dish.

Vote: Goose eggs are awesome and we prefer them to chicken eggs. Duck eggs are equally awesome!