Salt cured egg yolks

Today I'm going to do something completely new for me... I'm going to talk about something I just started doing! I learned how to salt cure egg yolks a few months back and they are amazing! They're super simple to do and you really need to try it!

Now normally I won't write a post about something until I've been doing it for a long time but this is so simple and delicious that I just have to share! Especially since egg season is starting and with the spring days getting longer and warmer lots of us are starting to get overwhelmed with eggs.

I've made these about 5 times so we're just going with it today

Also, I'm going to be sharing my meringue recipe soon so I'll give you a way to use up all those whites that we'll have left over! Unfortunately I'm not really a recipe developer so I don't have some great but long story prepared about how this recipe reminds of some time in the past etc etc. LOL 

How to : Freezing raw eggs

I finally started taking all the eggs off my silkie hens at least twice a day! You cannot leave an egg in with silkies because it takes about 6 hours before one of them decides she's broody and she's gonna hatch that egg! *rolls eyes* I mean, sometimes a silkie hen will even decide to try to hatch the floor, but it's less likely for her to go broody if there are no eggs sitting in the coop.

Quite frankly I have had it with chicks this year! I just took the last 20 to auction and I do not want anymore. So I decided to start taking their eggs everyday and very quickly found myself with several dozen little silkie eggs.

Related reading: How often should you collect eggs?

I currently have nine silkie hens, so the eggs add up fast! I also have six Marans hens, so I really don't need this many eggs. At least not right now. I decided I better preserve some and what easier way to preserve fresh chicken eggs then by freezing them?

75+ Dessert recipes to use up extra eggs

It's that time of year when all of our hens are laying and it feels like we have eggs and eggs and eggs for days! So what do you do with all those eggs? Cook with them of course. I'm sure you've been eating eggs every day for breakfast though (aren't we all?) so what else can we make with lots of eggs? Desserts and more desserts!!

Luckily (since we're not yet into the heat of Summer) it's a perfect time to make baked desserts and other dishes using all those excess eggs. The current slightly cool temps mean baking warms the kitchen without overheating the house. So grab your egg basket and get ready for dessert!

I checked in with the best food bloggers the interwebs has to offer and found some of the most A-mazing dessert recipes and some of them use as many of 13 eggs! I told you we could use up those eggs.

Related reading: How to freeze raw eggs.

How to hard boil farm fresh eggs

Obviously we eat a lot of farm fresh eggs around here or we wouldn't have a flock of chickens, right? Or maybe we eat so many eggs because we have chickens? Hmmm, either way I've had to become pretty skilled at cooking eggs, with easy peel hard boiled eggs being my favorite.

I sorta stumbled into my preferred method for cooking farm fresh hard boiled eggs, but unfortunately I've heard that it doesn't always work for everyone! So, I'm going to explain my method and tell you every hard boiled egg method that I know of. Sound good?

All my life I had always put the eggs into the water and shook some salt in there with them, then put them on the burner. I never had a problem with them peeling, but they were from the grocery store so that's not uncommon.

Oven baked eggs (instead of pan frying)

We're getting close to that time of year when the hens are laying soooo many eggs every day, that you just don't know what to do with them! I end up making eggs for breakfast every weekend morning, which can be a lot of work if all 5 of us are here.

An easy way to make a whole lot of eggs at once is to bake the eggs in the oven. This is also super convenient if you are cooking for a bunch of people since 1 batch is 12 eggs! It gets better though...you can also bake scrambled eggs and poached eggs in the oven!

This is super simple so I'm just gonna jump right into the 3 different recipes. You'll only need a muffin tin, some cooking spray, eggs and whatever seasonings you prefer. 

Related reading: How to salt cure egg yolks.

How to make cloud eggs

Isn't this how it always is when raising chickens? You're either desperately trying to use up all these eggs before they go bad or...nothing! I'm always looking for great egg recipes for those 'eggs coming out my ears' times. All my girls just finished their fall molt and went back to laying, so I'm rolling in eggs right now. This is the perfect time to bring out some of my favorite egg recipes.

I found this egg cloud recipe online last year and it's both eye catching and delicious. The first recipe I saw was ridiculously complex so I didn't try it. Then it started popping up everywhere with various levels of difficulty. I've experimented with it quite a bit to make it as simple as possible and this is what I've settled on.

Egg clouds are just whipped egg whites (as if you're making meringues) with the egg yolk gently settled inside them and baked.  There is a two step baking process for this, but I've found the one step works just as well so that's the one I use now. All you need are eggs and some cheese, or seasonings. Or both if that's how you roll!

Use up those eggs: Make a super easy quiche

If your chickens are anything like mine, it seems like they're in overdrive lately. I swear I have eggs coming out of my ears! Over the years I have amassed quite a collection of egg heavy recipes for times when the girls are working overtime. I've been pulling out every recipe I have lately and I thought I would share some of them with you. 

Besides, somebody pointed out that I always talk about chickens but never talk about eggs....and the reason people have chickens is for eggs. Good point! So I'm fixing that...

Related reading: 75+ dessert recipes to use up a lot of eggs!

Today we're making a quiche. If you go to youtube and look up how to pronounce quiche you'll find it's said Keesh. Not kish like so many people have said it to me in the past. Where they got that short i sound I'll never know but I digress. Quiche is an unsweetened custard pie. It's not scrambled egg pie like so many think. 

So what's the difference? A custard is more of an even blend of eggs and milk, while scrambled eggs are mostly eggs. This is important to note, or the recipe will give you a bit of a panic when you see all that milk!

Chop boiled eggs the easy way!

This week I decided to copy a post from my other blog. I know you all have tons of eggs and that means lots of different egg dishes. What is the absolute worst part about all those egg salads we like to make? Chopping eggs! So here we go courtesy of Feathers In The Woods....

Chopping hard boiled eggs the easy way!
If there's one thing I hate doing it's chopping eggs. They get all over my fingers if I cut them by hand, or they turn to mush in my chopper. Yuck! A few years back I came up with a much better solution and all I needed was a fork!