What to do with duck eggs

March 1, 2011 10:36 PM

What can I do with duck eggs?

A colleague has laying ducks and a surplus of eggs which he is kindly giving to me. What can I do with them? Tell me everything you know about the culinary uses and abuses of duck eggs.

posted by i_am_joe's_spleen to food & drink (16 answers total)

I don't know if this is easily doable at home, but I really enjoy Filipino salted duck eggs. It looks like all you need to do is soak them in brine for two weeks. I wonder how important the clay packing step is.
posted by pluot at 10:47 PM on March 1, 2011

Eat them. They can be used in much the same way as chicken eggs, though if you are baking you may need to calculate by total volume rather than number of eggs.
posted by Sara C. at 10:52 PM on March 1, 2011

Are there flavour differences I should be aware of?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:57 PM on March 1, 2011

Duck egg custard from the French Laundry.
posted by Fuzzy Dog at 11:06 PM on March 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I grew up eating them all the time, and you can use them just like regular chicken eggs.

The flavor will be very dependent on the duck's diet, but the yolks tend to be a bit richer/bigger. They make great scrambled eggs and are good for most non-fussy baking with as a result.

If you like fudgy brownies, they're good at keeping your brownies moist because of the larger volume, but you'd have to do everything like your normal brownie recipe to make the comparison show.

I'd perhaps try something like a frittata or scrambled eggs or even a fried egg first just so you can check out the consistency. If you're used to commercially available eggs, you might notice a difference in taste, but that difference will be more about the bird's diet than the actual species.

Since I grew up with them instead of chicken eggs, I always thought chicken eggs were a little wimpy, so don't get too used to them if you can't have a steady supply!
posted by BlooPen at 11:10 PM on March 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

The only thing that you can't really do with duck eggs as well as chicken eggs is boiling (they're too big - unless you have a sous vide set-up). Scrambled is great, but I like them fried because the novelty of the large yolks is visible.
posted by atrazine at 11:54 PM on March 1, 2011

If you're feeling really ambitious you could try and make a century egg
posted by sarastro at 12:17 AM on March 2, 2011

Duck egg omelette is rich, yolk-y win.
posted by the latin mouse at 12:51 AM on March 2, 2011

Seconding omelette - because they have such a rich colour they taste and feel incredibly decadent. It is like the difference between duck and chicken meat.
posted by MuffinMan at 1:02 AM on March 2, 2011

You have not had a soft-boiled egg until you have soft-boiled a duck egg. Make extra toast and don't bother buttering it.
posted by d. z. wang at 2:04 AM on March 2, 2011

I buy them quite a lot. Yummy.

I just use them as I would chicken eggs. They taste much the same but a little 'richer' or creamier. The yolks are richer than chicken eggs. I mostly just use them for Omlettes and just fried eggs on toast.
posted by mary8nne at 3:26 AM on March 2, 2011

One of the most delicious things I've ever eaten was at a special duck degustation event - the last course was a duck egg creme brulee. Since it was at a restaurant I don't know the recipe, but I imagine you could just make normal creme brulee (or creme caramel if you don't have a blowtorch handy) but with duck eggs.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 3:52 AM on March 2, 2011

They're fairly common here in London at the supermarkets - like Waitrose. Fried on toast is a reliably tasty way to eat them.
posted by vacapinta at 4:39 AM on March 2, 2011

Duck egg spaghetti carbonara is pretty awesome. They're also good for sponges.
posted by zamboni at 5:05 AM on March 2, 2011

They are richer and creamier. Can be used like chicken eggs but man, they are great in baking especially cakes and custards. If you are into pasta, duck eggs have the protein and lecithin to get you a very good pasta. One of the problems about pasta making with industrial eggs is that you do not get the "Rosso" or red yolk eggs used by great pasta makers in Italy.

I would argue that the present day eggs produced are less in something to require that the new version of the New Times cookbook to adjust recipes so much that use eggs as part of the cooking process. She had to add more eggs to get proper baking to happen and this covered more than a few and spanning decades. This maybe similar to how meat recipes, in particular, pork have to be readjusted because of the leaner varieties used now. My grandmother's recipes have to be readjusted a lot or they end up being dry, tough planks.

But duck eggs are great, I envy you.
posted by jadepearl at 5:49 AM on March 2, 2011

When I was young, my mother would use them in her cheesecakes. They made her already great cakes better.
posted by Joe Schlabotnik at 7:51 AM on March 2, 2011 [1 favorite]