A lot of folks turn up their noses at the idea of eating duck eggs. When I was young, I did too. But if you’ve never tried them, you don’t know what you’re missing.
We recently asked our Facebook fans what they thought of duck eggs. Over 100 people responded, and there was quite the range of response:
- “They make the best cakes.”
- “We love them. They make great omelets and quiche and have a better flavor.”
- “Amazing in baked goods.”
- “Makes breads and cakes moister.”
- “I loved making homemade noodles out of them.”
To be fair, not everyone likes duck eggs.
- “They are gross. They taste very strong and have a tougher texture.”
- “I don’t care for the taste of them. Turkey eggs are good, though.”
Duck eggs are excellent for baking. They make fantastic soufflés, excellent angel food cakes, superior sponge cakes, great omelets and quiches, marvelous meringue, and nice, light pound cakes. They make cakes richer and fluffier, and their texture helps baked goods stay moist longer. Many people prefer them over chicken eggs for baking.
One of our Facebook fans reported: “Nothing is better than duck eggs for baked goods. I grew up with an Italian grandmother that only used them. We always raised ducks for that sole purpose.”
If you make your own pasta or egg noodles, try duck eggs in the recipe next time and see how you like them.
After hearing some people don’t care for them, I’ve tested our own duck eggs side-by-side against our chicken eggs and I can’t tell any difference in taste. I did perceive a slight difference in texture — but then again, I’m not exactly an egg connoisseur! Diet can affect the flavor of the eggs — the duck’s diet that is — and some may have a stronger flavor than others. Like eggs from any other fowl, they can be eaten any of the ways you’d normally prepare chicken eggs: fried, omelets, egg salad, deviled, hard boiled, soft boiled, over easy, or scrambled.
If you have a source of duck eggs but haven’t eaten any yet, try them. You might be pleasantly surprised, and don’t be afraid to experiment. If you have eaten or baked with them, what did you think about them?
What if any kind of housing or nest will raising and keeping ducks require. What advice for someone who has never had ducks before. Trying to become more self-sufficient. Going to go back to raising as much as I can of what I eat. Limited to a little over an acre. Thanks for any help you can give. Have enjoyed reading this blog.
I have Rouen ducks, and their eggs are great any way you want to eat them, but I used to raise Mallard ducks, and their eggs were very strong tasting (on the wild side). They are alright to bake with, but not to just eat. I think it depends on the breed of duck.
Do ducks slack off in laying like chickens do in the winter months or do they keep laying without supplemental light?
I have raised for ducks for over 20 years. Restaurants love the duck eggs for making Onion Rings and breading Fish and Chicken Fried Steak. I have used them for baking, and the results are wonderful cakes and breads. I have made salads and deviled eggs, too. Everyone loves the taste of them. Pekin Duck eggs are the best, they lay nice large eggs and are good natured ducks.
I’ve been raising a few Indian Runner ducks for the last 10 years. They are prolific layers of beautiful light blue eggs the size of a large chicken egg. I have a customer who is a specialty baker and will buy every egg I have available. She much prefers them. Runner ducks were developed specifically as egg layers and will outlay the best chicken layers. I always have Runner duck eggs available. My ducks do not have access to a pond and I think that helps keep the flavor good.
We have had chickens for a long time, but no ducks for the last 15 years. This spring we bought 10 (got from Murray McMurray, who sent 11). Seems we got 10 hens and one drake. They started laying at 4 months, 20 days! Within 10 days, we were getting 8 large to JUMBO eggs. About 3 times a week we get an enourmous egg (double yolk, we blow these out for crafts). The eggs are large for the size of the ducks (about 5#, smaller than our dual purpose chicken hens) with proportionately larger yolks. The taste, other than more yolk, is the same, on the same feed. (If you feed minnows, snails, rank weeds and fish meal to chickens, their eggs can taste “strong” too). The shells are stronger (avoid accidental breaks) and the duck eggs seem a little more sensitive to heat (it took us a couple of “tough” batches of scrambled eggs to realize they need to be cooked at a slightly lower heat; that prevents any difference in texture). The only “downside” to ducks is that chickens can eat a wider range of left over food scraps. Nell, raising dwarf dairy goats and K. Campbell egg laying ducks in Maine.
Duck eggs are great! We started using them for the natural antibiotic properties and love them for the taste. The consistency it thicker a chicken egg.
Duck eggs are the best ! I’ve used them for fried rice, potato salad, bakings and sushi rolls..
We have just begun raising chickens for eggs and pets. NO fried chickens here at least not YET.. LOL I absolutely LOVE the RICH taste of the free range eggs we get from our chickens. I think we will try raising a few ducks for eggs this coming spring. The taste described here sounds interesting enough for me to give it a go. Thanks for this article and for all the comments left by people in the KNOW!!! :)
When we raised ducks, I used the duck eggs for baking, but I didn’t eat them like I would eat a regular egg. They just seemed to have a stranger taste.
When I got more than I could use, which often happened, I gave them to a friend who used them to make custard for her family.
Now, why didn’t I think of that!
We run a restaurant and hostel in the Cuchumatane Mountains of Guatemala in order to support our Special Education school and other projects. We also raise ducks, chickens, a few turkeys, and much of the produce used in the restaurant. People come from all over just to enjoy our fresh apple pie topped with our own soymilk and duck egg ice cream. The duck eggs yokes make the ice cream extra rich, and we use the whites to make angel food cakes – an extra treat. Everything here is made from scratch, and most of the recipes are our own creation.
Many years ago we had Muscovy ducks. Their eggs’ shells were tougher, thicker, and their yolks firmer than chicken’s eggs. People bought the eggs from us both to eat, and to use in crafts, as they stood up better to handling.
We have chickens, layers, Banties and Pea hens of which we’ve eaten all the different eggs. Not much difference between them except for size. There is one difference though, the Pea egg shells are very hard and difficult to crack. Nontheless, they are all good.
I bake w/ eggs from our Muscovy ducks whenever they are available w/ excellent results. I make a Vanilla Cream Pie that uses 5 egg yolks. It is always superior when made w/ duck eggs, to the point my wife & 21-year -old daughter now call it ‘fight-over-it-pie,’ because they literally got into a good-natured shoving match over the last piece one time!!
I love baking with my duck eggs. I made the best bananna bread this year using duck eggs for the first time. They make all my baked goods very moist.
Turkey eggs are very good plus are larger than chicken eggs.
I have to be honest here – at first I loved the idea of duck eggs and we were going to get chickens anyway – I tried a couple and thought they were good – so we got ducks too – Khaki Campbells – we raised them from day olds and it was a lot of work – when they started laying eggs it was kind of weird – I didn’t really like them a whole lot at first but because we put so much effort into them I continued on – it’s kind of like when you first try a farm fresh egg compared to store bought – now I wouldn’t trade the duck eggs for anything – I love them cooked any way you can think of. They are especially good in gluten free cooking.
I have ducks and chickens as pets (way too many!). I’m vegetarian and do not eat the eggs. When I started getting more than my family, friends, and dogs could eat, I started selling them. Over a year later, I mostly get one of two responses from people. “I love duck eggs. They are the best.” “Duck eggs are too firm and/or strong flavored.” There are a few people who are indifferent and will eat either. I find that if people have no preformed opinions about them, they will try them and they end up at least liking them for baking. If they have preformed ideas (bad ideas), they end up believing whatever they believed before they tried them. Overall, people are thrilled to have duck eggs. I also have a few customers who are allergic to chickens eggs and do really well with the duck eggs. I do believe much of the taste has to do with what they eat. Keeping them free range or rotating fenced pastures so they always have access to fresh grass/greens/bugs will make all the difference in both the taste of them and the healthy benefits that you get fom them. A caged hen’s eggs won’t taste much different than an uncaged hen if that hen doesn’t have fresh greens and such to eat. Thanks to everyone who buys eggs locally and not from the sad, mass producing egg farms. Backyard hens lay their eggs happily and naturally and you can tell the difference in the taste!
Love them! We have chicken eggs and duck eggs both are great. We also eat the geese eggs.
I Love our duck eggs! They make very nice cakes and are just as good as chicken eggs.
When my Grandmother was alive I used to make custard/flan using only duck eggs because she liked them better than chicken eggs for that purpose. I don’t have ducks anymore, but I do have geese. I their eggs for baking because I have them and don’t want them to go to waste. They work really well in cakes and brownies, but they are too large to use in most cookie recipes.
Duck eggs are absolutely the best and are far superior to chicken eggs. I tried a goose egg one morning for breakfast. The yolk was so big I was afraid to eat 2 of them for fear of keeling over from a cholesterol attack !!:>)
We have become duck egg converts! They are excellent. You don’t know what your missing until you eat a fresh duck egg or bake with it, superior. Don’t tell my chickens I prefer the ducks egg though ;-) My Welsh Harlequin “Ginger” delights me every day with a egg, she out lays any of my chicken breeds.
I always suggest to our first-time duck egg customers that if they are planning on frying or scrambling them they use a lower heat than with chicken eggs. Seems to reduce the “toughness”. I’ve also got a regular duck egg customer who loves that a single egg makes a fried egg sandwich that fills his bread!
What breed of duck do you have or suggest for eggs?
Pete, the Khaki Campbells and Gold Star Hybrids are our best layers.
The best Angel Food Cake I ever ate was made from duck eggs by a friend of mine for my 20th birthday. She did not have the option of running into town for a carton of cold storage eggs, (lucky me) and made the cake from the assortment of duck and guinnea eggs collected every day from her chicken yard and hen house.
Duck eggs make truly superior noodles also. However, I do find the texture a little tough and prefer hen eggs for the table otherwise.
I raise chickens and Pekin ducks. My family and friends who have tried our duck eggs can tell NO difference between them and our chicken eggs at all. Maybe it’s the Pekin breed that has a mild egg? I’ve heard so many say duck eggs are so rich, or strong in flavor and they dislike them. But in all honesty, we cannot tell ANY difference AT ALL. Maybe it is all in the feed or the breed? I just don’t know, but we have made the eggs in every way, side by side for taste comparison. And we love them just the same! I really think its a “mental block”. I hope that people will at least try duck eggs after reading your article…they are egg-cellent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And even better….try raising their own ducks and chickens….home grown is so much healthier and there is nothing more fun than watching your chickens each day…talk about entertainment!
Duck eggs are very good in my opinion. I offered mine for sale and was glad when no one bought them so that I could use them. Turkey eggs are good too. I all ways wanted to try goose eggs but never had any. I have eaten Emu meat, but haven’t had the chance to eat the eggs from the bigger birds. But I would try them.
Nice article! My duck eggs are considerably larger than chicken eggs. I recently made a huge platter of deviled eggs for a party. I used a variety of eggs of chicken, duck, turkey, goose, pheasant and quail. It was the hit of the party! I wonder what pea hen eggs taste like? Maybe try dove eggs too? You can probably tell I just love eggs!
Great article! We tried ducks for the 1st time this year. They’re both boys, so no eggs… :( Next year we will get some more ducklings to raise…. Hopefully some of them will be girls!
Our family has a small farm. We enjoy all eggs from our chickens, geese, and ducks. They all have a superb taste. The taste of a quality egg all has to do with how the animals are raised. We raise all our animals on pasture.