BY JOANNE SASVARI
Considered by many nature’s perfect food, eggs are also quick, easy, versatile and an essential ingredient in many of our favourite dishes.
Almost everything is better with an egg on it. Think: an umami-rich bowl of ramen topped with a jammy boiled egg or a gooey croque madame garnished with a crispy-edged fried one. But eggs are stars whatever role they play on your plate, whether they’re tucked into a savoury shakshuka, topped with the vinegary anchovies known as boquerones or served beside a mountain of comforting bacon and hash browns.
If I’m feeling hungry but too tired or lazy to make anything complicated, eggs are always the answer. They are delicious at any time of day, and it doesn’t take much effort to make an omelette, a frittata or spaghetti carbonara. It takes even less effort to scramble a couple of eggs, adding any random bits of smoked salmon, ham, cheese or veg hanging about the fridge.
Aside from being the quick, easy solution to your culinary conundrums, eggs are a nutritional powerhouse. One large egg only has about 80 calories but contains loads of protein, as well as healthy fats and nutrients including vitamins A, D, E, choline, iron and folate. In fact, eggs are one of the few foods considered to be a complete high-quality protein source, because they contain all nine of the essential amino acids that are considered the body’s building blocks.
Yes, eggs also contain cholesterol, and there has been much debate about how that affects us. The most recent research shows that eating eggs has minimal impact on our levels of blood cholesterol, though, as with anything else, it’s still a good idea to enjoy eggs in moderation.
If you’re a baker, you know that eggs are kind of magical. They create structure and stability in batters, thicken and emulsify sauces and custards, and add moisture to cakes and other baked goods. The yolks have lots of lovely fat that makes things rich and creamy; the whites, when whipped, incorporate millions of tiny air bubbles, giving lift to chiffon cakes and meringues. And mixed with a little milk or water, eggs can work as a sort of glue between layers of pastry or add gloss when brushed on top.
There truly are almost endless uses for eggs. A number of years ago I was taking a cooking class when the chef-instructor challenged us to come up with as many dishes featuring eggs as we could in a minute. We found over a hundred, everything from quiche to devilled eggs to all those luscious “aise” sauces (mayonnaise, hollandaise, Béarnaise), and I bet we’d have found hundreds more if we’d had time.
Best of all, eggs are the perfect food for this time of year, when spring hasn’t quite arrived, but we are craving its lighter, brighter flavours. They’re perfect as part of a main-course salad or a vegetable-packed frittata.
So what are you waiting for? Get cracking!
Boiled Eggs
Boiled eggs make great additions to main-course salads like a classic Cobb or Niçoise), as well as Asian noodle soups and charcuterie boards; they are also the starting point for Scotch eggs and devilled ones, as well as egg salad sandwiches. So knowing how to boil one is a good skill to have.
There’s this myth going around that it’s easy to boil an egg. As anyone who has ever stared at a blackish ring around the yolk or the goopy remains of a broken egg in a pot of murky water well knows, that’s not always the case. That said, there is a lot of disagreement on how, exactly, to do it right.
Unless you use a gadget like a sous vide circulator or Instant Pot, there are basically two schools of thought: Bring a pot of water to a boil before adding the eggs or add the eggs first, then boil the water.
Boiling the water first gives you more control over the doneness of your eggs, but can easily result in one or two sacrificial ones. If you choose this method, bring your eggs to room temperature first, then very, very gently and carefully add them to the boiling water.
The second method is much less likely to result in broken eggs. Simply put the eggs in a pot, cover them with cold water and bring the water to a boil. Once it reaches a rolling boil, turn off the heat, cover the pot and let it sit until the eggs reach your desired doneness.
In either case, you are typically looking at three minutes for very soft boiled eggs, six to eight minutes for medium/jammy ones and 12 minutes for hard boiled.
For greater likelihood of success, also:
- Don’t crowd too many eggs into too small a pot or they are more likely to (a) cook unevenly and (b) crack while cooking.
- Do use eggs that are a little older as they are easier to peel than really fresh eggs. Buy them a week or two before you plan to boil them.
- Don’t overcook them. Even if you like your yolks really firm, overcooking them will give you a green-gray tint, sulfuric odour, rubbery white and crumbly yolk.
- Do submerge them in cold water immediately once they’ve reached your preferred cooking time. This will not only stop them cooking, it will also make them easier to peel. Let them soak until they are completely cool.
What You Need to Know About Eggs
Types of Eggs
Most of the eggs we see come from chickens, though you can also occasionally find quail, duck and goose eggs, especially at farmers’ markets.
Most chicken’s eggs are white or brown, but can be pink, blue, green or speckled, and are sold in in a range of sizes based on weight:
Recipes typically call for large eggs. However, unless you’re using whipped egg whites in baking, you can generally swap out a medium or extra-large egg if that’s what you have on hand.
Farming Eggs
According to BC Egg, there are 155 egg farms in B.C., all of them family owned and operated. Eighty per cent of them are located in the Fraser Valley, but at last count nine of them were here on Vancouver Island, including Firbank Farm in Saanichton and Farmer Ben’s Eggs in the Cowichan Valley.
There are five different types of egg production in this province. Your basic grocery store eggs are produced in conventional (also known as classic) or enriched systems (34.2 and 34.9 per cent, respectively). The rest are more or less equally divided between free-run, free-range and organic production.
That said, Canada has made a commitment to phase out conventional cages by 2036, replacing them with either cage-free housing or enriched housing that gives the hens more space and allows them to practise all the natural chicken behaviours conventional cages don’t, like perching, scratching, stretching their wings, laying eggs in cozy nest boxes and enjoying free access to food and water.
Farms must also adhere to strict protocols to prevent disease, whether it’s the deadly avian H5N1 flu that has devastated American flocks or pathogens like salmonella. Note that Canada has some of the world’s highest food safety standards and outbreaks of food-borne illness are extremely rare here.
Egg Safety
If you’ve been to a market in Europe, you’ve likely seen eggs kept on the counter at room temperature. In North America, though, consumers are advised to keep eggs refrigerated at all times. So what gives? Two things: Some European countries vaccinate chickens against salmonella and we don’t; they also don’t wash eggs the way we do in North America, which removes a protective barrier that leaves the shells porous to bacteria.
The Government of Canada advises shoppers to buy only refrigerated eggs with clean, uncracked shells. All eggs sold in grocery stores are graded “A,” which means they have passed stringent inspections. Grade A eggs are marked with a maple leaf on the carton; note that you might find ungraded eggs at some farm stands. If you have doubts or concerns, ask.
At all times, keep your eggs cold. Refrigerate them as soon as possible when you get home from the market and store them in the coldest part of your fridge (not the door). And whether they are raw or cooked, eggs should never be left at room temperature longer than two hours.
Cost of Eggs
The price of eggs in Canada has steadily risen in recent years, from an average cost of $3.87 for a dozen eggs in 2021 to $4.66 in 2024. That’s due to a confluence of factors including supply-chain issues, inflation and the rising costs of labour, feed and fuel. And don’t forget that more than 600,000 chickens and ducks died in B.C.’s devastating floods of November 2021. Now farmers are facing the spectre of the lethal H5N1 avian flu, which is also causing shortages and rising costs, especially in the U.S.
Still, eggs are a relatively affordable — and reliably delicious — source of high-quality protein.
Photo: Trent Lanz/Stocksy