We've always been curious about cooking with ostrich eggs, but after hearing about one Chicago chef's experience preparing these massive eggs that are the size of 24 chicken eggs, with translucent gray whites and sulfurous yolks...well, we're not so sure.
Justin White of Chicago's Small Bar was given the challenge of preparing a dish with ostrich eggs, an ingredient he had never used before. He decided to hard boil them — which took 2 hours per egg — and devil the yolks. He ended up having to cook the yolks a second time in an attempt to get rid of their overpowering sulfur odor, and cut the whites into cubes, as they were quite gelatinous even when fully cooked.
The finished dish, a sort of deviled egg crostini with pancetta and kale, was "surprisingly fantastic," but White says he could have done the same dish with chicken eggs. His final thoughts? "I say just let the ostrich grow."
The article and its accompanying video are part of the Chicago Reader's Key Ingredient series, which asks chefs to come up with a dish using an unusual ingredient assigned to them by other chefs. We're a bit addicted to this series, which is a fascinating glimpse into the process of recipe development in professional kitchens.
• Check it out: Key Ingredient: Ostrich Egg at Chicago Reader
• Read the series: Key Ingredient
Have you ever cooked with ostrich eggs?
Related: Look! Local Ostrich and Emu Eggs at Whole Foods
(Image: Flickr member f_mafra licensed under Creative Commons)
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Comments (9)
What's funny is every time I've ever read about ostrich eggs people always talk about how large they are and what novelty it is to work with them but not a single person has ever mentioned the issues with them. After reading the article and watching the video, I no longer have a desire to eat them or cook with them. They sound incredibly annoying and disgusting. I am glad Justin was the first (ever) honest person when it comes to working with these behemoth eggs.
I always was under the impression that scrambled or fried (over-hard, or whichever way lets you squish them and cook them through) were the only ways to go. Way to be creative!
"Let the ostrich grow"? I thought those eggs weren't fertilized... I heard chicken eggs worked that way. Something like they lay an egg regardless of if they've been fertilized or not.
Hi there from Cape Town, where from time to time a friend will phone in excitement to say we have an ostrich egg don't you want to come around and share it... No thank you, I do not!!! Or worse they are thrust on you unsuspectingly as you arrive at a brunch invitation... Firstly they are not a way to cater for a large amount of guests - chicken eggs work better. You need a drill to get into them, and a whack with a nail doesn't do it and forget silly little thought of piercing the shell knitting needles or screwdrivers. Secondly they smell so strongly of egg that unless you have the strongest stomach you will literally be turning head over heals - well your innards will... and they have a really intense wild taste that only a handful of folk can actually stomach. No pass on the ostrich egg.
There is a reason these birds have lasted so long!!!
When we were kids we stayed with distant cousins who lived on an ostrich farm in Outdshoorn, the home of the ostrich in South Africa. They kept a huge jug of ready to scramble ostrich egg in the fridge and only used the little that they needed for breakfast each day... I always passed - the smell just gets to me...
Desmond Morris, former curator of mammals at the London Zoo, did a live TV program from there for a while called Zoo Time. In one episode, he cooked an ostrich-egg omelette, sort of. The egg was harder to open than they'd realized (they'd planned for difficult, but didn't realize it would defeat their hammer and chisel), and they'd had no idea it would take so long to cook, and it was still mostly raw when they were running out of air time; he gamely swallowed some of the glop and tried to pretend it was tasty. This was in the 1950s; he wrote about it in his '79 autobiography Animal Days.
ughh gross
Rhea eggs are much more manageable - the size of about 8 eggs. I've helped make French toast with them, and it was quite delicious.
My family got an ostrich egg a few years back - my mom has a friend who loves trying unusual foods - and it was quite an interesting experience. 6 of us had it scrambled for dinner, and I still remember my dad finally resulting to a hack saw to finally crack it open.
I don't remember any sulfurous smell or anything (and that sounds like something you wouldn't forget!), but just something similar to a very very large chicken egg. It was a fun novelty as a kid, but not something I'll go out of my way to recreate.
This reminds me of a dish I read about that is a "monster egg" - basically separate a ton of chicken eggs, bake the yolks in a mold into one giant "yolk", then boil that whole thing in egg whites in a bigger, egg-shaped mold. When you cut into it, it looks like one humongo-sized chicken egg. I think that's how I like to imagine ostrich eggs are, and not this ugly stuff.