In Search of the Perfect Egg

These days, there are so many different types of eggs available, it's dizzying. Even among local eggs, you can choose between conventionally farmed eggs (read: hens stuck in cages), cage-free eggs (hens let out of cages for an hour or so every day), free-running hens (hens never in cages but still confined to a barn), and free-range hens (allowed outside during the day and brought in at night to protect them from predators).

Then, there's what the hens are fed: conventional chicken feed, vegetarian chicken feed (nothing but grain or corn), organic chicken feed, and feed supplemented by whatever the chickens scratch up outside.

But what does all this mean for your breakfast table? Which of these eggs is more nutritious and more tasty? Well, I decided to find out, empirically.

This morning, I compared one egg from each of the following local sources:

1. Country Hen, Hubbardston, MA - free-running hens fed vegetarian organic feed, bought at Whole Foods
2. Chestnut Farm, Hardwick, MA - free-range hens that happily eat insects, bought when picking up meat share last week.
   
3. Coll's Farm, Jaffrey, NH - cage-free hens fed vegetarian conventional feed, bought at the Dairy Bar in Davis Square.
4. Chip-In Farm, Bedford, MA - free-running hens fed vegetarian conventional feed, bought at the farm

I checked the eggs for two critical parameters: color and taste. Yolk color is determined by what a hen eats. A more orange yolk can mean one of two things: a coloring agent such as marigold petals has been added to the feed, or the hen's diet is naturally rich in carotenoids such as beta carotene. Read more about this here.

An earlier taste test between scrambled Chestnut Farm eggs and Chip-In eggs failed miserably due to adding too much water to the eggs, resulting in runny eggs. Note, however, that the eggs on the right, from Chestnut Farm, are much darker in color than the Chip-in Farm eggs on the left.



So this time around, I chose to fry them sunny-side up. Here are the eggs, happily cooking in the frying pan together. They are, starting from the top right and moving clockwise, from Chestnut Farm, Chip-In Farm, Coll's Farm, and Country Hen. Note that the eggs from Country Hen and Chestnut Farm look noticeably more orange than the eggs from Coll's Farm or Chip-In Farm. My husband and I then tasted the yolk of each of the eggs. The yolks from Chestnut Farm and Country Hen clearly had a stronger, better taste and texture. The Coll's Farm yolk had a very mild flavor, and the Chip-In Farm yolk was nearly tasteless. Of the two tasty orange eggs, we both agreed that Chestnut Farm's egg had a slightly better flavor.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Country Hen eggs. I had expected them to come in near the bottom, despite their brandishing of the high-omega-3 content of their eggs. According to them, their eggs are highly nutritious, and judging from the color and flavor of the egg, I have to agree. But here's the kicker: they were also the most expensive eggs. Here's a cost comparison of the eggs from most to least expensive:

1. Country Hen - $2.75/half-dozen
2. Chestnut Farm - $4/dozen
3. Coll's Farm - $3.75/dozen
4. Chip-In Farm - $2.30/2 dozen

For the difference in cost, flavor, and humane treatment, I declare Chestnut Farm the winner. Incidentally, the Chestnut Farm eggs were also, on average, bigger than all of the other eggs, making them an even better value. Unfortunately, those eggs are available only once/month, on meatshare distribution days. When I run out, I plan on buying Country Hen eggs. I'm going to shop around area stores and see if I can't find them at a better price than at Whole Foods.

Reader's Challenge: Got a favorite locally-produced egg? Do your own taste test against Country Hen eggs or Chestnut Farm eggs if you can get them, then let the rest of us know your results.