Small eggs

[Paul Fink]

Anyone ever seen small chicken eggs in a store? We have medium, large, XLarge & Jumbo, but no small.

My in laws always insist on having deviled eggs at holidays. And they follow the philosophy "bigger is better"

I like  deviled eggs but I want to do nice, small eggs. 

 

Yes, I've done deviled quail eggs ... way too much work ... 

[Shelby]

No, I've not seen small eggs in stores.  Are there any chicken farms and/or people that have their own chickens?  You'd have to get pullet eggs....which, I think this time of year (if you are located somewhere coldish) would be hard to find......

[Soupcon]

It depends on when your egg supplier has young hens which start to lay. They lay the smallest sized eggs and as the bird grows in size and weight, the eggs also increase in size and weight.

[btbyrd]

I've never even seen medium.

[kayb]

If you live in an area where people have laying chicken farms, check to see if a locally-owned grocery or farm supply-type store carries "ungraded" eggs. I used to regularly buy double-yolk eggs, and the same store also carried small, or pullet, eggs. 

[jayt90]

Small eggs can be found in Asian stores. Sometimes double yolks. 

[JohnT]

In South Africa small eggs are clasified as more than 33g but less than 43g. I have not seen them being sold locally for many years. I have been having a dispute with a local egg producer / wholesaler who has been breaking the law on egg sizing over the last few months and after three letters to their senior management, which have been ignored, I have finally opened a fraud charge against them with the police. They have been selling medium eggs as extra-large and small eggs as large. However, during my own investigation I discovered that the egg producers have basically stopped trying to market their small eggs and they are now separated and sold as egg whites or egg yolks in bulk to the baking and catering industry after going through, I presume, a UHT process. Funnily, the biggest purchaser of these eggs is our military - not that we have much of a military remaining these days!

[Soupcon]

Why not give them "bigger is better" and see if you can find duck or goose eggs which are even bigger. My local mennonite farm products supplier usually have duck and sometimes goose eggs and sometimes "Longos" in Toronto has duck eggs.

[Paul Fink]

4 hours ago, Soupcon said:

Why not give them "bigger is better" and see if you can find duck or goose eggs which are even bigger. My local mennonite farm products supplier usually have duck and sometimes goose eggs and sometimes "Longos" in Toronto has duck eggs.

 

Interesting, Turkey eggs are huge and available. 

[blue_dolphin]

20 minutes ago, Paul Fink said:

 

Interesting, Turkey eggs are huge and available. 

 

Also interesting - this WSJ article from last month suggested turkey eggs were in short supply:  Turkeys Lay Eggs, Too—Then the Foodies Fight Over Them

[Paul Fink]

2 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

Also interesting - this WSJ article from last month suggested turkey eggs were in short supply:  Turkeys Lay Eggs, Too—Then the Foodies Fight Over Them

To be honest its been decades since I had turkey eggs. By " available" I meant I could get them from local producers not that they are in stores.

Sorry.

[kayb]

Turkey deviled eggs would be fun, I'd think. I used to get duck eggs at the farmers market occasionally, and I love one over-easy. Never thought of deviling one.

 

I do love a deviled quail egg, though. But yes, they are an awful lot of work.

 

[liuzhou]

My egg lady in the market has this range. All free range and very fresh. I have visited her farm and met her birds, so I know the conditions they live in.

 

 

I almost always go for the duck eggs, but I buy the quail eggs quite often, too for certain dishes. Never had turkey eggs. Where do they fit in size-wise? Turkey isn't easy to find here.

[Duvel]

Maybe steam egg whites in small halfspherical molds (a snail serving dish comes to mind), then pipette the egg yolk mixture on top ..?

[ChocoMom]

I'll weigh in on the turkey eggs, since Ethel (the pet turkey) still lays them.   As far as size goes....If you take two typical large chicken eggs, OR one and half extra large chicken eggs, you'd get a turkey egg.  (I had some doozies - equivalent to two XL chicken eggs.)  Depending on the turkey, they can end up being enormous. (My bronze turkeys laid larger eggs than the butterballs.)  I've used them in place of chicken eggs when making cakes. 2 turkey eggs instead of 3 chicken eggs.  The yolks are extremely dense. I think they'd make fantastic, monstrous deviled eggs!  

 

Ethel was laying so many one year, that I was going to sell them. But then I came across some interesting information....now I don't know if the law is antiquated, no longer in effect, or what.... but it used to be illegal to sell turkey eggs in the US.     We used to have small chicken eggs in the grocery stores--- haven't seen them in years though. Medium eggs are about the smallest I've seen. 

[IowaDee]

I love "Ethel" as a turkey name.  I had a great aunt with that name and now that I think about it, she did look rather like a turkey.  Her two sisters  were named Gertrude and Maude, also good poultry names I think

[blue_dolphin]

I remember listening to a radio interview with a woman who raised a few turkeys for her family.  She named them Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

[MRE]

I haven't looked for small eggs in the grocery store for years, but they used to sell them. That was the size my mother always bought when I was a kid, back in the 60's. Here's a link to a Wiki that lists weights for eggs. Smalls in the US weigh 42.5 grams (1.5 oz) up to 49.5 grams (1.74 oz).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_egg_sizes

[liuzhou]

On 24/12/2016 at 10:45 PM, blue_dolphin said:

I remember listening to a radio interview with a woman who raised a few turkeys for her family.  She named them Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

 

Not egg related, but the (since retired) owner of the local "mom-and-no-pop" shop by my countryside home had two cats, more for rodent deterrence than as cosy companions. I named one "Lunch" and the other "Dinner" and demanded to know when "Breakfast" would be born.  She found this endlessly amusing, but "Breakfast" never did turn up.
 

[dcarch]

Cornish hen eggs?

 

dcarch

[dscheidt]

On 12/20/2016 at 3:52 AM, JohnT said:

In South Africa small eggs are clasified as more than 33g but less than 43g. I have not seen them being sold locally for many years. <snip> discovered that the egg producers have basically stopped trying to market their small eggs and they are now separated and sold as egg whites or egg yolks in bulk to the baking and catering industry after going through, I presume, a UHT process. Funnily, the biggest purchaser of these eggs is our military - not that we have much of a military remaining these days!

 

That's where most small egg production goes in the US, as well.  Consumers of fluid eggs don't care what size the shells were, after all.  It costs the producer about the same to package and transport eggs to market whether they're large, xl, or small.