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Free-Range, Cage-Free Eggs Taste Better than Chicken-as-Machine Eggs

Am I in danger of becoming an egg snob?  Maybe.  But it has long been said that better ingredients make better food.  With that in mind, I can now say that free-range, cage-free eggs taste better than factory, stuck-in-a-cage, never-seen-sunlight, is-that-a-chicken-or-an-egg-machine eggs.

Before I tell you about my egg-tasting experience today – one that was merely fortuitous but worth talking about all the same – let me tell you why I choose to buy free-range, cage-free chicken eggs in the first place.  It comes down to taste, quality, common sense, and ethics.

Have you seen videos or photos of how chickens are raised in modern egg-producing facilities?  The chickens are cooped up in cages where they barely have space to move around, the metal grating cage floor is bad for their feet and their bodies, the things never get a chance to simply do what chickens do.  Other than eat and lay eggs.

Maybe that kind of inhumane treatment doesn’t bother you.  It bothers me.  At least a little.  I won’t pay $10 an egg to treat the chickens well, but for an extra 5 cents an egg?  Definitely.

But so what if the chickens are happier and healthier?  Other than giving those of us who think about more than just dollars and cents a warm, fuzzy feeling in our hearts, it also means a higher-quality egg.  In what sense?  Well, if chickens roamed around the city eating garbage like urban pigeons do, would you eat their eggs?  Probably not.

But why not?  I’m willing to bet it’s because you have common sense and realize the garbage-in, garbage-out rule of thumb applies to living systems.  But it isn’t just about the diet, it’s also about how healthy the entire animal is – not only physically, but also psychologically.

What kind of quality work do you produce if you were stuck in a space barely big enough to fit you, kept under constant psychological stress, and treated like a machine to just eat and produce?  Oh wait, if you’re like millions of North Americans and work in an office cubicle, that decribes your existence…

Anyhow, healthier animals create better product, whether that’s a widget, a report, or an egg.  I don’t have the lab evidence on-hand to prove this to the skeptics in the audience, but this ought to jive with common sense for most of us.

Now what about taste?  I started this post because I did a taste comparison with 2 softboiled eggs, so what was the result?

In sum:

• ŸThe caged-chicken-as-machine egg yolk was saltier, with a stronger “yolk” taste up front.  The taste was short-lived, dropping off and disappearing quickly.  No difference in the egg white, no difference in yolk color.

• ŸThe free-range, cage-free egg had a milder, “wheaty” yolk.  No initial blast of saltiness, and the overall taste was not as pronounced, but it lasted, was mellower and rounded.

The chicken-as-machine egg hit the tastebuds like a sledgehammer.  The let-me-be-a-chicken egg was more subtle, more nuanced, more interesting, and like that pink bunny with an Energizer battery up his spine, kept going and going.

The quality of chicken affects the quality of egg.  The quality of egg affects the quality of taste.  And taste is what good food is about.