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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Refrigerated eggs poach fine; if they didn't, nobody in the US would have decent poached eggs. :)

They are harder to make, though. The albumins break down over time, leading to a more liquid egg white. This, in turn causes the egg to spread out more when you are poaching them. Making a perfectly round poached egg by dropping it into a pot of salted, simmering water is very difficult if the egg is less than a few days old. That's why Starfrit sells egg poachers.

BTW, I don't know about the US, but in Canada, the supply chain often delivers eggs to the store that are 2 weeks old, so it's quite likely that most people have never cooked with a fresh egg before in their life.

Thanks for making me realise why I stopped liking poached eggs. I was just using old eggs.

And I have heard similar things about the supply chain in the US. However, I have had a fresh egg that was no more than 24 hours old (I think younger) and I didn't really notice a difference. Then again, I think it was scrambled, so I don't know if you can tell anyways.

Personally, I can't tell the difference in flavour between a fresh egg and an old egg. Texture is the only thing I've noticed. Though, for instance, that can be quite important in some egg dishes like tamagoyaki. For flavour, a much bigger difference can be seen from the diet of the hen. Grain fed battery hens have pretty bland eggs. I obsess about my tamagoyaki, so I'm willing to go to some extremes to get good, fresh eggs.

If you know anyone with chickens, get an egg off them. The difference between the eggs and store bought, free range, is night and day. I don't know why, but the yolk is orange for starters. It may have been due to the species of chicken I suppose?

If you're lucky, your friend with chickens might have blue-green egg shells.

You can buy eggs with blue shells and bright orange yolks in UK supermarkets, I ate some yesterday.

It's to do with diet. IIRC, some farmers feed their flock flax in order to get more orange yolks. But free range hens that have access to insects tend to have a nicer flavour in my experience. Generally speaking, an egg with a hard shell and a very bright yolk will be nicer and that tends to correspond with free range hens. But, climate where you live will influence how realistic that is.

Add vinegar to the water

A tiny, tiny amount though, unless you like the sensation of teeth grinding on chalk.

Better to steam.

Heston Blumenthal has some tips for poached eggs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gbgSCV9hbM#t=7m6s

Just do what Kenji Alt does: crack the eggs into a strainer and swish them around to get rid of the runny whites. Works like a charm.

I mean, by all means, use super fresh eggs. But as a matter of technique: solvable problem!

Was getting ready to say just this and boom, someone else already made this comment.

Yeah, it's a lot easier to find really fresh eggs in the UK.

The supermarket supply chain seems to turn them over much faster. Poached eggs are much more popular, perhaps for that very reason!

Nobody in the cities or suburbs. Raising one's own chickens for eggs or getting eggs from friends with chickens is popular in rural areas.

Many cities are launching urban chicken programs to allow people to keep their own coops. I figure if you're going to allow dogs in all their kid-biting, sidewalk-pooping, late-night barking glory, why not allow chickens in the city?

I didnt know about that. Thanks for telling me. Makes plenty of sense.

Dogs are trainable. Roosters not.

Urban folks keeping chickens for their eggs often don't keep roosters.

The people I know in rural areas with chickens all have roosters. Why they do it different in urban? Is it the noise they make early in the morning?

Some roosters start crowing at 5:00 am, they sing non-stop for 15-20 minutes and wait for an hour. When people are sleep again they repeat the bursts. This can last from 5:00 am until 9:00 am or so. All days of the week including sundays and holidays. Is basically torturing your neighbours, specially if they are of the night owl kind.

Makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

The rural folks likely have less rigid constraints on the number of chickens and more room for the chickens to roam. If you only have room for 2 chickens, choosing a male for one of the two halves your laying capacity.

I had an upstairs neighbor at my condo in Chicago raising chickens on the porch. When the association put a stop to it he moved them to the community garden next door.

That was the second chicken coop on our block.

The "no laundry on the porch" crowd didn't see that coming.

My next door neighbor has a chicken coop.

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