We found a great source for quail eggs – but what to do? We spent a day with about 30 or so quail eggs and followed our inspiration.

1. Give some of them away!
2. teensy little fried eggs on toast for breakfast
3. adorable bite-sized deviled eggs
4. soft boiled eggs to add to pork and greens

NUMBER ONE – GIVE AWAY!

Thanks, Tyler, for taking half a dozen or so of them off our hands!

NUMBER TWO – FRIED EGG BREAKFAST

I loved the idea of doing a mini breakfast of steak and eggs with toast, but I knew that quail eggs can be difficult to work with. I wanted the eggs to be over-easy with intact, somewhat runny yolks. If I just tried to crack the eggs into the pan like I would with chicken eggs, the quail egg yolk would break and shell would get in the eggs – a mess! I also knew that once I got that quail egg into the pan, it would cook very quickly, so I couldn’t just break the quail eggs one at a time while cooking. We ended up breaking each quail egg carefully into its individual little cup (we used sake cups and shot glasses.) Rather than tapping the egg to crack it, we used a small paring knife to pry off the end of each egg and then carefully shook the egg out into the cup. I cut up some rye bread  and quickly pan-fried it in butter and removed to the plate in the warm oven. Then we tipped the quail eggs into the skillet and cooked them, quickly, in the butter. The eggs cooked very fast – maybe a minute per side. Some of them ended up more cooked than we would have liked – we’ll work faster next time. We served the eggs on the toast alongside some little tenderloin venison bite-size steaks. Delicious!

 

 

NUMBER THREE – DEVILED EGGS

I love deviled eggs, but they are an odd size. Is a deviled egg one bite (no!), two bites, an odd two-and-a-half-bites? Problem solved with the one-bite quail deviled egg! Just boil the eggs (a light boil, just more than a simmer) for 3 minutes, remove eggs from pot and put in ice water to cool and loosen the shell. Carefully peel, cut in half, scoop out yolk with grapefruit fork. Mix yolk with your favorite deviled egg mixture (I like Dijon mustard, curry powder, salt, pepper, smoked paprika), put yolk mixture into egg white halves and top with a caper or a few grains of cavier. Voila!

NUMBER FOUR – SOFT BOILED EGGS

I love to have a soft boiled egg atop a bowl of something kind of soupy. I discovered this a few years ago when we added a soft boiled egg to our bowl of black-eyed peas one cold New Year’s Day at the ranch. Today, we happened to have leftover wild pig shoulder roast that we were throwing into some collard greens we’d gotten at the farmer’s market – a perfect backdrop to our quail eggs. When soft-boiling the eggs, it’s just like hard-boiled eggs, but only cook them for just shy of 2 minutes before putting them into the ice water. It is tricky to peel them because the eggs are sort of wobbly; you have to be patient, but it’s worth it! Here they are with the pork, greens, and some brown rice.

So, there you have it – a few ways to use quail eggs!