Comment by com2kid

Comment by com2kid 2 days ago

51 replies

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> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them

At 2 years old my son could blind taste test tell the difference between my neighbor's chicken's eggs and store bought eggs.

He refused to eat eggs (still doesn't) until we convinced him to try one of the eggs from our neighbor's chicken's. He liked that egg. Every time we've tried to pass (fancy!) store eggs off to him as our neighbor's eggs he's called us out for lying to him.

He'll reliably eat eggs from the chickens across the street and nowhere else.

So yes, there is a difference in taste!

prepend 2 days ago

I think you demonstrated that eggs taste different, but not better.

My 2 year old would only prefer to eat frozen chicken nuggets. That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.

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  • CharlieDigital 2 days ago

        > That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.
    Taste is subjective. Sounds like his son preferred the taste of one over the other.

    My kids prefer nuggets over the whole roast chicken my wife and I eat. The salt, MSG, and seasoning of the nuggets along with the fat from the oil tastes better to them. Sadly, nothing I say will convince them otherwise.

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    • johnla 2 days ago

      Try making nuggets from scratch. It’s so good and easy to do. Chicken tenders from breast meat. Egg seasoned with salt, pepper. Dunk into seasoned breading. Dunk into egg again and back to the breading. Pan fry. Yummy.

      Reply View 19 replies
      • crazygringo 2 days ago

        Chicken tenders are chicken tenders, not nuggets.

        And there's absolutely nothing wrong with nuggets. Nobody criticizes Italian meatballs, which are ground-up beef in balls. But then for some reason ground-up chicken in a different shape isn't "real chicken"?!

        Reply View 7 replies
      • CharlieDigital 2 days ago

        I do make fried chicken for them occasionally and I season with a bit of curry, cumin, and smoked paprika.

            - 1 pack of 6 thighs or 3 breasts
    - 4 tbs corn starch + 1 tsp salt + 1/2 tsp each of curry powder, cumin, smoked paprika to coat
    - slice chicken thinly and use a mallet to flatten to make it even and cook faster (this also increases the ratio of breading to chicken which they like)
    - coat each slice in the corn starch mix
    - beat 2 eggs and then dredge the coated slices in egg
    - coat the now egg coated chicken with bread crumbs of your choice
    - fry in a flat pan with just about 4-6mm of oil
    - about 60-90 seconds each side
        They love it! But it also takes me almost 2 hours to do! So it's a once in a while thing in these busy times.
        Reply View 0 replies
      • mapt 2 days ago

        You're still going to come back to a child who's learned "Real chicken nuggets come in dinosaur shapes, are very salty, have a uniform breading, and don't require teeth to chew". He's going to think your dish doesn't quality.

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  • xattt 2 days ago

    > That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.

    It will depend on whether the whole chicken is chicken proper, or one reassembled from nuggets.

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  • throwmeme888 2 days ago

    eggs are homogenous in nature, so a blind test between two eggs can reveal the superior quality of one type of homogenous product. Especially when it is an egg, which is entirely "natural"

    a chicken nugget is not the same thing as whole chicken, because it has many chemicals, additives, flavouring agents, msg, organ meat, etc and is then battered or crumbed and deep fried before being packed. It also has a different texture altogether, and is eaten with the hands which children find easier than using cutlery.

    compare a child tasting two different varieties of dark chocolate in comparison to a milk chocolate with caramel filling, or two varieties of whole milk to chocolate skim milk, et cetera.

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    • prepend 2 days ago

      You are right. My point wasn’t that chicken and eggs are the same or even similar.

      What I wanted to convey is just because kids have a preference for something doesn’t mean it is better. So more a flaw in the syllogism.

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  • cluckindan 2 days ago

    Nuggets are mostly skin and cartilage, so maybe that preference stems from the nutritional needs of a growing child.

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    • crazygringo 2 days ago

      Where do you get this total misinformation?

      You're trying to propagate an urban legend. HN is not the place for that.

      Reply View 5 replies
      • cluckindan a day ago

        What are you referring to? Sure, chicken nuggets made mostly of breast or other muscle flesh exist, but you can bet your buns the majority of frozen nuggets are mostly ground skin and mechanically separated meat.

        In the United States, mechanically separated poultry has been used in poultry products since 1969, after the National Academy of Sciences found it safe.

        Reply View 4 replies
Maxion 2 days ago

My 2 year old daughter never liked eggs. We started buying some from a neighbor who pasture raises his lay hens (and feeds them more chicken-appropriate feed).

She eats her eggs and asks for more. If we run out and I fry up some store bought ones, she refuses to eat them - even when I don't tell her where they're from.

Same goes for chicken meat from the grocery store vs. pasture raised broilers from another neighbor.

When it happened the first time it was something of a canary-in-the-coalmine situation for me.

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  • bilsbie 2 days ago

    Taste (and health) are two things the market doesn’t select for.

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tptacek 2 days ago

People say that all the time, but professional cooks have run triangle tests on backyard/farm eggs vs. store bought eggs and people can't tell the difference. At this point, I don't believe there's a difference in taste. The psychological effects that would lead people to believe that difference exists --- a kind of culinary placebo effect --- are so strong that I just attribute everything to that.

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  • glenneroo 2 days ago

    Anecdotally I have regularly switched between store-bought eggs and eggs from my friend's little farm over the last 20+ years, and try as I might, regardless of consumption method, I have yet to taste a difference. I have also asked many friends over the years if they notice any difference and all have agreed with me.

    It doesn't matter though, I still prefer my friend's eggs to store-bought ones, I'd rather not support that dirty industry.

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  • NoGravitas 2 days ago

    I cannot tell the difference between backyard eggs and fancy store bought (organic, free-range) eggs, but I can tell the difference between that set and industrial store bought eggs.

    Reply View 3 replies
    • tptacek 2 days ago

      My expectation is that what you're tasting is the difference between a very fresh egg and an older egg; there's no doubt that's real (older eggs aren't even functionally the same as fresh eggs).

      Reply View 2 replies
      • adrian_b 16 hours ago

        I doubt that there can be any difference in the egg whites, but the egg yolks certainly have a composition in fatty substances that varies with the kind of food used for the chicken, which should lead to noticeable differences.

        While there are some taste differences in egg yolks, the taste difference in meat, between chicken that ate mostly what they had found themselves in a large area with abundant vegetation, insects and worms, and chicken that had been raised in industrial complexes, is huge.

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        • tptacek 9 hours ago

          Yes, the constitution of the chicken's feed matters enough to change the color of the yolk, so much so that organic chicken farms introduce additives to feed specifically to color the yolks. And yolk color may indeed cause you to enjoy the egg differently! But there is apparently no discernible taste difference, once you control for egg age.

          Multiple groups have done tests on this. Kenji did a somewhat informal test, where he dyed the eggs so you couldn't discern the farm egg. The Japanese have done expert panel chicken feed tests. It's interesting stuff!

          I think people want this "farm egg" thing to be true more than it really is true. People got mad at me on Twitter when I griped about those Vital Farms eggs (don't buy those eggs! they cost more than 2x as much as commodity organic eggs!).

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  • arkey 2 days ago

    Anecdata also, but I can compare the eggs at home (homegrown) vs. any normal restaurant around and there definitely is a notable difference in looks and taste.

    That said, this applies to scrambled or fried eggs.

    Omelettes not so much, as seasoning might play quite a big part, and even less with cakes, baked goods, etc. in which eggs are just one more ingredient.

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  • ysavir 2 days ago

    Honestly, does it matter? If raising the chickens that yield your eggs makes your breakfasts more enjoyable, is physical vs psychological causality relevant? The important thing here is enjoyment of our food.

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    • tptacek 2 days ago

      It does not matter, outside of the context of a message board, where it is of grave importance.

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  • watwut 2 days ago

    This backyard chicken and that backyard chicken does not have to be the same tho

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wonderwonder 2 days ago

I wonder how much of this is due to there simply being different types of chickens. I would guess that most commercial egg layers are from a specific or small subset of optimized chicken types. While there is a larger variety in the type of chickens people raise in their back yards. My brother has 3 different types of chickens and each lays visually different eggs.

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