I’ve found many double yolk eggs (double-yoked?) in my life, by accident, not on purpose, living in Nigeria, The UK, and The Netherlands. Each time, I was excited. Whether it was preparing my Scottish High Tea.
And then, I moved to Canada where you can get double yolk eggs, on purpose, in a carton, at a regular grocery store. Yes, it is a big deal, both for me, and for people on Reddit!
I love them for special cooking projects like curds, custards, pastry cream, creme patisserie :), and more. I particularly love them because I don’t use egg whites often.
If it was back in the day when I was intrigued by macarons and willing to brave all sorts to make them, perhaps I wouldn’t worry about a jar full of whites in the fridge, or the counter depending. I like meringues but I don’t make them often, on average once a year. And while it isn’t like I make curds often, I make them more than I do macarons and meringues.
I found these at Real Canadian Superstore, along with all the other eggs. I get them by the dozen, and have only ever encountered the white-shelled eggs.
They are slightly larger, and heavier than regular large eggs and the egg white I is a 1-eggwhiter as opposed to a 2-eggwhiter. Though
You may also find double yolk eggs if you buy jumbo eggs – generally eggs are graded by weight and sold per class.
How do double yolk eggs form I hear you ask?
They are typically laid by young chickens whose reproductive cycles aren’t synchronized to “make” one yolk eggs, and sometimes by older hens.
In some ways, they are, similar to fraternal (not identical) twins, except they are rarely allowed to mature to the chick stage for a few good reasons. Typical egg shells, even the slightly larger ones with double yolks don’t have sufficient room for two chicks.
How do the farmers know?
Through the candling process. What’s that I hear you say? It’s a process of using focused light, shone into an egg for a variety of health and safety reasons like to check for cracks which could cause bacterial contamination, to identify eggs that are viable or not, and more. Check out Poultry Keepers page on Candling Eggs.
Are double yolk eggs rare?
I’m not sure the source of the statistics but the interwebs suggest 1 in 1000.
Double yolk egg superstitions
There are many superstitions about double yolk eggs like it representing abundance, fertility, and more! Do they only apply when you happen upon the eggs? I mean do they apply if you intentionally purchase a crate of double yolk eggs? Who knows!
Anyhoo, these went into some Yuzu curd – recipe coming up! Here’s an “unshelling” video 🙂
Leave a Reply