AIBU...Burford Brown Eggs...what else compares?

[TwinsandTrifle]

Please help. We get through so many eggs and the only ones we've found and loved are the Burford Browns which are £4.50 for ten. We use at least a box a day (5 of us.) We've tried all local recommendations of "oh the most wonderful eggs from the farm shop/at the side of the road" and honestly, they've all been crap in comparison.

On the basis that (unless you live next door to us and don't want to give location away in case outing) local recommendations aren't really of any help, has anyone found nationally available eggs that are as good or surpass Burfords? Must be some way to get our eggs for less than £35 a week!

@C8H10N4O2

Agree, Although none of it can come from your kitchen (unless you are vegan) as it is illegal in the UK to feed food from anywhere that uses meat.

Illegal for domestic hen keepers to feed their own hens veg scraps when they don't sell the eggs? In that case every domestic hen keeper I've ever met breaks the law by enriching the hen's diet with peelings, cabbage leaves/stalks, leafy trimmings etc.

Also, how is this enforced? Do domestic hen keepers have to have a licence, and get inspected?

@dottiedodah

You seem to be consuming an awful lot of eggs! I think that Happy Eggs (£2.75 for 10 large ones ) seem very nice to me .I think maybe M and S or Waitrose? I would have thought home chickens would have a nicer taste personally .

When my girls go off lay I buy these at the farm gate from my neighbour who produces for them, as I know how good his setup is as a relatively small commercial producer. When they have their 18 month destock, in the past I've been given any birds that couldn't be caught on the day (when I've had space) and there's barely a feather out of place on them. The eggs are absolutely fine, probably benefit from getting them almost straight out of the hen house same day but I'm quite content with them. I know that brand had a bit of an issue a few years ago but if the rest of the producers are at the same standard as my neighbour then I'm happy to recommend them as a 'normal' egg producer.

No they don't @HaveringWavering and therein lies the problem a bit. Anybody keeping four-legged pet farm animals has to have their movements recorded (as the person selling/giving them had to for their records, it's a trickle down thing), keep them correctly identified for that species, and keep records of any medication. Anybody at all that keeps pet sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, camelids etc can be visited by Animal Health as a routine thing. They also check what you're feeding and if it meets the storage rules. I was selected to give feed samples one year so the chap just turned up one day with some plastic bags and labels and took a bit of feed from different species' bins (including my poultry as it happens) and left a second bag of each with me as a control sample. While he was here he had a look in all the housing and had a look over my paperwork, although i suspect if it had been a visit due to a complaint or something he would have looked a lot more closely. Of course there were no issues and all I lost form it was about half a kilo of feed from a few different animals and it was reassuring in some ways to see the checks going on. But if you've only got a few hens you can do that totally off radar. People can report others to animal health/trading standards if there's a concern but that exists primarily for welfare reasons, and I know some people were reported for breaking the avian flu lockdowns in the past.

It's too easy to buy hens and not be told all of this by the seller, they can't make you do any of it but most of the time when I've bought in birds they just take my cash and wave me on my way. You can't do that with a four legged animal because then the seller is just as liable to get into trouble for not doing the records their end correctly if/when they get a random visit.

My neighbour also got randomly selected for having their sheep blood tested for a national screening programme. They'd only got three old lady sheep as pets! For saying they were let's they were bloody hard to catch when the ministry vet turned up 😂.

These were very good today but similar price to Burfords. My Co op often has posh eggs reduced price.
Local farms are £1.20 a half dozen near me.

It’s funny how everyone on here who has had Burford Browns understands what OP means.
The ones who haven’t had them think eggs are eggs, it’s in our heads and we couldn’t tell from a blind taste test.

This made me chuckle

We've tried loads of other eggs. Supermarket cheap and dear. Farm shop. Honesty boxes. All sorts, it would be lovely to find some that aren't such a premium price.

I have tried the Waitrose essential white ones and they were not bad. And the m&s ones, they were ok too. They're just not as good as Burfords!

If it's of note, to all saying about the degree of yellow in a rich yolk, Burfords are really orange yolks. Are there any others that have particularly orange yolks? Perhaps that's the key?

My silkies give me 2-3 beautiful tiny eggs a day, with glorious yolks. That's enough for my family.

Maybe rescue some hens OP?

Eggs for breakfast and then omelette for lunch is egg overload. Surely the solution is to just eat less eggs or buy cheaper.

*PlasticEgg People still have their own chickens?

I thought that particular middle class fad had gone the way of allotments a good ten years ago.*

Maybe it had... Until the first lockdown. Loads of people started keeping chickens then.

Where I live (not UK) allotments are still going strong.

Genuinely didn't know eggs could taste different, will have to see if I can find some of these magical Burfords. I'm rubbish at cooking eggs though so worry I will waste them!

You need to find someone who feeds their birds A LOT of corn, @TwinsandTrifle that will get your the yolk colour. There are other ways of achieving this...

Interestingly for those fellow fans of follow feed regulations, I've just found a link to the producer of the birds (while trying to find out what they get fed, if I'm honest) and they say not to feed 'too many' scraps and also recommend mealworms. When you've got companies like that giving such inaccurate information what hope is there?

The Waitrose Longstock Gold are pretty good with a very orange yolk and make a good poached egg.

I do like Burfords, and use them in most things. They're great in baking, especially. (If you can get the large ones, not all shops sell them.)

I do find they don't poach well, though. The whites always disperse too much and the yolks sink to the bottom, meaning when I lift them out the yolk breaks and leaks all over the kitchen roll. (And I'm like you, I poach a lot of eggs every week.)

The best poaching ones I've found are a brand called Big and Welsh. They're... er... large and from Wales. Obviously.

In my experience whites dispersing is more to do with the age of the egg than the initial quality.

BBs are superb, I completely agree. I have tried all sorts of eggs as I thought them really expensive, but they taste so good! I find that two, scrambled, with a slice of sourdough, keeps me going from breakfast through to supper time, with a piece of fruit during the day.

@BIoodyStupidJohnson

I know what you mean. They are a pain to poach. I've found that if I rapid boil the water, then take it off the heat, let the bubbles stop, then immediately put eggs in (off the heat) and poach for 3 mins they come out perfectly. It's taken a lot of trial and error to get there!

The ones I posted pic of were very orange yolk.

Long term chicken fancier here...

So many myths waves at other hen obsessives

Best poached eggs (aesthetics rather than flavour) : young hen as the collagen in the white produced is similar to that for us, the older we are the less easier it is to twang back into shape, also, fresher the better. None of these mysterious egg poaching methods required - just crack straight into the simmering water.

Flavour/ colour: we have a mix of breeds and sizes, bantams to buff Orpington's. Fed on good pellets, corn and let out to forage except in the winter the product is fantastic, especially when heavy on worms, grubs and greenery.

Don't tell anyone but they get lots of kitchen scraps too (never cooked chicken) but as a pp said they are all over any dropped or smashed ones anyway - in fact you have to be careful to make sure that they don't learn to snaffle whole ones in some cases.

There's a notable change in "richness" over the winter but in the spring onward it's sometimes tastes as if you've put half a pound of butter in your scrambled eggs. In a good way!

I'm going to get some burfords in my next shop to do a comparison.

Not had Burford Browns but I buy St Ewe eggs in Cornwall and they are delicious. Not sure if they sell to other parts of the country though.
Our neighbour often gives away his excess eggs - Bantam, chicken and duck - and although they are very good I can't say they are any better than the St Ewe.

@mazylou

BBs are superb, I completely agree. I have tried all sorts of eggs as I thought them really expensive, but they taste so good! I find that two, scrambled, with a slice of sourdough, keeps me going from breakfast through to supper time, with a piece of fruit during the day.

I find that half an egg white with a small sprig of parsley will keep me full for an entire working week.

Do you use white vinegar in the water when you poach eggs?
That stops the whites dispersing around the pan.

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

Do you use white vinegar in the water when you poach eggs? That stops the whites dispersing around the pan.

Not invariably. I use it every time but still get some whites that don't behave. Not having a rolling boil when you crack them in can help, but I am still undecided on swirl vs don't swirl. John Torode said never swirl when he did a demo on Masterchef: The Professionals.

I'm very intrigued by the theory that the age of the hen is crucial, but that's not really something Tesco are going to be able to tell me!

I also find that if you are doing multiple batches you need fresh water each time. A second lot in the original water is always a disaster.

Oh that’s annoying! I’ve not had any problems if I use vinegar.
Although, it’s very possible I’m not very fussy. I just like a soft yolk and I’m happy

I was going on the basis PP was already putting white vinegar in....if you're not, that's the main reason they're falling apart. And I'm in the definitely don't swirl camp.