Page 4 - National Poultry Newspaper

The author recently spent big on this beautiful 500-page hard-cover book, titled Meat, The Ultimate Companion. He describes it as a meat lover’s bible. Co-authored by merchant banker turned ‘celebrity butcher’ Anthony Puharich of Victor Churchill fame, it happens to have a great section on birds, covering on-farm, in-butcher and in-kitchen, as it does with sheep, pigs, cattle and wild game. It also features a fabulous foreword penned by none other than TV star and sardonic chef Anthony Bourdain only weeks before he died.
I’VE long loved ducks, all the way from playing with pet Khaki Camp- bells as a young fella to breeding, killing and eating Muscovies as a slightly older fella, to enjoying (sorry) duck shooting, especially the season opening, back in the day in Western Aus- tralia with my dad and his mates.
Another fond memory as a young fella was gath- ering the big, heavy, rich duck eggs for mum, from which she made scrump- tious cakes.
We’d sometimes cook and eat the duck eggs, as we did our chook eggs, albeit I always found them a bit rich.
Speaking of eating big, rich eggs, an old farmer I once knew would start most days with a fried emu egg and maybe a king brown (bottled beer, not snake, though both could reputably be found tucked away under shrubbery in his farmhouse garden!).
Anyway, my long-held, but now fading fascination with ducks, was recently reignited when reading an edition of ‘Modern Farm- er’, an e-newsletter I’ve long subscribed to from the US.
Often quirky and this time ‘quacky’, the April 9 edition had a great ar- ticle about ducks, US fla- voured, of course.
So, I’ll share with my fellow duck lovers some of the contents.
“Duck eggs are typically larger than chicken eggs; they vary a bit in size but are usually around 50 percent larger than your standard jumbo chicken egg.
They can come in all sorts of colours, varying mostly by breed.
The shell, too, is signifi-
Cant Comment by BRENDON CANT
cantly thicker than that of a chicken egg.
This can make it tricky to crack, but generally duck farmers and enthusi- asts report that this thick shell gives a duck egg a longer shelf life than a chicken’s egg.
What really sets them apart is inside.
A duck egg’s white tends to be nearly transparent, lacking the slight yellow- ish tint some chicken eggs have.
Its yolk, though, is what’s so prized by chefs: a duck yolk is much big-
ger than a chicken yolk. Partly due to the larger yolk, duck eggs are sig- nificantly higher in both fat and cholesterol than
chicken eggs.
But they’re also higher in
protein and have a higher concentration of omega-3 fatty acids, making them a favourite of paleo dieters, who seek high-fat foods.
Besides that, duck eggs have a nutritional profile similar to chicken eggs.
Yes, they are as safe as chicken eggs.
There have been some salmonella scares over the years, with a recent one in the EU in 2010, but cer- tainly there’s no evidence to suggest duck eggs are empirically more danger- ous than chicken eggs.
You can cook duck eggs the same way you’d cook any other egg; there’s nothing a chicken egg can do that a duck egg can’t.
But because it’s larger and has a higher fat con- tent, a recipe designed for a chicken egg won’t always work with a duck egg substitution.
If you want to bake with them, it’ll take a little playing around before you figure out just how much of a duck egg to use.
But in almost any other case, you can cook a duck egg exactly the same way as a chicken egg.
They fry well, poach well and boil well, but be-
cause there’s so much fat, a good early experiment is a simple scrambled egg.
You’ll find them much creamier and richer than scrambled chicken eggs.
Duck eggs are most pop- ular in various Asian cui- sines, especially Chinese and Vietnamese.
The most popular way to prepare them there is by salting them: the eggs sit in a brine of some sort and cures, pulling out mois- ture to preserve them and alter their texture.
They’re typically added to stir-fries or sometimes as a filling with rice.
Duck eggs taste like chicken eggs, only more so.
Their flavour tends to be more reliably intense than a chicken egg because of the duck’s diet.
Farmers tend to love ducks because they prefer to eat bugs, snails, slugs and other high-protein critters over plant matter and that diet impacts the flavour of their eggs sig- nificantly.
Duck eggs cost quite a bit more than chicken eggs, but are not prohibi- tively expensive. Whereas the average price for a dozen chicken eggs is somewhere just north of $US2, duck eggs will usu- ally run you anywhere from $US6 to $US12 a dozen.”
Swell memories of duck diving days
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Strengthening farm biosecurity – is your biosecurity registration current?
IF you own or keep 100 or more poultry in Queensland raised for meat or egg pro- duction, you need to make sure you’re reg- istered as a biosecurity entity and your current contact details are re- corded.
Registration helps keep you informed in a pest or disease emer- gency.
It also allows Bio- security Queensland to quickly locate animals and trace their move- ments, protecting the industry and maintain- ing market access.
If you held a property identification code on July 1, 2016, you were automatically regis- tered as a biosecurity entity based on your PIC details, so it’s im- portant to check your contact information is up to date.
What you need to do
First, check if you’re registered online at qld. gov.au/BiosecurityReg- istration
If your details can’t be matched, you’ll be
prompted to contact Biosecurity Queensland to complete your regis- tration and ensure your details are up to date.
If you’re already reg- istered as a biosecurity entity and your details can be matched, you’ll be prompted how to ac- tivate your online ac- count and can update your contact details online.
Start at qld.gov.au/ BiosecurityRegistration More information
For more information, or if you need help to check your registration and update your con- tact information, you can contact the Depart- ment of Agriculture and
Fisheries on 13 25 23. Queensland United Egg Producers wel- comes the application of registration to any- one farming more than 100 poultry in Queens-
land.
QUEP encourages all
egg farmers to review their current status us- ing the links in this ar- ticle.
Being a registered biosecurity entity is a prerequisite to the ap- plication of greater tres- pass penalties aligned to the associated regu- lations.
Should you require further information on this topic, you can call me on 0406 622 166.
by JOHN COWARD CEO
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Page 4 – National Poultry Newspaper, May 2019
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