An Egg-cellent Adventure: A story of emus, ostriches, and kangaroos.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of your guesses yesterday! A 1000 year old egg, a stone, an ostrich egg, an emu egg, a dyed egg for Easter, a duck egg, a type of mango, a gulls egg, an avocado, a marbled stone egg, a watermelon, an Americana chicken egg, and my personal favorite, a wild exotic fruit plucked from the peaks of Mt. Fuji (though for some reason I think that commenter was pulling my leg…). So, who was right? Well, Wendy said, “just tell me it’s not balut, and I’ll be happy…” Well Wendy, you can be happy because it’s definitely not balut! All of you who guessed that it is an emu egg were correct!

Picture from Wikipedia

So why on Earth did I have an emu egg? Well, my dad stopped by Charlie Brown Farms recently, a farm that’s about an hour and half drive away from where we live. My dad calls it “the holy grail for adventurous eaters” because of all the unique food items that you can find there. He purchased a couple of ostrich eggs, a couple of emu eggs, and some kangaroo meat. This past Sunday the Fujis were invited to come for dinner and he made potato salad using one of the ostrich eggs and we sampled some grilled kangaroo meat. The potato salad was fantastic. I’ve had ostrich egg before, so I knew that it doesn’t really taste any different from a chicken egg, except for maybe being a bit lighter in flavor.
The kangaroo meat was perfectly cooked and nice and juicy.
It had a very strong slightly sour gamey flavor. It was good.
I didn’t like it as much as I enjoyed yak, but I would definitely eat it again.

My dad taking picture of the meat…it’s nice not to be the only crazy foodie in the family…

So where does the emu egg fit in? Well, I agreed to do a favor for my dad in exchange for one of the emu eggs. (Now you all know that I can be bribed with strange foods. I also ALWAYS accept chocolate.) It was a gorgeous dark green/slightly teal color about the size of a grapefruit.
For comparison, you can see that it is much larger than a chicken egg, but much smaller than an ostrich egg:
Last night I took a clean nail and a hammer,
and made a small hole in one end of the egg.
Then, using a straw, I blew the contents of the egg out into a bowl.
I was curious to how the egg would compare to a large chicken egg, so I got one out for comparison. It’s hard to tell from this picture, but the emu egg contents were a slightly lighter shade of yellow than the chicken egg contents (emu egg on left, chicken egg on right).
I measured the contents out and the emu egg contained 2 cups, whereas the chicken egg contained 1/4 cup. So an emu egg is about the size of EIGHT large chicken eggs!
I then scrambled the emu egg and the chicken egg in separate pans and served them up for a taste test.
The scrambled emu egg was much lighter in color than the scrambled chicken egg–a very pale yellow/cream color (scrambled emu egg is on the right hand side of the plate). The scrambled emu egg was also much lighter and fluffier compared to the sturdier and heavier consistency of the scrambled chicken egg. The scrambled emu egg also had a slightly gelatinous consistency to it. The flavors were pretty similar. If anything, the scrambled emu egg was slightly more bland…like a watered down version of the scrambled chicken egg taste.
We all enjoyed the scrambled emu egg (Squirrel wolfed down several helpings in rapid succession) and would definitely eat it again if presented with the opportunity!

Coming Tomorrow: Bunny Bento