quail eggs

For dinner tonight I sauted onion and red peppers with diced baked potato (leftover from baked potato bar the other night) and cilantro, salt and pepper. I topped it with fried eggs for Steve and fried quail eggs for me.

I went to the Asian market a few days ago; while there I saw an absolutely enormous refrigerated case full of very pretty, speckled quail eggs. Having never tasted them before but heard folks say how fabulous they were I decided to get them (Steve did not want to try them). Quite frankly I'm not sure what the hullabaloo is all about. My suspicion is that the attraction to quail eggs is for the novelty value. To be truthful I'm not sure if it's because I don't have a very sophisticated palate or because there really isn't a huge difference, but I did not taste a significant difference in the eggs. The only difference I noticed was that the yolk on the quail eggs had a creamier mouthfeel to me than chicken eggs do. So aside from the novelty value of a bite-sized egg it's certainly not something I think I'll do again.

Nutritionally the protein value is the same (comparing 1 ounce, 28 grams, of raw egg each) except that quail eggs have twice as much cholesterol. However quail eggs also have more riboflavin and a tiny bit more choline, B12, and folate as well as zinc, phosphate and iron.

As always, it comes down to the willingness to be adventurous, to try new things. While I don't think I will buy quail eggs again I'm glad that I had the opportunity to try them.

photo courtesy of K. Suzuki | commons.wikimedia.org