Are those from the site that had like 6 different kinds of pickled egg recipes?
The balsamic recipe was from allrecipes.com - it was a recipe with overall good reviews, and most of the more negative ones were basically around not wanting a balsamic flavor for the eggs. It has 5 crushed cloves of garlic per 6 eggs! And the balsamic is diluted with water, as expected. Recipe says 4-5 day wait, so I'll let you know!
The Dill recipe and Beet recipe were from "National Center for Food Preservation" website. There were 6 recipes there, so I picked the two I felt I would like. There were a few new-to-me pickled egg recipes here: "Pineapple pickled eggs" using pineapple juice, pickling spice, and onions as key ingredients (with white vinegar). Then a :"Dark and Spicy" recipe with liquid smoke or hickory smoke salt, and a "sweet and Sour" recipe using red cinnamon candy and pickling spice and garlic!
A couple of years ago I pickled many jars of quail eggs, and we LOVED the cajun ones, so delicious! So, I'll likely try a batch of Cajun pickled Chicken eggs in the future! That recipe was from "Just a Pinch" website and uses Zataran's liquid crab boil as one ingredient. The quail eggs were actually canned - it is pretty easy to peel quail eggs after they sit in straight vinegar for 12 hours, so eggs were intact, and they are much smaller, so the canning works for them, but is not recommended for chicken eggs, besides, double cooking the eggs (boil to peel, then to can), makes the texture a bit rubbery.
Have you raised them before? DP and I are thinking of doing like 6 at a time during the summer.
Yes, this is our 4th batch. The first batch was a learning curve and we were unsure if it was something we would do again. That is, until we tasted the cooked chicken!!!! Yum! So nice, great texture, great flavor!
We've only bought from one hatchery, but they sell 2 CX versions. These walk well their entire lives, but do end up waddling. One thing to keep them moving is to place water and feed in different locations so they have to get up and walk. They poop A LOT. A LOT, A LOT! So, just know you will need to move their tractor, or toss around or replace bedding often. 6 birds isn't too bad, so don't be turned off by that. 6 birds is a very manageable number. We started with 12, and did not find it too taxing.
If processing in summer, have a shady spot - no need to have any additional smells! Also, we learned from experience, process the chickens the day BEFORE trash pick-up, not the day after
. Or at least have freezer space to put the trash bag in until trash pickup. Maybe you have a place to bury it on your yard, so then not an issue.
We process around 7-8 weeks of age.
