Hello I was wondering what you do with excess quail eggs? And if you had any recipes to share? I have a flock of bantam cochins and kikirikis and they lay a lot of quail sized eggs and there's only so many times I can crack 10 eggs to make an omelette before I want to crack my own head so any suggestions would be wonderful :)
Bird tax
I don't eat a lot of eggs, so I'm not usually the one making stuff with them BUT. Here's some of the things we use eggs for:
pickled eggs- EASILY the best way to use a bunch of eggs, and GREAT in this heat. There are a ton of recipes for various flavor profiles but I'm a basic bitch. I make dill pickle brine and put in hard boiled quail eggs instead. Give it a week in the fridge and they're good to go! Eat within 3 weeks total. NOT shelf stable.
Deviled eggs - time consuming, but absolutely my favorite way to eat eggs. I admit to setting aside about 1/4-1/3 of the egg whites and giving them back to the birds, so that I can make the rest with extra filling in them.
Deviled eggs (yolk edition) - if you ever need just whites for something, boil a small pan of water and toss the yolks in until cooked. Mash up like you're making deviled eggs filling, and just eat it on crackers. A+ cracker dip.
If the eggs are small enough, like actual quail egg 10-16g sized eggs, you can crack a couple directly into a bowl of fresh ramen (they'll poach if the cooking JUST finished or if you do it while the noodles are stewing/softening) or cooked rice (swirl them rapidly in the rice w/ chopsticks and they will cook). My partner eats them like this.
You can scramble them raw and dehydrate them! Egg flakes/powder can be used in cooking just like raw eggs, but you can store them on a shelf if you've done it right. Good for prepping for winter if/when your birds stop laying for molt and resting period. If I were going to do this, I would set aside a portion of my fridge, and do a big batch at once.
Egg Salad - also cook to chop a hard boiled egg or two or ten into pasta salads, potato salads, chicken salads, etc. Can also go on salads made of greens for protein.
Breakfast casserole - There's a lot of different breakfast casserole options. My mom makes a really good one with ripped up bread and ground sausage crumbles. Here's another one from a cookbook made of recipes from my mom's coworkers.
French Toast - ESPECIALLY good if you make french toast with banana bread :)
Cookies/Breads - Most cookies use eggs, some breads use eggs. pretty much any bread can be egg washed.
Homemade mayo - it's less eggs and more oil but it's tasty and you can make it at home
Lasagna filling, meatloaf/meatballs, homemade pasta, carbonara sauce, and many other things all contain eggs (usually) but don't really seem "egg based" so get forgotten. Some of the stuff can be frozen for later (lasagna freezes well, after being made), pasta can be dried and be shelf stable.
A friend of mine at work was all over me for quail eggs because they apparently make a great Breakfast Pizza... I am unclear what that means but they were on there over easy. I was too afraid to ask.
People make quiche. I do not and would not. But that's a thing people do.
Breakfast burritos - I hear this one a LOT. Scrambled eggs + whatever extras, wrap it up in a big soft tortilla, wrap that in foil, pack into a gallon bag, and remove as needed to nuke for breakfast. If you like scrambled eggs, it seems like a handy way to preserve some eggs for winter too, since most frozen stuff is good for months. I would date the bags.
Custard/Flan/Souffles - I've never done it, but I hear they all use eggs.
Meringues use... I think whites. So if you want to make meringues and then use the yolks for deviled egg spread, there's always that.
I'm sure there's other stuff I've forgotten (feel free to add more if you're seeing this), but this the bulk of what I do to eat eggs. I also make my partner eat most of them and, all other avenues failing, I just scramble all the available eggs and give them to the birds to reset my counter.
Non-edible solutions involve things like giving them away to friends and family, though I don't often have to. My neighbors will take dozens if I bring them over, and will sometimes bring other things back for me. Local food banks can sometimes accept farm fresh eggs (sometimes they can't). As weird as it sounds, if you're really pressed for too many eggs, go hit up a church parking lot after mass. LOTS of those folks are about to head home to make brunch. Some churches will also take farm fresh eggs for their food pantries. If I get really pressed, I would give a bunch to my dad to bring to his church buddies.
But, I HATCH most of my eggs, like 90% of my eggs go into the incubator, so I don't usually have too too many. This is considerably harder to do with chicken eggs, as you need way more space for chickens than for quail and you're probably not processing kikirikis for food, considering grow out times and all. With a 6 week turn around time from hatch to table, it's a lot easier to hatch a ton and eat the bird instead of the egg.
