We all know a thing or two about one thing or another, especially those of us who tend to amass hobbies. But food writer Lisa Steele, creator of the popular Fresh Eggs Daily blog, knows more than just a thing or two about eggs. In fact, you could call this fifth-generation chicken keeper and master gardener an “eggspert” (sorry) in the field.
Dubbed the “queen of the coop” by pundits, Steele has become the go-to source for all things chicken and egg, appearing on TV and in print publications from California to her home base. That would be Maine, where she lives with her husband and a flock of about 30 hens, ducks and geese, a grumpy rooster named Sherman and a drake, Gregory.
Her latest project, “The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook” (Harper Horizon, $28), has arrived just in time for all our springtime, egg-centric and Easter-focused cooking endeavors. The book delivers more than 100 recipes for ways to use eggs, Steele says, “in unexpected ways.”
You’ll find the usual suspects — French omelets, meringues and eggs Benedictified. But you’ll also find Caprese Quiche, Lemon Basil Squares, Maple Chai Cream Puffs and Toasty Baked Egg Cups you can eat with one hand (while scrolling social media or catching up on email, Steele says). There’s a Broccoli Cheddar Tart that is equally at home at brunch or as a cocktail nibble. And speaking of cocktails, there are recipes for those, too, from a colonial-era Egg Flip to a very modern Sunny-Side Up Sidecar.
Steele offers foundational cooking techniques and surprising tips, too, including that salting eggs before they are done cooking makes them watery. Who knew?
She recently took some time out of her busy bird-tending schedule to answer a few of our pressing questions.
Q. It’s obvious that having an excess of eggs has gotten you pretty creative in the kitchen. What is the most surprising recipe you’ve created?
A. After exhausting all the usual culprits one would think of to use up a lot of eggs, like mayonnaise, pound cake, meringues, lemon curd and, of course, eggs every which way for breakfast, I started searching out other, more obscure ways to use eggs. I think homemade sprinkles are probably the most unexpected, but the Eggs in Butternut Squash seem to be extremely popular! And homemade Caesar salad dressing, tartar sauce, bearnaise and flavored aiolis are things I didn’t see in many other egg cookbooks.
Q. How about one you would never repeat?
A. Not many of the recipes I tried were complete flops, but I did cave in to the TikTok influence and tried making cloud eggs. They basically require whipping the egg whites with some cheese, then arranging them on a sheet pan in “clouds” and baking them, then adding the yolk into the center of each cloud and returning them to the oven until the yolk is cooked. They are cute. They look like a cheery sun sitting in a cloud, But they taste awful. Sort of like eating packing peanuts. So that was a hard pass.
Q. We know you name your chickens. Can you remember the name of your very first hen?
A. Of course! How could I call them and talk to them otherwise? Our very first chicken — one of our very first batch of six that we got in 2009 — was named Charlotte. She lived to be 9 years old. We just lost her a few winters ago. She survived a fox attack early on, hatched and raised countless baby chicks, appeared in my TV show and, of course, laid hundreds of eggs over the years.
As a child, we had chickens also. I remember two chicks named Batman and Robin, and we had a rooster named Mr. Bojangles.
Q. What is one of the biggest common myths about eggs?
A. A couple of things I get asked all the time: People think that you need a rooster in order for a hen to lay eggs — not true, but the eggs will never hatch into chicks. And people don’t realize that fresh eggs that haven’t been washed don’t need to be refrigerated. I leave mine out on the counter for a couple of weeks.
Q. Can you explain some of the labels we see on egg cartons? Is there any simple way to think about what we should buy, egg wise, at a grocery store?
A. So many labels really have no meaning and are pure marketing terms. “Farm fresh,” “natural,” “hormone-free,” “antibiotic-free,” “vegetarian fed” are all pretty much meaningless. If eating organic is important to you, then by all means looking for “organic” eggs is fine, but you should know that the organic certification refers more to what the chickens are eating than how they are treated. If you really care about the health and happiness of the chickens that lay the eggs you’re eating, you want to buy eggs in a carton labeled “certified humane pasture raised”. That means that the chickens actually spend nearly all day outside, year round, and have room to move around and do “chicken” things.
