WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: What's up with eggs?

What's up with eggs? What's happened to the supermarket?

Bruce is on his own for this episode, since Mark is still recovering from his broken leg.

Join us for a fun and informative podcast about food and cooking!

Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:

[00:36] Our one-minute cooking tip: bake some breads in a heavy, superheated Dutch oven.

[02:31] What’s going on with eggs?

[12:56] What’s making Bruce happy in food this week? Decaffeinated coffee from Mexico!

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this isthe podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Mark is just learning how to walkagain after breaking his leg.
He's just starting to do stairs.
So we've got one more episode with mebefore he gets back to the studio and
joins me for all this cooking fun.
But today I have got aone minute cooking tip.

(00:23):
I'm going to talk all about eggs andwhat is going on in the world with
eggs, and I'm going to tell you what'smaking me happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
My one minute cooking tip, Myone minute cooking tip, bake your
free form breads in a coveredDutch oven, not on a baking sheet.

(00:44):
What do I mean by free form?
Not the loaf bread you put in a loaf pan.
I'm talking about a round loaf, a Frenchboule, or even a braided round loaf, or a
small braided oval, like a small challah.
But you want to make sure that yourDutch oven is going to be big enough.
to hold it.
So here's what happens.

(01:04):
The Dutch oven is heated in your ovenat 400 degrees for about an hour.
So it gets super hot andyou've made your dough.
You've let it rise.
You've shaped it.
You let it rise again.
Now, instead of baking it ona baking sheet, you put that
risen loaf of dough Into thatsuperheated Dutch oven immediately.

(01:27):
It will spring up as it does in aprofessional oven and get significantly
bigger than it would in a baking tray.
Second, it's a closed system becauseyou put the lid back on it and that
lid was in during the preheating.
So the lid is hot.
So we'll create some steam and thatsteamy environment delays the crust
formation, allowing it to get.

(01:48):
Even bigger.
So try that and see if you like bakingyour bread in a covered Dutch oven.
before I get to the next segmentof cooking with Bruce and Mark,
I want to thank you for listeningand ask you for your indulgence
to please rate this podcast,wherever you get your podcasts from.

(02:09):
Please give us a rating, leave a comment.
We are not supported in any otherway and your comments and your
ratings are what do us the best goodin this busy podcast landscape.
So thank you for spending your timewith us here and for leaving us a
review Okay on to our next segment.
What's up with eggs?

(02:31):
Eggs are all in the news, right?
Everywhere you look, it's eggs.
It's on social media.
It's on the news.
It's in the papers.
Prices are through the roof.
Last week I went shopping andalmost all the eggshelves in
my supermarket were empty.
And what was there was 13 a dozen.
That is kind of nuts.

(02:51):
Now this week I went shopping andthere were more eggs and prices
had come down a little to about 20.
And I know that that's a lotto pay for eggs, but why have
the price of eggs been so high?
Well, it's because of outbreaks of ahighly pathogenic avian influenza, or
bird flu, and cases have significantlyreduced the United States Egg laying

(03:17):
flock, and that's causing a shortageof eggs, which is raising prices.
But here's the thing.
This bird flu has beenout there since 2022.
And that's why egg prices have beenup and down for the past three years.
This isn't something new.
This has been coming in waves, right?

(03:38):
And it's estimated that more than136 million birds have been infected.
by the avian influenza in thelast three years since 2022.
In December, there were over18 million birds affected.
And in the U.
S.,
when the flu is detected at a farm,sadly, the entire flock is culled.

(04:02):
And that means thatthey are all destroyed.
And then the farm is disinfected.
And so what does this mean besidesthe lack of eggs in your supermarket
and the prices going through the roof?
Well, more and more eggs, believe itor not, are being found at both our
southern and northern border crossings.
and being taken away frompeople yep, egg smuggling.

(04:25):
But why isn't the bird flu and eggshortages a big problem in Canada?
Well, there's a bunch of reasons why.
Let's start with the factthat Canada has so many fewer
people than the United States.
320 million people here in the U.
S.
It's hard to produce food for this manypeople without Giant industrial farms.

(04:48):
So in Canada, they have smallerfarms and Canadian poultry farms
are not only smaller, but it meansif an outbreak occurs, it affects a
smaller number of birds and limitsthe potential economic impact.
Also, the farms are spread out.
There's so much land in Canadaversus how many people that the

(05:09):
geographical distribution ofthese farms really helps prevent.
the rapid transmission between flocks.
So you're not going to get a farmin one place getting bird flu and
then the farm, you know, half amile down the road getting it.
They're really spread out.
Also Canada has strict.
regulations.
And Canadian authorities implement strictbiosecurity measures to monitor and

(05:33):
control potential outbreaks on farms.
And also, their cullingpractices are different.
Well, here, we might have to wipe outan entire farm with millions of birds.
If avian flu is detected on an egglaying farm in Canada, Canada, sometimes
the infected birds can be culledwithout the entire flock coming out

(05:54):
and that helps prevent further spreadand monitoring and surveillance.
Canadian public health agencies closelymonitor avian flu both domestically and
globally and that's something we're justnot quite doing as much in this country.
So that's why People are tryingto smuggle eggs in from Canada.

(06:15):
Now, one of the benefits of livingrurally, and Mark and I live very rurally
in New England, is that we can go tolocal farms and local backyard farmers
who have chickens and they have eggsout in coolers on their front porches
and at the ends of their driveways.
And there's been a bitof an egg war recently.
In our area and in our town andeggs were 5 a dozen from these local

(06:39):
farms and some of them organic.
And all of a sudden I've beenseeing people crossing out the
five and putting 4 a dozen.
Everybody is trying to beatout their neighbors and getting
my money for their eggs.
And it's really kind of funbecause you could see the chickens.
They're running aroundone of the farms near us.
All she has are Guinea fowl, which are.
In French, pintade.

(07:01):
And they run around the roads,and luckily I've never seen
any hit by cars on the roads.
People are very careful.
And those eggs are delicious, andthey're beautiful, and they're 5 a dozen.
So I've been stocking upon those kind of eggs.
There's a lot of weirdnews going on about eggs.
, there's a butcher in Bed Stuy inBrooklyn, Prince Abu's Butchery,

(07:24):
and two weeks ago they handed out200 dozen eggs to New Yorkers Free.
And their feeling is eggs are a staple.
Everybody needs them.
And they wanted to make surethat people in their neighborhood
were still able to get eggs.
New Yorkers lined up for their free eggs.
And, also, in New York, go into any ofthe thousands of bodegas in New York City,

(07:49):
and let me tell you, there are thousands.
And you will find many sellingeggs in packages of three.
Little, three littleeggs for three dollars.
That's one dollar an egg, which isabout twelve dollars a dozen, which
is about what they're costing in thesupermarkets up here, but this is nice,
so you only have to buy three eggs.
You don't have to buy a whole dozen.

(08:10):
And people are not only smugglingeggs, people are stealing eggs.
Last month there was the theft ofone 100, 000 eggs of Pete and Jerry's
organic eggs in Pennsylvania and theywere stolen from one single store chain
and it is insane a hundred thousandeggs So what's happening about this?

(08:33):
Well to mitigate the shortage Turkey,the country of Turkey, they have
begun exporting approximately 33million pounds of eggs to the U.
S.
to help.
This is part of a preliminaryagreement between our countries and
it will continue through July of 2025.
So some of those eggs you may begetting at your store are actually

(08:55):
from the country of Turkey.
And while I'm talking about eggs, howabout some fun egg facts for the day?
about eggs, how about some funegg facts Did you know that an
eggshell can have As many as 17, 000pores, yep, eggshells are porous.
And when the chicken lays the egg,they're coated in a protective

(09:16):
layer that sort of seals those.
In many parts of the world, a lotin Europe and Asia, they do not wash
the eggs before they sell them, soeggs can be kept at room temperature.
In the U.
S.,
eggs are washed, so becausethey're porous and that Protective
layer's been washed off.
We have to keep them in the fridge.
And did you know that an egg shell andan egg yolk color have no effect on

(09:39):
the taste or the quality of an egg?
Nope.
That's just about whatthe chicken was eating and
the breed determines the egg color.
Some are brown, some are white, some layblue eggs, green eggs, even pink eggs.
However, chickens that lay browneggs tend to require more feed to
produce their eggs, so that's whybrown eggs sometimes are a little

(10:00):
bit more expensive than white eggs.
And did you know it takes a chicken24 to 26 hours to produce an egg?
Which is why, in the heightof laying season, a chicken
can produce an egg a day.
And, although ostrich eggs are oneof the largest bird eggs known to
us, Kiwis, a much smaller bird, laysthe largest egg in relation to its

(10:23):
body size of any species of bird.
And when it comes to the number of eggslaid each year, Iowa leads the nation with
almost 15 billion eggs produced annually.
Ohio, a close second, with8 billion eggs a year.
And Finally, about eggs.
This has been an internetfavorite for the past few weeks,

(10:45):
and this is cracking me up.
You scroll through TikTok and Reelsand Facebook and Instagram, and you
see this headline, Scientists Findthe Perfect Way to Boil an Egg.
Now, maybe you haven't seen that.
Google it if you haven't,but I see it in my feed.
And the truth is, to make a reallygood hard boiled egg is difficult.

(11:06):
Why is that?
Because the yolk and the whitecook at separate temperatures.
65 degrees centigrade or 150 Fahrenheit isthe most perfect texture for an egg yolk.
185 Fahrenheit, that's 85centigrade, is the most perfect

(11:26):
temperature for an egg white.
Boil an Egg and You end up gettinga slightly overcooked white or
a slightly undercooked yolk.
So, here's what happened.
An Italian scientist andhis team figured it out.
They used math and the knowledgethey gained from working with them.
Plastic foams.
Yeah, you heard me.
Plastic foams to invent somethingthey're referring to as periodic cooking.

(11:51):
Periodic cooking has you flip the eggbetween boiling water and room temperature
water, about 85 degrees Fahrenheitor 30 Celsius, every two minutes.
And you keep doing thatfor a total of 32 minutes.
Now with this rapidly shiftingtemperature you end up with this
incredibly beautiful boiled egg.
Now do you want to spend32 minutes boiling an egg?

(12:13):
I don't know, that's up to you.
What I usually do is I put an egg inboiling water for minutes, I turn
off the heat, I set the pan aside, andI let it sit for another four minutes.
That, to me, gives me a perfectlyset white, the yolk is slightly
jammy in the middle, and I absolutelylove a boiled egg done that way.

(12:35):
In fact, that is just about theonly way I will eat a boiled egg
when the yolk is a little jammy.
Once it's cooked all the way, it's notmy favorite, so I am not a fan of your
egg salad or of your deviled eggs.
My husband is though, and Imake them for him all the time.

(12:56):
Our last segment of the podcast, what'smaking me happy in food this week?
Believe it or not, decaffeinatedcoffee from Chiapas, Mexico.
A few months ago, I decided to give upcaffeine and I thought it was going to be
really hard, but surprisingly, I didn'tgo through any of the headaches or any

(13:16):
of the nervousness that people claim.
I'm a little tired and it getsharder to wake up in the morning,
but I have found this amazing Swisswater process decaffeinated coffee
from Southern Mexico that is.
is just fabulous.
It's a dark roast.
I do it in my espresso machine.
I have a latte with that every morning,sometimes in the afternoon too, because

(13:38):
for me coffee is not about waking up.
It's about the flavor.
I just love coffee.
So what's making me happy is abeautiful Decaffeinated Mexican
coffee from the south of Mexico.
And if you want to try it, go ahead.
Tell me what you think aboutdecaffeinated coffee from Mexico.
So, that's our podcast.

(13:59):
We talked about bakingbread in a Dutch oven.
I talked endlessly about eggsand what's going on with eggs.
And I talked about decaffeinated coffee.
Please go to our Facebook groupCooking with Bruce and Mark and
tell me what and tell us what'smaking you happy in food this week.
We tell you every weekwhat's making us happy.

(14:19):
We want to know what's making you happy infood this week and we might even try it or
certainly talk about it here on the nextepisode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark.