Every time I make eggs for breakfast, I wonder whether the color of the yolk means anything. Sometimes, the yolks are a pleasant yellow color; other times, they’re pale; occasionally, I’ll crack an egg with a sunset-colored yolk.
Sure, it might look beautiful, but does the color of the yolk actually mean anything? Does the yolk indicate that the egg comes from a pasture-raised chicken or that the chicken is happy? I talked to an expert to find out.
Why Some Egg Yolks are Bright Orange
Common chicken “wisdom” suggests that the more orange the yolk, the better the egg. A bright orange yolk implies that the chicken that laid it was free to roam in a pasture somewhere foraging for bugs and a salad bar of tender grass. Lisa Steele, a fifth-generation chicken keeper and writer at Fresh Eggs Daily, says this isn’t necessarily the case.
“An orange yolk is indicative of the chicken’s diet,” says Steele. “So if the chicken is eating a lot of things that have xanthophylls in them, which is beta-carotene, it makes egg yolks orange.” This pigment is in foods like marigold, alfalfa, pumpkin, and a lot of leafy greens. “Chickens that are out in the grass or a pasture are naturally getting it from the things they’re eating,” Steele adds.
However, chickens can also eat these foods without ever stepping foot into a big open pasture. Feed manufacturers can add these ingredients—marigolds and alfalfa are most common—to their product, and the chickens that eat it will produce eggs with bright orange yolks.
“These foods are nutritious. It’s not orange food coloring,” Steele says. “Feed companies do it because they know people want to see nice orange yolks. It’s sort of artificial, but none of this is bad for them.”
How To Tell if Your Eggs Come From Pastured Chickens
The only way to truly know if the egg you’re eating came from a happy chicken that roams a pasture is to see the chickens in their habitat.
“You can fake a pasture-raised egg or an egg from a happy chicken. They can put a chicken in a 12-inch cage and feed it marigold and alfalfa, and you’ll think it was a happy chicken,” Steele says. “The only real way to know is to see that chicken and see that they have a big place to roam and they look healthy and their feathers are glossy.”
Your local farmers market is an excellent place for finding an egg source you trust. However, when shopping the supermarket, your best bet is to understand what the labels on egg cartons actually mean—it’s not always the same as what they imply.
What Can You Know About an Egg Just By Looking At It?
You may not be able to determine whether the eggs in your fridge came from chickens feasting on open pasture based on the color, but there is one thing you can tell just by looking at a cracked egg. Steele says the yolks from fresh eggs stand tall and mighty, and the whites are thick and gelatinous. As eggs age, the yolks flatten when cracked into a pan. That doesn’t mean your egg is bad, of course. It just means it’s been sitting around for a while.
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