Saturday, February 12, 2011

The Octo-Yoker

The WHAT?!? you say?

Ever cracked an egg and seen more than one yoke?  I remember the first time this happened to me.  I have some food allergies so I do quite a bit of cooking from scratch.  And I'm also super busy working during the week.  So I love to spend Sunday afternoon in the kitchen getting things prepared for the week.  And why not have a glass of bubbly while you're at it.  Beer and wine have a tendency to give me migraines and champagne does not which is why I was drinking bubbly.

I was baking cookies.  And I cracked an egg into a glass container so I could beat it before I dumped it into the mixer.  And then got distracted and went to stir something on the stove.  I came back to the egg and there were two yokes.  I'm wracking my brain to remember, did I crack two eggs?  No, one whole egg is still on the counter.  But there are two yokes in the glass.

Hmmm, am I on my first glass of champagne or my second?

So it got me thinking, what's the record for most number of yokes in one egg.  There are rumors that it's 9.  But no proof of that.

This lady in New Zealand back in December cracked open an egg from one of her hens and it had 8 yokes in it.  So they've started call it the "Octo-Yoker".  See link for article:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/3686513/Octo-yolk-an-egg-record

Multi-yoke eggs usually happen to young hens who are just starting to lay.  The hens may ovulate more rapidly at first until they find their natural rhythm.  And these yokes get strung together and as a result, all come out in one egg.  Typically, a long, narrow egg.  But not always.

2 comments:

  1. Very interesting. I used to get XL AA eggs and they tended to have double yolks. Somebody (Josh or Scott??) just posted about a double on fb...but of course now I can't find the post!

    The question is, how do you deal with them in a recipe when you've got double yolks?

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  2. I usualy just leave it in. But if my recepie calls for two eggs and I end up with four yokes, I'll usually pull out one or two yokes and toss them.

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