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Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Truffle Cured Duck Egg Yolks

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salted duck egg yolks

Wrap the yolks in cheese cloth, hang them up and allow them to air dry for a week before using.

Curing egg yolks in salt is a great trick I learned from a chef friend of mine, the talented Brett Weber, now chef de cuisine at the Bachelor Farmer in Minneapolis.

You take some duck yolks (chicken would work fine too, but they won’t yield as much) cover them in salt, let them sit for two days, then wrap them in cheese cloth and hang them for a week. Afterwords the yolks can be shaved like cheese.

Now the basic salted yolk is a great thing, but eggs, more than anything else I know, will absorb aromas from things they come into contact with. When I got a batch of truffles this year, I did an experiment using truffled salt in place of regular salt. The truffled yolks tasted so strong that they took over the flavor of a recent soup I made, almost all I could taste was truffle, just from a teency bit of grated yolk hitting the broth.

After I found out how good the truffle salt worked, I started using herbs, and the results were fantastic. Needless to say, you don’t have to have truffles to enjoy the salted yolks, anything with a strong perfume would be excellent. For example, salt ground in a robot coupe/food processor with lovage or rosemary gave awesome results too. Next year I will have to try ramp leaves.

You might find yourself wondering what you could garnish with shaved, salted egg yolks. Here are some of the ways we’ve enjoyed using them.

  • Shaved as a garnish on beef tartare
  • As a garnish for a soup
  • In place of cheese on a dairy-less salad
  • In place of cheese on a dairy-less pasta

 

truffled duck egg yolks

Truffled duck egg yolks

truffled duck egg yolks
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Truffle Salt-Cured Duck Egg Yolks

Egg yolks cured in black truffle salt can be shaved like cheese.
Prep Time15 mins
Aging Time7 d
Course: Appetizer, Snack
Keyword: Black Truffles, Cured Egg Yolk

Ingredients

  • 2 duck eggs
  • 1/2 cup kosher salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon fresh black truffle grated

Instructions

  • Spread 1/2 of the salt in a layer in a container such as a tupper-ware, the container doesn't matter that much, just so long as the yolks don't get sloshed around, since they would break. I have used cookie sheets, tupper-ware, and 1/2 pint canning jars, they all worked fine, but the 1/2 pint canning jars were probably the easiest to use.
  • Crack the duck eggs one at a time in your hand, allowing the white to fall through into another dish. Save the whites for an omelet or something, or discard.
  • Gently place the yolks on top of the salt and then cover with the rest of the salt, making sure they are completely covered. Refrigerate the yolks for 2 days.
  • After two days, remove the yolks from the salt and wrap in cheese cloth. Tie up the yolks and hang them to dry for 1 week in a cool dark place. After a week, remove the yolks from the cheesecloth, wrap in plastic and refrigerate. To serve, grate the yolks as you would cheese (preferrably with a microplane grater as they are salty).

Notes

Duck eggs or goose eggs are the best for this since they are so large, but chicken eggs make a fine substitute. If you don't have fresh truffles, don't worry. Truffle salt can be purchased at many specialty markets, I even see it in the discount aisle at Marshalls and T.J. Maxx.
Like I mentioned, you don't have to use truffles either for this, making perfumed salt blends with herbs will give great results too.
A little bit of cured yolk goes along way, so I'm scaling this to two yolks, which will be more than enough to garnish 10 plates or more, depending on what you're doing.

Future cured egg research

While I was typing this up, I had a fun thought on a variation you could make with these. So I cure fish to make gravlax, I use a proportion of salt and sugar. Sugar, like salt, has preservative properties, and you could use the same mix, (dill would be great) to cure some eggs. Going even farther down the bunny hole, I know that eggs are used in many of my favorite desserts, the most interesting being a sweet dessert omelet made with berries by Jacques Chibois. Curing egg yolks in sugar should work too, and the first thing that came to my mind was curing them with vanilla sugar, and then grating them on top of a cake, one with berries in it sounds the best to me. I’ll do some research and update this post If I come up with something.

Related

Previous Post: « Milkweed Bud Fettuccine
Next Post: Crown Coral Mushroom Soup, Milkweed, White Lentils, Truffle Cured Egg »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lois

    July 6, 2014 at 5:46 pm

    Thanks for posting this Alan, since i forgot how you told me it was made! Do let me know if you try it with sugar, and how that turns out!

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      July 7, 2014 at 10:34 am

      No prob Lois, I’m going to give the sugar version a go this week, I’ll keep you posted.

      Reply
  2. shawn scepan

    October 9, 2014 at 11:52 pm

    its funny, as I was reading and thinking about the salt quotient I stumbled down the same hole. I thought about rosemary salt, then I thought about a traditional juniper/allspice cure, then thought a bout the physics of a straight sugar cure but with coriander/grapefruit zest. challenge accepted.

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      October 10, 2014 at 1:05 pm

      Glad you liked it Shawn, this is a fun recipe, it will be a garnish on our tartare at the salt cellar. 🙂

      Reply
  3. Lois

    October 10, 2014 at 4:09 pm

    Did you ever try the sugar cure? All I have are chicken eggs, but have plenty of those right now. We are all supposed to be on a minimum salt diet around here! Thanks!

    Reply
  4. Jason

    June 17, 2015 at 1:02 am

    Another option instead of just vanilla sugar – have you tried vanilla salt? Would that over power the egg yolk? Just an option…

    Reply
  5. Kate

    March 5, 2020 at 4:25 am

    Hi There,
    I’m in the process of a salt cure. 2 questions.
    1. I have an underground bodega which is were I keep all my ferments. Will this be a good place to dry the yolks or will the yolk take on the musky smell of the room?
    2. I can use my dehydrator on a low heat setting, will that work?

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      March 7, 2020 at 8:14 am

      You can dry them in the underground room, that’s fine, as long as it’s cool. I would open the door of the dehydrator if you want to use that.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Coral mushroom woup with white lentils, milkweed leaves, poached duck egg and cured duck egg yolk says:
    July 4, 2014 at 2:10 pm

    […] 1 recipe truffle salt-cured duck egg yolks (recipe here) […]

    Reply
  2. Cured Duck Egg Yolks Sweet or Savoury | Along the Grapevine says:
    July 2, 2015 at 11:08 am

    […] it and use it as a garnish for salads, soups or pasta. I was inspired to make a sweet version by Forager Chef who in his post on curing eggs in truffle salt suggested sugar should also work. The method is the […]

    Reply
  3. What Are Cured Egg Yolks? – Bainbridge Today says:
    April 18, 2019 at 12:39 am

    […] star anise to the salt and sugar mixture, which will spice up your congee. Or try out rosemary or truffles when you’re looking to add an extra dimension of fragrance to your […]

    Reply
  4. What Are Cured Egg Yolks? | | TimesDirect.TV says:
    April 18, 2019 at 7:18 am

    […] star anise to the salt and sugar mixture, which will spice up your congee. Or try out rosemary or truffles when you’re looking to add an extra dimension of fragrance to your […]

    Reply

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