Knoll Krest Farm @ Union Square Greenmarket

Maybe they sell all their good eggs to Eleven Madison Park. I’m not going to write Knoll Krest off entirely forever, but today I bought the most pathetic eggs from them. My face as I cracked these eggs was like… well, have you seen that Youtube video of the cruel family who gave their young son empty Xbox packaging for Christmas? Pay close attention to how his gleeful face drops suddenly as he realizes his coveted toy isn’t available to him, and his doe eyes give way to tears of disappointment. That was me today.
I hit the farmer’s market for eggs because I use them in cocktails. They taste quite good cooked, but so do better Whole Foods eggs (and those don’t sell out if I fail to roll out of bed in the early AM hours). The thing is, pasteurized eggs (like Whole Foods sells) have an eau-​de-​wet-​dog when consumed raw. A great cocktail demands unpasteurized eggs.
So I’ve got all these top notch ingredients lined up to make a Rye Cynar Flip, and I crack the first egg from Knoll Krest. The yolk is a tiny, flat lemon yellow blob and the albumen is as clear as the lenses in my glasses. This is bad.
When eggs are laid they have carbon dioxide inside, which turns the albumen whitish. CO2 leaches out over time, so an opaque fresh albumen will become clearer as it ages. As for the yolk, color isn’t necessarily indicative of quality*, but… it is. Free range chickens get to chow down on grasses and other good things that provide the carotenoids which make yolks a bright, rich yellow-​orange. Caged chickens or birds fed a more anemic diet produce paler yolks. And aged yolks? They’ll be flat and have a fragile, easily punctured membrane. Fresh yolks are round and taut and actually have to be tossed around with some force in a cocktail shaker to get them to blend. Fresh yolks are rich and velvety. Fresh yolks are to old yolks as heavy cream is to skim milk.
I was hoping that was just one bum egg. I cracked another. Same disappointing results. I cracked another. Ditto. These miserable specimens look as bad as Trader Joe’s eggs.
At this point, I should really just bake something, but it’s hot out and I want my cocktail, even as I resign myself to a subpar flip. My yolk-​only (not whole egg) flips are usually a rich gold color with a thick, silky mouthfeel. Tonight, it looked like a watery Brandy Alexander. Whitish tan. Beige. And that’s how I feel about Knoll Krest right now. Beige, limp and disappointed.
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*Rich golden-​orange yolks can also be achieved by feeding hens a lot of corn & dyes, so not all vividly hued yolks indicate a great quality egg. But eggs of great quality should have vividly hued yolks.