The Ostrich Egg Is The Largest Egg You Can Eat. Here's What To Do With It

When you lay an ostrich egg next to chicken, goose, and duck eggs, it's a bit like looking at a set of Russian matryoshka dolls, those cute little wooden moppets that nest snuggly inside of each other. These mama matryoshkas look similar to, though bigger than, their more miniature egg counterparts. As it turns out, they're similar in taste, too. However, ostrich eggs are more gamey, buttery, and rich in flavor than those smaller egg options. As you might imagine, these taste and size differences give you more to play with come cooking time.

But what to do with it? That's the question. Coming in at approximately 24 times the size of a chicken egg, finding a pan big enough to cook the crystal-ball-sized morsel becomes an issue. It can be done, of course. Otherwise, no one would even know what an ostrich egg tastes like.

Still, an egg that size makes for an awfully big omelet or fried egg, which means you won't be eating this by yourself (though feeding a crowd with an ostrich egg bake might make sense). It also takes 90 minutes to make a hard-boiled ostrich egg. You're looking at slightly less time to fry it — only about half an hour, give or take. In other words, you'll eat an ostrich egg for the novelty rather than the practicality of it, though staring down that big yolk on your plate at least once is worth a line on your bucket list, right?

Assuming that you're not deterred by the size of an ostrich egg, you're going to have to get past the security gate — its shell — to cook it. Both the shell and the egg's membrane are stronger and thicker than the eggs of the ostrich's smaller animal kingdom compadres. To coax the edible part of the egg out of its millimeters-thick home you must excavate it using tools like the back of a meat cleaver or a small hammer or mallet. 

Given that you won't have hands enough to hold the egg, whack it, and stop the contents from running all over the counter, you may want to line a bowl with a towel and put the egg in it while you work. You'll also want a bowl to pour the egg into once you get the shell cracked open. No surprise, the size is also an issue if you need to separate the egg yolks from the whites. Given how large the yolk is, use a smaller bowl to pull the yolk out of the whites, allowing you to work with them separately.

Everything about cooking an ostrich egg is more. More time. More effort. More volume. Keep that in mind when it comes time to whip it up for breakfast. When you're ready to cook the ostrich egg, locating large enough cookware can be tricky. If you're baking it, cook it on the largest baking sheet that you have. If you're trying for gigantic hard-boiled eggs, you might want to try a cauldron on for size. An ostrich egg does fit in a full-sized wok if you'd like to fry it. From there, many of the same tips for frying chicken eggs will work for ostrich eggs, too.

If you want to whip up scrambled ostrich eggs, you'll do it much the same as chicken eggs. Greasing the pan also works the same, though you could use one of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's best cooking tips and drop copious amounts of butter into the raw scrambled eggs to flavor the eggs and grease up the pan. Side note: Don't use a hand whisk to beat the egg. Because of the size, the egg needs to mix for a while — at least 10 minutes — so a mixer is a better option. 

Depending on availability, you can purchase ostrich eggs online for between about $40 and $80, not including shipping. All things considered, it's a pretty cheap bucket list item, at least when you compare it to a trip to Hawaii.