Are you like most egg eaters and prefer your yolks a lemon-yellow colour? Or, like a growing number of consumers, do you favour a deeper orange-coloured yolk? Many believe the colour of a yolk reflects the nutritional content of an egg. It does not. A chicken’s diet determines the hue of an egg’s inside. And the more colourful their feed is, the deeper the colour will be. Amanda Nolan, a chicken farmer from Idaho, says the feed makes all the difference. “We’ve learned that dark leafy greens and any orange/red fruits and veggies help give the yolk a very dark orange color.”
Carotenoids, nature’s pigment molecules, give a yolk its colour. We can thank carotenoids for making carrots orange, beets red and cabbages purple. In Japan, farmers often feed their chickens flower petals from marigolds and red roses to increase the intensity of a yolk’s colour. In North America, some chefs raise their own chickens, feeding them red peppers to brighten the yolks. Here is a list of yolk colours and the foods that help create them:
YOLK COLOUR INGREDIENT
- almost no colour white cornmeal
- pale yellow barley, wheat
- medium yellow alfalfa meal, yellow cornmeal
- deep yellow marigold petals, kale, greens
- orange to red carrots, tomatoes, red peppers, rose petals
- olive green cottonseed meal, acorns, shepherd's purse
- greenish black silage, grass
It's hard to know what a farmer has used to feed his flock. Nowadays, many store bought eggs are liberal when using terms such as “free-range” and “organically raised.” So these labels don’t always guarantee rich coloured yolks. When in doubt, best to buy your eggs directly from a farmer.