How to cook quails eggs
“How many?” Adil the farmer asks me. Actually he might just have gestured; his English and my Arabic are on a par. At 1 aed each (about 20 pence) I can afford to buy lots. He starts to count the dainty, speckled eggs into a plastic bag cushioned with strips of paper. The lady at my elbow asks “what do you do with them?”. This is part of the pleasure of shopping at the Farmers’ Market on the Terrace, the chatting, the friendly camaraderie, the exchange of information about food with people of many backgrounds and cultures.
My first ever quail egg could have tasted quite ordinary but I was won over by their stylish presentation at a party where the food was by fashionable London caterers ‘The Admiral Crichton’ in the private garden in a London square. The eggs nestled on straw in a wicker basket, some peeled, some still in their bluish, mottled shells. We’d been warned by our MD that the first cocktail would be very strong to relax our clients and get the party started with a bang. Food seemed sensible and these were immensely moreish. I was a lifelong fan from that moment.
My girls loved snacking on them when they were little – the perfect toddler fare – and their nimble fingers soon picked off the papery peel. As an easy starter to take to a friend’s house (who is wheat-intolerant) this weekend they were ideal. I arranged them on a white linen napkin inside a basket with a shot glass full of celery salt for dipping. Quails eggs can be used in any way you’d use chicken eggs but it’s nice to make the most of their Lilliputian size:
Hard boiled quails eggs
Place the eggs in a small saucepan and cover with cold water. Place over a medium heat. Time for 2 1/2 minutes after they come to the boil and then drain and plunge immediately into lots of cold water.
Serving ideas: Peel and use in salads, dipped into celery salt, or with home-made mayonnaise. If you have a lot of patience you could make miniature Scotch eggs (thanks Kavey). Or pickle them.
Fried quails eggs
It’s quite hard to crack a quail egg without breaking the yolk. I peel off the end of the shell then pinch the membrane to break it. You can pour the egg out of the shell quite easily then. Otherwise carefully saw off the end with a serrated knife. Lightly grease a small non-stick frying pan and place over a low to medium heat. Slide the eggs gently onto the pan and cover with a lid (or large plate). Check after a minute (glass lids are great) and once the white is set firm, gently lift out with a fish slice.
Serving ideas: with shoe-string fries; on thin slices of toasted baguette with a sliver of crispy bacon or chorizo; or on rye bread rounds on small slices of smoked salmon.
Poached quails eggs
Gently crack your eggs as above onto a flat plate. Bring a small frying pan of water to a gently shimmer and slide the eggs into the water very carefully. Keep the water at a temperature so it hardly bubbles. Remove the quails eggs when the whites are set. If using later plunge them into a bowl of iced water and reheat in simmering water for 30 seconds.
Serving ideas: mini eggs Benedict or Florentine; on top of tiny fish cakes; with baby asparagus and shaved Parmesan.
Last Friday’s Farmers’ Market haul
So you love quails eggs like I do (KP won’t touch them even though he adores hard-boiled eggs – that’s just weird)? Are you a quails egg virgin? Any other serving suggestions to add to this list?
P.S. All these pics taken on my iphone – do you think that matters? Would love your feedback.
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My Custard Pie 
they’re such pretty little things
Aren’t they – too pretty to eat…. only joking
Such a useful post Sally, buying a batch next farmers market for sure ☺️
See you there Rupal – fight you for the quail eggs!
Those are beautiful! I love quails eggs too. I use them in my medieval medicine presentations and little kids think they’re marvelous. 🙂
You have so many strings to your bow! Need to know more about these presentations… do you show them leeches too?
My mother and granny used to make us eat (my sisters and I) quail eggs saying it will make us stronger! 😉 I love quail eggs, had a couple today for breakfast. My son calls them ‘chocolate eggs’. Haha!
There’s a snack my great aunt made for us last December – boil quail eggs, peel, slice in half and keep aside. Finely chop onions, green chilli, garlic and ginger. Season with salt, pepper and turmeric. Take a spoonful of this mixture and combine with half an egg, dip in batter (flour, water, salt) and deep fry. We usually make these with regular chicken eggs for Ramadan and parties. She swapped them with quail eggs instead. Delish!
What a delicious idea – sounds fiddly but worth it.
the real challenge is getting them into a mini Scotch egg, photography superb!!
Thank you! I’m daunted but excited about a quail Scotch egg. Have to feel the fear and do it anyway soon 🙂
I am a quail egg virgin. I’m not a great fan of boiled eggs unless they are mashed with copious amounts of mayo and sandwiched between 2 layers of bread. Quail eggs just seem too …don’t know the word, but alien perhaps? 😮
I think you and KP would get on! Try one – I think you’ll like them – especially dipped in copious amounts of mayo 🙂
I love quail eggs too, especially when the yolk is nice and runny 🙂 Great post Sally, and your photography is amazing!
They look always superb, Sally 🙂
I couldn’t help but smile, Sally – my very first quail’s egg was served by The Admirable Crichton too! And in exactly the same way that you describe. I’ve enjoyed some nostalgic memories this morning, all thanks to you.
I’m very impressed by the iPhone pictures by the way.
What a bizarre coincidence! London in the early 90s eh? Thanks for the kind comment about the pics – it’s so easy to use.
I found peeling the eggs once cooked quite a challenge. That was the bit that was most tricky in creating the mini scotch eggs I think! How lucky you can get them so cheaply and from a market where people talk, I love those kind of markets!
Quail’s eggs are such beautiful little things. I’ve only ever bought them once and they ended up going to waste because my family wouldn’t try them and I didn’t know how to cook them! I shall remember this post next time!
I love quail eggs, but always forget to buy them when i go shopping…
Cheers,
Rosa
That is for the tips Sally – I must remember the 2.5 min cooking time. It’s the idea of peeling quail eggs that always puts me off buying them.
Thank you for sharing this Sally. I has never even crossed my mind I could fry quail eggs or poach them. Since I was a child we were just hard boiling them, they were perfect for lunchboxes 🙂
Quails eggs make frequent appearance at my dinner parties as a nibble with fizz. I made my own dukka recently as an alternative to celery salt and it went down very well.
iPhone photos are great- I usually do the same for my food blog, as time is of the essence. I leave the editing of DSLR shots for my travel/ photography blog.
Anne
Haven’t eaten quail eggs before and every time I saw them here in Dubai, I wondered how to cook them. Still doubtful if that is up my alley but will surely make my little one taste it. Can’t leave him away from all the wonderful food that I shy away in eating. You have wonderfully shared the ideas which are going to be truly helpful for a novice like me. Pictures are great too, Sally!!!
The first time I ever had quails’ eggs, I was still a child of perhaps nine. My new stepmother boiled them and made what we call salsa rosada (mayo, ketchup and a little Tabasco) for dipping them in. Perfect picnic at the beach fare. Last weekend I boiled and peeled 72 of those pretty babies, made my salsa rosada and brought them to a friend’s house as an appetizer. They went over very well! Miniature Scotch eggs have been on my to-do list for ages! Thanks for the reminder and all the useful quail egg instructions, Sally. Your photos are always stunning, no matter what the recording device.
Oh I love quail’s eggs – but as for cooking them myself, they have always fallen into the “life’s to short” category for me ;o) What impresses me the most is when a restaurant or caterer serves soft-boiled quail’s eggs with perfectly runny yolks. Swoon!
Quail’s eggs are delicious! I love the raw yolk (if you’re able not to break it) on beef tartare…
I meant to add steak tartare into my post and forgot. Thanks for the reminder 🙂
I just love quail eggs too Sally. So versatile and tasty. Hard to crack though 😉 and the blue insides and spotted outer shells are fabulously pretty, one feels so elegant just eating them.
Sally, I’ve had so many quail eggs back when I lived in the Philippines. There’s a street food called “kwek kwek” which is basically hardboiled quail egg that is coated in a batter of flour and then deep fried. The fried egg, fresh out of the frying pan, is then briefly dipped in spicy vinegar mix and then popped in the mouth.
Quail egg is my go to no brainer school snack for the LittleMan.
مرحبا سلي جميل بيض السمان
Thank you Sally, an informative post for me as I have never tasted them. Trust someday I do get enough courage to pick up some from the market and give them a try😉.
I never realised that quails eggs could be so versatile!
I’ll definitely try to incorporate them into more dishes
I am a quail egg virgin but am very curious to try them. Can you cook them in a curry?
I used to LOVE having quails’ eggs when I was little, but I only cooked them for the first time very recently after discovering them at the farmers’ market (they went in the wonderful Ottolenghi royal potato salad, one of my all-time favourite potato dishes, though I’d only ever used chopped hens’ eggs for it before). I made a mess of the timings, easily done I suppose, and ended up with them hard-boiled rather than nice and gooey, though thankfully that suited the pregnant potato salad-eaters 🙂 Will pin this for future reference, very useful, thanks 🙂
p.s. your farmers’ market haul photo is just BEAUTIFUL!!
I’ve never had quail eggs, but they are such an impressive little egg!
Great post, Sally – I happen to love quail eggs and I agree that they lend themselves to much more elegant presentations than their chicken counterparts 😉
Quails eggs are so cute, I love them! I’ve eaten them a few times at other people’s houses or restaurants, but never cooked them myself. I think I will try boiling them following your directions. I love your serving suggestion of arranging them in a basket wit a shot glass of celery salt for dipping!
What a beautiful haul you brought back! Wow. And quail eggs are one of my favorite things. I love how they’re small and they taste better than regular eggs. Thanks for the tutorial. I would love to get a bunch like this and try them each way!
Quail eggs are yum; i made some oeufs en concotte a couple years back with them. They are ridiculously expensive in all grocery stores… but picked up 20 of them from the farmers market for a bargain!
Iphone pics… ah! Did you see that amazing advertisement on Sheikh Zayed Road- a huge picture, crisp and crystal clear in quality- stretched over a 30-40 storey building…. taken by the iphone 6…. says it all.
Great device! Great pics!
And thank you for bringing them Friday…… they were lovely. We will be getting some Friday if they are at the market.
I think your photos look great! I use my iPhone too 🙂
Like most of the comments you’ve received, I’m a big fan of quail’s eggs. I love them en gelee….I tend to buy them from a traiteur but I might make them for the blog:)
I love quails eggs, they’re so pretty. I have to admit if I’m serving lots of people I buy them ready peeled from Waitrose! Love the iPhone photos, mine always look a little grainy. GG
Quail eggs are just so darned cute! But I do find the peeling of them to be sort of a pain. As for the iPhone photos, every time I drag out my DSLR I think I must be insane. Generally, the phone does a better job (though of course one does lack a bit of control).
These quail eggs are beautiful on a Spring themed dinner, keep that in mind for your Easter meals 🙂 And no I don’t think there’s anything wrong with iPhone pictures, I often interchange between my DSLR and iPhone and I think that’s totally fine. I like to keep it “real” 🙂
I love Qual’s eggs too but rarely buy them! Now, I know what to do with them & how to use them too! Thanks for the easy ways to cook, fry & poach them too!
I love the photos from your I-phone! 🙂
Brilliantly useful post, especially as I am popping some on a savoury Easter cake. I wasn’t sure of the timing but I knew exactly where to come for help. 🙂 I’m not a quail’s egg virgin but they are certainly not cheap enough for me to eat them as often as you. Yours are a bargain! Great iPhone pix too
I ♥ Quail eggs but I have never cooked them myself! Thanks for the post; I am going to try and cook some!
They are exceedingly easy to eat!
Almost impossible to come by here in Johannesburg, unless you know a farmer nearby, but I do think they are very pretty!
I thought about raising either chickens or quail, I would love to be able to do so sometime in the future. 😀
And I discard a dozen or two every day. What a shame.