These Underrated Eggs Are Your Secret Weapon For Stable Meringues, Macarons And Soufflés

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Egg-based dishes like meringues, macarons, and soufflés are tricky — but they're well worth the time and effort required if you can get them right. Lisa Steele, a fifth-generation chicken keeper, host of the American Public Television/CreateTV series "Welcome to My Farm," and the author of "The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook," spoke exclusively with Chowhound about her method for creating rich, super-flavorful, stable egg-based dishes. Her secret? Using duck eggs instead of chicken eggs. Here's why it works — and how you can make the swap in your own kitchen.

Duck eggs are significantly different from chicken eggs, according to Steele. "Duck eggs are higher in fat and protein than chicken eggs. They contain almost twice as much fat and less water, and the yolks are proportionally larger," Steele says. "This extra fat gives things baked with duck eggs more richness and flavor."

The yolks aren't the only thing that differentiate duck eggs from chicken eggs — the whites are also substantially better for baking. "The lower amounts of water in duck eggs help baked goods stay fresh longer," Steele says. "The whites of duck eggs are also thicker than chicken eggs, which gives baked goods more stability. The added protein also helps with stability in baked goods."

If you find yourself lucky enough to get your hands on some duck eggs, you'll want to make sure you use them correctly so you can enjoy every bite of the richness they'll add to your egg-based dishes. While you can certainly use recipes that call specifically for duck eggs, you can also sub duck eggs for chicken eggs in standard recipes. If you're baking super egg-heavy dishes like quiche or a frittata (try popping your frittata in the air fryer for a super easy, fancy-looking result), you won't need to make any adjustments — you can do a 1:1 swap. That being said, Lisa Steele says that you'll need to adjust the number of eggs that you use for baked goods (they're especially good in custards, puddings, cheesecake, and crème brûlée) if you're swapping duck eggs for chicken eggs.

"Duck eggs are generally 30% larger than chicken eggs," says Steele. "A large chicken egg weighs about 2 ounces and measures about 3 tablespoons in volume, so the easiest way to substitute in duck eggs is to crack the duck eggs into a bowl, lightly whisk them, then measure out 2 ounces (or 3 tablespoons) for each egg the recipe calls for." She says that you can also use two duck eggs in place of every three chicken eggs.