Oh, we love eggs! But not all eggs. We love really good eggs, and it has kind of become an obsession. Actually, they are quite possibly our favorite ingredient. But sadly, we have come to learn that not all eggs are created equal.
Essential to a great kitchen, eggs are a staple in baking, fundamental for a good old fashion breakfast and the easiest solution to a quick meal. They can be found in all sorts of food, and maybe that’s the problem. High demand always encourages speed and production over health, and the quality of the eggs we consume today is very different from that of the good old times.
You can basically separate eggs into two categories: one is packed with protein, full of healthy omega 3 fatty acids and nutrients, and the other is basically an imposter containing less than half of the nutritional value and full of things that we probably should not be eating. Now, it’s nice to pass by a farm and see a sign “EGGS FOR SALE”, grab a dozen and problem solved, but that is not practical for a business going through a few hundred a week. So, what’s the solution? That was the same question we were wondering until we recently began talking to the fantastic people from the NGO Animals Don't Speak Human, who opened our eyes to the extraordinary contrast between battery-caged and cage-free chickens. Hens raised in battery cages spend their whole lives in tight, terrible circumstances, unable to spread their wings and walk freely and we couldn’t let that be part of Cuca’s food story—so with this NGO’s guidance, we scrambled to make a change.
We learned that unlike batter-caged chickens, cage-free hens have the space to walk around and behave naturally like birds, laying in nests as well as selecting the food they prefer like wild flowers, grass, seeds and insects. This transforms the yolk into a rich, creamy custard, the white into a magical firm protein-packed jelly, and the shell into a hard impenetrable force unlike its opposition.
We have always believed that the food we serve in Cuca must be primarily
nutritious, so much so that we did not serve eggs in any form for the first few
years, just because, quite simply, they were trash. The result of treating
chickens as machinery, their food as performance fuel and the product as a
commercial good focused not on flavor or nutrition but volume and uniformity,
is unsurprisingly a smelly, dirty, unthinkable food source in the shape of an
egg.
If we are not
willing to eat them ourselves, we would never serve them to a customer. With
that said, Cuca is excited to announce we are using
only cage-free eggs in all our dishes. Here’s to happier chickens,
better eggs, and tastier food!🥂 🐥🥚😋