The Egg Brand Amanda Freitag Swears By
Amanda Freitag has been a regular judge for the television cooking competition show Chopped for some time. The celebrity chef has been a culinary fixture in New York, working at some of the city's most coveted restaurants: Jean-George Vongerichten's Vong, Verbena, Il Buco, Cesca, and The Harrison, to name a few. Freitag's goal for her viewing audience is to "make cooking more approachable" (via Amanda Freitag), and that includes using ingredients that are easily accessible. If you imagine that anyone who's cooked food for such fancy restaurants uses only fancy ingredients that cost more than you spend on your monthly grocery bill and that you can only find these ingredients at a specialty store on online, then you would be incorrect.
Freitag is pretty down to earth. The cookbook author even revealed in an interview with Food Network that unlike many chefs we've seen on food shows, Freitag isn't a fan of sea urchin and her guilty food pleasure is one we can all relate to: a burger. Food Network also asked all of their chefs to share ingredients that they swear by, and we love that Freitag's ingredient is one that's pretty ubiquitous, but really important. Freitag shared the type of egg she always buys and you might be surprised to learn that these eggs at sold at pretty much every major grocery store chain.
Horizon Organic Eggs
Freitag told Food Network that when she buys eggs, "I buy HORIZON organic eggs because they are reliable." Eggs are such an essential base ingredient in a number of recipes, so we get why Freitag would want them to be "reliable." Food Science notes that eggs are a "binding" ingredient; they are the glue that helps our meatloaves and casseroles hold their shape. Baker Bettie adds that eggs are also a leavening agent that adds moisture, as well as flavor and color to your recipes.
Eggs are pretty darn important. But why organic? The Cleveland Clinic explains that a hen's eggs are influenced by her diet. When you buy organic eggs you know that the hens didn't eat any feed that contained "animal byproducts, synthetic fertilizers," or any other ingredients you probably need a dictionary to pronounce. But the site also notes that organic doesn't equate to how the chickens were treated. That said, the Amazon descriptor for Horizon organic eggs states they are fed a completely vegetarian diet and they are both cage free and range free; they also use no hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, or cloning in the production of their eggs.