How long to boil a goose egg

Goose eggs weigh around 144 grams and need roughly 23 minutes to hard boil. Timing by weight, plus what to expect from the texture.

Around 23 and a half minutes for hard boiled, and about 11 for a soft yolk. A goose egg runs near 144 grams, which is two and a half hen eggs.

Weigh yours if you can. Goose eggs vary between 120 and 170 grams depending on the bird and the point in the season, and at this size that spread is worth several minutes.

They are seasonal

Geese lay in spring, roughly February through June depending on the climate, and then stop. You cannot buy them year round the way you can hen or duck eggs.

A goose lays perhaps 40 eggs in a season against 300 or more for a laying hen, which is most of why they cost what they do.

Texture and cracking

The yolk is enormous relative to the white and very rich. Hard boiled, it is dense and slightly crumbly, closer to a cooked yolk paste than to a hen egg yolk.

The white sets firm and can go rubbery if you push past the time. Given how long these take, a couple of extra minutes is easy to lose track of.

Shells are thick and genuinely hard to crack. A knife tap will not do it. Most people crack them on the edge of a bowl with real force, or score them with a serrated knife.

Because of the long cook, the ice bath matters more than usual. There is a lot of thermal mass in a 144 gram egg and it keeps cooking for several minutes after the pan comes off.

Other boiling times

Egg guides

Common questions