As the saying goes, “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs…” – Yes you can!! Here are 10 easy alternatives to eggs and when to use them.
If you’ve recently switched to a vegan diet, or are preparing a meal for a vegan person in your life, you may suddenly find yourself with the dilemma of what on earth to do when you would have normally used eggs.
Just what do vegan bakers use to make those delicious cakes? How on earth do they get the ingredients to bind together?
Either as or for a vegetarian, you might have whipped up a quick omelette or some scrambled egg. But now what?
And as for vegans, – don’t they miss pancakes in a morning? Don’t they miss scrambled eggs? Muffins no longer an option? Lemon pie? Merengue?! Forget it! Right?
Nope! Rest assured, there are ways of making any dish or recipe vegan.
Baking is an art and a science, and eggs are used for different functions within the preparation of a recipe, from acting as a binding agent for the other ingredients to providing structure, leavening and in the case of the yolk, even adding flavour. These different roles are the reason why some recipes call for whole eggs, while others require only the whites or only the yolk.
Therefore, not every egg alternative will work well for every recipe, and so when looking to replace the egg with one of the many substitutes, it pays to have an idea what function the egg would have had in a given recipe and which of the alternative options will perform the same function.
However, unlike the meaning of this famous saying, choosing an alternative to eggs for your recipes doesn’t have to be difficult and neither does the baking.
Many lovely people have tried and tested these methods and done all the hard work, so now you don’t have to!
Coming up, – our handy guide to 10 ingredients to use in place of eggs, and which one to use depending on the recipe you’re making.
Banana
Silken tofu
Aquafaba (‘bean water’). Best for: Merengues, pavlovas, macarons, and anything which would use egg-whites.
No longer just a tasty and protein-rich humble side, or the main ingredient of hummus, chickpeas (or garbanzo beans) really come into their own when it comes to veganising traditionally egg-based recipes. Once whipped, chickpea brine has all the properties of egg-whites.
You can thank French musician Joel Roessel for his initial experiments on the molecular properties of bean brine, and later, American, Goose Wohlt for this one. Wohlt, (who coined the more appetising name ‘Aquafaba’ from the Latin words for ‘water’ and ‘bean’) brought this amazingly repurposed by-product of tinned chickpeas to the vegan community back in 2015, when he posted images of perfectly formed merengues in a Facebook group, stating that they were made from just two ingredients, – whipped chickpea water and sugar.
In doing so he brought merengues, pavlovas, lemon pie and macarons back to vegans everywhere, and saved probably millions of litres of the brine going straight down the kitchen sink.
So next time you pull open a tin of chickpeas, make yourself a dessert as well.
Shop-bought egg replacers. Best for:
Usually in powder form, there are many different brands of egg-replacers which are easy to find nowadays in most major supermarkets across the USA and UK, as well as Health Food shops, and of course, the internet.
Vegan-Egg
Vegan custard
Cupcakes!
Flax seeds (Linseed) – Yes, these are actually the same thing, and you might find it under either name depending on what country you’re in.
Chia seeds – if you’ve ever made Chia Pudding, or thrown some in with your Overnight Oats, you will know that chia seeds go rather glutinous when wet. It is this property that makes them a good alternative to use in place of eggs in …
Apple sauce – generally one tablespoon of applesauce is equivalent to one egg. (This only apples to Applesauce from the USA however. The Apple Sauce found in the UK … )
Baking soda and vinegar
Agar-agar and boiled water
Agar, Agar-Agar, or ‘Vegan Gelatine’, as it’s known, is the perfect substitute for jelly (or jello), as you can imagine, and everything else where gelatine would normally be used. But it turns out it’s also a great replacement for eggs.
