John Myers
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Aquafaba – artificial beaten egg whites
Cooking and baking are not always easy for vegans. They have to find suitable alternatives for many important ingredients, such as eggs. With aquafaba, the search is over and you can conjure up the greatest meringues, mousse au Chocolat, marshmallows, coconut macaroons, or marshmallows. And all without eggs, you only need aquafaba.
- Aquafaba is based on water and beans.
- Hard to imagine at first, but this mixture is actually the perfect substitute for beaten egg whites. But aquafaba is not only suitable for baking. Bean water is also ideal as an emulsifier for cooking.
- The secret of aquafaba lies in the ingredients that remain in the water when the beans are cooked. As a rule, chickpeas are used for the aquafaba. Basically, you can use other legumes as well.
Preparation of the vegan egg whites
During cooking, chickpeas release many of their ingredients, such as proteins, into the water. This bean water forms the basis for the aquafaba.
- First, boil the beans. Then separate the water from the beans by pouring it through a sieve into a container.
- To thicken the liquid, add locust bean gum, baking powder, and the obligatory pinch of salt. About half a teaspoon each of baking powder and locust bean gum is added to 100 milliliters of bean water. If you are allergic to locust bean gum, use half a teaspoon of lemon juice instead.
- After you have mixed everything well, use a hand mixer to beat the aquafaba in the same way as you would beat the egg whites until it forms an egg white-like mass.
- By the way: Aquafaba has been celebrated in vegan circles for about three years as an ingenious egg substitute. In fact, however, aquafaba is by no means a new discovery – only the name is a new creation. More than a hundred years ago, our ancestors used bean water for cooking and baking due to the lack of eggs. Later, when times got better and everything was plentiful, the recipe for the fake egg whites, as it was then called, fell into oblivion
