Vegetarian Egg White Foam

We recently had some guests stop by ChefSteps and prepared a small lunch for them. We wanted to do a version of the American Toast dish. Naturally we made everything a day ahead of time and were getting set up when we had that duh moment. One of the guests was vegetarian and the egg foam was full of gelatin. We "quickly" threw together a vegetarian version.

V.1

Eggwhite200g

Cream300g

Salt7.5g

Pepper.75g

Carageenan L.3g

The egg whites were fried on both sides in a nonstick with about 5mm oil in it. It was like a shallow fry. It was allowed to drain on some paper towels, to remove any excess oil. Meanwhile, the cream was quickly heated to a simmer. Everything was transferred to a blender and blended into a smooth puree. The puree seemed a bit thick at this point so 100g of hot milk was added to let it down slightly. The puree was then passed through an #80 sieve and transferred to a 1 liter isi siphon and charged with 14g N2O. Upon dispensing, the texture of the foam was too dense. It did not dispense evenly either as if it was too viscous to flow through the valve smoothly. The seasoning was also lacking.

V.2

Eggwhite200g

Cream300g

Milk150g

Salt7.5g

Pepper8g

Carageenan L.3g

For this version the same procedure was used, except the milk was added with the cream. The foam base seemed much thinner after sieving. The foam base was placed in a 1 liter siphon and charged with 14g N2O. Upon dispensing, the base did not seem to be aerated enough. It was charged with an additonal 7g N20. The foam was now a nice light texture, however it died very quickly. This was either due to the base being too thin or too much residual oil in the base.

V.3

Eggwhite200g

Cream300g

Milk115g

Salt7.5g

Pepper.75g

Carageenan L.3g

Milk in this version was cut back fairly significantly. Upon dispensing, the foam had great textrure. However, it did still deflate more quickly than I wanted. Still plenty of time for the egg dish, but it could be better. This was actually the foam we used for the dish as we ran out of time to do further iterations before the meal.

V.4

Eggwhite200g

Cream300g

Milk115g

Salt8g

Pepper1.1g

Carageenan L.5g

In this version, the carageenan was nearly doubled. Although the foam base did appear a little thicker. The dispensed foam is still deflating too quick. This version appeared to deflate even quicker than the last. Time to rethink the problem.

V.5

Eggwhite200g

Cream300g

Milk115g

Salt8g

Pepper1.1g

Carageenan L.3g

In this version, all oil was removed from the production process. Rather the eggwhite was fried in a dry nonstick. The milk/cream was then used to “deglaze” the pan and make sure all the bits made it out of the pan. This whole mass was then heated and transferred to a blender with the remaining ingredients. The remaining steps are the same as above. The foam was light and very stable, although it was somewhat brittle.

V.6

Eggwhite200g

Cream300g

Milk115g

Salt8g

Pepper1.1g

Carageenan L.3g

Xanthan.5g

This version was the same as V.5 with the addtion of xanthan. The xanthan helped to alleviate much of the brittleness in the foam and gave it a much more cohesive and velvety texture.

Frying the egg white for V.1

Made sure to get both sides nice and golden.

Draining excess oil.

V.1 foam base. Looked very promising.

Ok I messed up here and didn't take photos of the actual foam because I wasn't happy with it so I skipped to V.2 I will be more diligent about capturing more steps and fails also in the future.

V.2 base

V.5 foam. This was the first one I liked what was going on.

Note the graininess/brittleness of the foam.

V.6 foam. Looks a little smoother.

This was the foam I settled on.

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Comments

Patrik_Racz_19800

awesome post

Seth_Ratner_91225

This. So. Much. This.

Any chance you could give a quick explanation as to why the oil affects the stability of the foam?

Awesome content. This type of stuff is gold, and needs to go in one section of the community, or the site.

Patrik_Racz_19800

agree, this needs to have its own category. i would love to see it on the main site, but the forum is good as well, but in its own category.

tshewman

This is a great breakdown! Thanks Ben! Can't help but to wonder if it could also be stabilized if we fried some of the egg whites and did the remainder sous vide at 62 Deg for about 45 minutes?

Ben_Johnson_34605

Perhaps Chris could give a better explanation, but my understanding is that fat interrupts network of gelled proteins and carageenans etc... Thus causing reduced surface tension in the tiny bubbles that are formed in the foam. As these little bubbles collapse do to the weaker network it causes the foam to deflate.

Ben_Johnson_34605

I think this recipe could definitely be adapted to sous vide. I might go slightly hotter than 62, for something like this there is really not concern from over cooking. As you can see in the photos I cooked them pretty hard in the pan.

tshewman

Hi Ben, I would agree, although I don't know how much more stability we would get from egg whites at a higher temp sous vide? I was wondering about using them as a stabilizer and add a bit of body (hence the lower temp). The "fry" would seem to add much more flavor (?) just uncertain of the stability.

Ben_Johnson_34605

The last version of the foam was pretty stable. It would get cold before breaking down too much.

Matthew_Snyder_68770

All of the win.

Chris_Young_80640

Seth Ratner a simple way to think about how oil reduces the stability of this foam is that it competes with the water and hydrocolloids to coat the surface of the air bubbles. If the air is coated by oil, rather than the stabilizing gums, then those oil-coated bubbles can start to coalesce into larger and larger air bubbles. Eventually, this process causes a foam to collapse.

Seth_Ratner_91225

Makes perfect sense. Thanks!

What would be a recommended substitute for the lambda, if you didn't have it on hand?

robert.c.brown15

So I replied to this last night and now it seems it is gone. I have no idea what happened to my.

Anyway, it said something along the lines of...AWESOME!

I think this approach is perfect. The QUALITY of the INFORMATION is fantastic and the photos are perfect and helpful. I'm assuming this didn't take as long as your typical output with the very refined videos, etc. Those are fantastic, but something like this, with a paragraph or two to break things down and helpful photos that aren't necessarily professionally done I think would be a great addition to this forum. You could create a sub-head called "The ChefSteps Kitchen" or something and make it so that only you guys can post new topic threads in it and members can only comment on those said posts, ask questions, but not create new topic threads. This post would be perfect in there. It could also be a place where we could find more things like this, that maybe aren't up to normal ChefSteps standard, but maybe one of the guys working out a part of a recipe and going through trial and error could use it as a place to report back to us and enlighten us.

Or whatever. Just a thought. This seems like a great post that obviously will be seen with the "hot" feature, but could even benefit from its own sub-heading.

Anyway, thanks for the information. Really enjoyed it!