It’s been a minute since I had time to update this site, which means I’ll be backfilling a lot of adventures that have been posted to bluesky. And I’m going to start with the most wacky adventure: freeze drying raw eggs.
The price of eggs has been all over the place for the past 18 months, but I saw a great deal at Aldi and decided now was the time to give it a go. So we got six dozen eggs and set to work.
Following the advice of this gentleman on youtube, I broke out the blender and did my best to blend each egg until the whites & yolks were completely incorporated. (That’s important if you want to be able to use the powder as an “egg”!) Each dozen got a tablespoon or two of salt as well to help do chemistry stuff that keeps the eggs from separating, I’m told. I was just trusting the process here.
Honestly, I was a little nervous about this part! Most of the people I’ve watched like to just load their trays into the freezer and then pull one out enough to pour the liquid into it, thus avoiding trying to carry a tray full of liquid without spilling it.
I don’t know why but I get very nervous about the big trays just sloshing with liquid and also I find the big chunks of freeze dried STUFF hard to manage, so I use these little green molds I got. Three sets of two fit nicely in a small tray, and when I pop the results out it’s not too hard to manage. Each cavity could hold about 3 eggs, so each tray ended up being about 1.5 dozen.
I was slightly dubious going into this, but the resulting powder became one of my surprise favorite things I’ve ever freeze dried? Partly because it’s just so easy to dump some water into some dried eggs and give it a stir and then you get perfect scrambled eggs. But after I’d freeze dried some tomatoes, I ended up with an even more evil genius idea.
Omelettes (or scrambled eggs!) in a bag.
I also freeze dried some mushrooms around the same time, and made some tomato powder. Someone on bluesky suggested adding tomato powder to the eggs, and my brain expanded and I grabbed these little mylar bags and went to work.
Each bag contains: roughly 1/3rd cup of powdered eggs, a few tablespoons of tomato powder, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, and salt, and a handful of baby portabella mushrooms I’d broken apart into little chunks. Reconstituting them is as easy as putting 1/2 cup of water in a measuring cup, upending the bag into it, and giving it a stir before letting it rehydrate for a minute or two while the pan heats up. (I also dumped some shredded cheese into it.)
On the whole, this is probably one of my favorite adventures with the freeze dryer thus far, and I’m currently trying to decide what sorts of vegetables I could freeze dry to add to my morning eggs. I want to bag up a nice solid dozen or two of these so I’ll always have a hot breakfast just one measuring cup away from my frying pan in the morning!
Please enjoy the low quality video of me making breakfast below.