Thursday, January 22, 2009

Egg White Disaster Revisited

Of my posts so far, my failed attempt at scrambled egg whites has elicited the most comment. First to weigh in, my friend Claudia, cook extraordinaire.Link

For those of you who don't know Claude, she is the hostess with the most-est, former nutrition, food and dieting columnist for the Hartford Courant, the cook I wish I were. Utterly fearless in the kitchen, she has that rare ability to survey a table of ingredients and spontaneously whip them into something delicious and original. Beet salad, arugula, pistachio meat loaf, micro-green salads, cold cucumber soup, these are all foods that I tasted for the first time Claudia's kitchen (not a bad name for a Food Network TV show, now that I think about it).

Then there's the kitchen. Claude cooks on a to-die-for Viking gas range with six (or is it eight?) burners and even a proofing oven to assist fermentation of bread dough. I have serious oven envy.

When it comes to food, Claudia is my E.F. Hutton: When she talks, I listen. Here's her email regarding my scrambled egg white disaster.

No-stick frying pans won't work for eggs. You need to spray the pan with Pam, the butter flavor is best for eggs as it replicates butter quite well. There are no calories in spray oil.
It's better to make one egg with the yolk than wreck a bunch of eggs extracting the white. It's true the cholesterol is in the yolk but so is the protein which is what fills you and stops you from being hungry in a hour and snacking on cholesterol-loaded goodies.
Either way - yolk or not - you can make the meal more palatable by making an omelet. You can add chopped dill, scallions, chopped orange peppers (the best flavor-wise) broccoli, whatever you want in the vegetable category. You could also add half a wedge of Laughing Cow Lite cheese - the best light cheese but again there's the cholesterol issue.
What you want is an egg breakfast that has some volume so you have a lot of bites of food. It's good to serve yourself the omelet on a piece of multi-grain or whole wheat toast, but you don't want the thing so dry it catches in your throat. This requires a non-saturated fat, thin spread of some kind.
I think we should investigate the possibilities in the stores.

I feel chastened.

Then there was my friend Ken:
I find that the best way to make an "egg-white" omelet is to use three eggs whites and one egg yolk, saving the two others for whatever...sugar cookies...
And finally, Eleanor had this to say.

Thank you all for your good advice. My next effort will be egg white-ilicious.

1 comment:

  1. One additional thought: humans have been eating eggs for millions of years. How could they suddenly be bad for us? Does it have something to do with how we produce them in modern times?

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