Egg whites in cartons,

[middydd]

A pastry chef on TV was demonstrating making an Angel Food cake. She stated that you can now buy egg whites in cartons but for baking this recipe it was better to separate the eggs yourself. You'll get more volume.

I've used carton egg whites for Angel Food cake and love the convenience. I didn't notice a difference in the volume or height of my cake.

Anybody else find they get a different result using freshly separated eggs or carton egg whites?

[mckayinutah]

If I am making a small amount of angelfood cakes, I'll use fresh whites (Ii use fresh whenever possible,) but if it is a large volume to crack and/or separate, I see no difference when I use whites in a carton.

Jason

[tan319]

When I was working the souffle station during my appenticeship I didn't like the carton whites much.

They just behaved differently.

Ditto for liquid yolks or whole eggs.

Just didn't dig them.

[celenes]

I have only used the carton ones once or twice myself. Laziness was my reason to use them.

I prefer as everyone else has mention to use fresh.

[Wendy DeBord]

We were just talking about these egg products in the end of the buttercream thread. I had only used them in non-whipped applications or non-cooked for safety reasons. But I've got to say....this past week I used them everytime I could, just to learn.

When I whipped the whites with plain sugar they worked out great, good volume. But when I poured a hot sugar syrup into them, they didn't work great. I never got a really firm meringue. But since I've only done this once....I can't make a real judgement.

I also used cartoned yolks as much as possible this week and didn't see any negative issues.

I'm glad this issue came up....I sure didn't miss seperating eggs.

[middydd]

I think I'll do a comparison, same recipe made with carton whites and fresh separated eggs. See which gives bigger volume.

With all the strawberries on sale, I don't think anybody would complain about being presented with the "extra" Angel Food Cake.

[phum]

We use carton egg whites as well in our kitchen. They are pasturized egg whites. We have no problems when we whip them as a French meringue but we ONLY use fresh egg whites for Italian meringues. As Sinclair said, there was a problem with volume when hot syrup was poured into the whipped pasturized egg whites.

I've noticed that when using fresh egg whites to make meringue, I always got a tighter meringue than when using pasturized egg whites. I think the pasturization process does something to the characteristics of the carton egg whites.

Hope this helps

[nightscotsman]

I see big buckets of frozen whites in one of our coolers, but the restraurant team doesn't use them, so I'm not sure what they do get used for in the kitchen.

However, we use TONS of frozen egg yolks. You would too if your creme brulee recipe called for 7200 grams of yolks! We learned the hard way how wonderful it is to have this stuff around when we didn't get our regular delivery and we had to separate fresh eggs for everything.

[tan319]

Neil, is there any special procedure you guys use to break them up ?

That's what I don't dig about them.

I've found that I don't like the way sauces look when I've used them .

it's kind of a grainy look.

I would expect that with your chef, you are getting a great result.

In cake batters, doughs, you wouldn't see it.

It was a topic of conversation with one of my French guys the other day.

[nightscotsman]

Neil, is there any special procedure you guys use to break them up ?

That's what I don't dig about them.

I've found that I don't like the way sauces look when I've used them .

it's kind of a grainy look.

I would expect that with your chef, you are getting a great result.

In cake batters, doughs, you wouldn't see it.

It was a topic of conversation with one of my French guys the other day.

I assume you mean the frozen yolks? The stuff we get comes already blended with a small percentage of sugar, so when it's defrosted it's nice and smooth - almost like a gel. Never had a problem with graininess.