mix, mix…stir, stir

Back in August ’08 I posted a tip on freezing egg yolks, so here is the other half of the story. Freezing egg whites doesn’t require any tricks; they freeze well and when thawed behave like egg whites that haven’t been frozen, even retaining the ability to be whipped into a nice foam. The trick for me was figuring out a good system for freezing egg whites.

photo by David Peterman

Over the years it seems that whenever I generated a lot of spare egg whites during a cooking project I would freeze them. I would even get around to using the frozen whites, but forgetting to label the container with how many whites it contained made using them annoying, as it required digging out a book to look up the measurement of a typical large egg white (2 tablespoons per white and 1 tablespoon per yolk). It was the single egg white that tripped me up. I would think, “I should freeze this,” but usually feeling pressed for time, I wouldn’t want to bother and would toss it justifying that it was just one egg white. Over time, I started feeling like those “it’s just one egg white” moments were adding up and it was bugging me.

What I needed was as system! Something easy to do in the middle of cooking that I would do every time I was faced with a spare egg white. Small Ziploc plastic containers were the answer.

I have a stack of these little bowls with snap-on lids (no spills) and anytime I separate an egg and will not be using the white, I separate the white into this container, snap on the lid and toss it in the freezer. Every time! Only one white is allowed per container. The next day, or the next time I open the freezer and have a moment, I process the frozen white. It takes all of about 30 seconds: run warm water over the outside of the container, pop the frozen white out onto a piece of plastic wrap, wrap, date, toss in a zip-top freezer bag with the other frozen whites.

I now have a nice collection of frozen egg whites at the ready and have taken advantage of them numerous times when making buttercream frosting and various other things. Buttercream is particularly gratifying because I use six whites and don’t end up generating a bowl full of orphaned yolks in the process. The best part is it’s saving the random single white that really builds my stash. Having a system in place makes freezing them an automatic process. I feel good!

All photos by David Peterman unless otherwise noted

Tags: egg whites

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Clever Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.