Aquafaba Egg Replacement: The Good, Bad and Ugly

By Amy Awol

Image by Hanna Harmel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41416945

The aquafaba revolution

What does it really come down to when you use aquafaba as an egg replacement? If you look up
“aquafaba” using a search engine like Google on the Internet, you’ll get more than 1.2 million
results in less than a second. Browsing through these soon leads us to believe that aquafaba is a
miraculous liquid, which has qualities that can replace egg whites and be used in hundreds of
recipes. Furthermore, in terms of food anyway, this has sparked a recent minor revolution.
Aquafaba was initially discovered by vegan French musician Joël Roessel in 2014, and further
developed and promoted by U.S. software developer Goose Wolt in 2015. It has made
tremendous worldwide impact on vegan recipes.

Enthusiasm for using aquafaba has risen exponentially, as shown by the huge number of entries
found on the Internet in the past three to four years. Aquafaba is used to make baked goods,
cream cheese, frosting, ice cream, mayonnaise, meringues, non-dairy creamer, soufflés, and
whipped toppings, among many other products. These recipe success stories would encourage
almost any cooking enthusiast to try a recipe using aquafaba, and nearly all of them show delicious
mouthwatering pictures you can almost taste.

What’s not shown are the less successful results from preparing recipes with aquafaba. These are
more common than people might imagine. A quick glance at the literature can lead a person to
quickly try and possibly fail at making even a simple recipe with disappointing results. It’s not that
there aren’t subtle warnings, but these will be brushed aside as many new aquafaba novices (like
me) rush to try their first recipe(s). I hope readers of this article could avoid inevitable and yet
avoidable disappointment by taking a few important details into account.

First attempts

One of my first excursions into the world of vegan cooking led me to work with chickpeas
(garbanzos for some of us) and aquafaba, with edible but less than successful results. My initial
enthusiasm led me to believe what I read and saw in pictures without further thought. Just pour
aquafaba into a bowl and whip it a few minutes for an immediate culinary delight. How hard could
that be?

What I expected was more difficult to achieve than I thought. My first experiment with spicy
chickpea veggie burgers had to be tweaked because I was missing key ingredients. I switched
breadcrumbs for ground oatmeal and omitted flax seeds. My veggie burgers at first were mushy,
which was fixed with some flour, but still invariably soft. Making aquafaba mayonnaise on my first
try wasn’t any better. I used a two-speed hand mixer with a plastic bowl. Although I followed all
recipe directions and used exact proportions of ingredients, the mixture wound up more like
dressing than mayonnaise. I nearly burnt out the hand mixer, which became too hot to handle,
overheated, and fell apart as I finished whipping the mayo mixture. Not exactly stellar results.

Concerns about using aquafaba

So there are several concerns about using aquafaba that new users should be aware of. First,
there’s concern from some people about BPA and salt in canned chickpeas. Although possible side
effects are debatable, it’s easy enough to directly cook chickpeas and prepare aquafaba yourself,
without BPH or salt. People may also discover that using aquafaba for egg replacement when
baking doesn’t always turn out as expected. Cooking may break down some of the emulsion
properties of aquafaba differently than it does when using eggs, and undesired baking results can
range from moist and undercooked to crumbly. Meringues may fall or disappear upon being
cooked, mayonnaise may be runny, and whipped toppings may separate when refrigerated.
Anything else? Aquafaba has saponins, carbohydrates and protein that contribute as emulsifiers,
but it only has a tenth the quantity of protein compared to eggs, so its nutritional value is
negligible. Some argue that if aquafaba had any real value for cooking, people would have
discovered it long ago, so something must obviously be suspect or wrong with it. Proceed at your
own risk if these potential drawbacks don’t deter you. Most recipes will work with some
persistence.

Keeping Murphy’s Law in mind, it’s highly probable that one critical element will be lacking in your
kitchen, which is needed for success at working with aquafaba. If this is not the case, then you’re
highly prepared, skilled or lucky, and need not read any further. You’ll succeed at nearly anything
you try to cook. Otherwise, there are a few suggestions to consider before using aquafaba in a
new recipe.
Sometimes it’s best to learn from other peoples’ mistakes before you learn from your own. I wish I
could have followed my own advice!

A few suggestions

- Use a high wattage stand mixer with a glass bowl for prolonged high speeds.
- If possible, make your own aquafaba straight from cooking chickpeas without added salt.
- If using aquafaba from a can, try cooking and reducing it 20-25 percent first before using.
- Keep in mind that canned aquafaba has salt (and other chemicals). Reduce recipe salt.
- Refrigerate aquafaba before using to improve whipping qualities.
- Add ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar as a stabilizer for whipping a small quantity of aquafaba.
- Use a wire whisk with a large mixing bowl, and work with patience (it takes longer).
- Avoid changing a recipe, unless it’s unavoidable, since it represents a proven process.
- Whatever you do, don’t throw aquafaba liquid down the drain.
- You can almost always eat your less than successful results anyway.
- Increase baking time slightly when using aquafaba to replace eggs in regular recipes.
- Read and follow recipe cooking and preparation instructions carefully for best results.
- For egg replacement in regular recipes, use 2 Tbsp per egg white or 3 Tbsp per whole egg.

Being aware of what you’re dealing with can help you to be marginally more successful than
embarking for your first time into the unknown without a compass. I hope this points you in the
right direction—Amy

P.S. How will later recipe trials work after becoming more aware of the challenges for using
aquafaba? Don’t always expect success, but results improve as the aquafaba behaves and whips
closer to the expectations and ideal images we’ve been enticed by in the first place.

(The sub-title of this article is inspired by the original title for one of the greatest spaghetti western
movies of all time, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and
Eli Wallach in 1966)

©2018 by Amy Awol

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