Exploding Egg Bites
I love the Bacon & Gruyère egg bites from Starbucks™. They are expensive and inconvenient to obtain now that I do not commute to work. Solution: make them myself. However, my exploding egg bites are proof that I should have stayed out of the kitchen.
The Exploding Egg Bites Disaster
It was a disaster. I tripled the recipe to have 21 egg bites. That was enough for several in the freezer, providing breakfast for at least three weeks. Great plan!
Unfortunately, increasing the servings (double, triple, etc.) of a recipe for a cook as inexperienced as I am is not a good idea. I didn’t have a one-serving mess – I had a three-serving mess.
The recipe did tell me to put the lid on the container that I put in the pressure cooker, but I had read right past that instruction. The recipe also says not to fill to the brim of the mold, which I also read right past. I may need to go back to school to refresh my reading skills.
As a result, the mixture expanded over the top of the mold and flowed into the water at the bottom of the pressure cooker. This left weird tunnels through the egg bites. Regrettably, I failed to take a picture of this disaster, so I can’t provide the evidence. You may sleep better having not seen the mess.
What I Did Instead
I still had, at least theoretically, enough mixture to make two more batches. However, the silicone mold was a pain to clean, and I was tired, so I put the remaining mixture into a regular muffin pan and baked it in the oven. I only got six more egg bites, not 14, and part of this is due to the muffin pan having cups that are oversized and are likely equal or nearly equal to two muffin cups that are traditionally sized.
I have eight egg bites I was able to salvage, which is four servings from the pressure cooker and six from the oven. So I was able to freeze ten servings. I did not get 21 egg bite servings as I had hoped, but still, I have breakfast for the coming days.
Believe it or not, on top of all that disaster, I ate an egg bite from those baked in the oven for breakfast yesterday. Bleh. The egg is tough and not appealing at all. I will eat the ones I made, but I never want to make them like this again. Hot sauce should cover many sins the next time I have one from those cooked in the oven.
The Sous Vide Cooking Method
My research shows that the egg bites served at Starbucks™ are made with the cooking method sous vide. I have never done that cooking method, and it sounds intimidating.
My friend’s Instant Pot™ has a sous vide setting, but mine does not, so I will not be making them that way anytime soon. Further research at Sandra Valvassori leads me to believe I can achieve something close to what I want in the oven and with some ingredient changes. That is for next time…