Daughter has adopted a vegan diet, which means we now have exotic food items like lentils and black rice in the pantry. Recently, she sent me to the store with a curious list of recipe ingredients, including “aquafaba”. Do you know what this is?
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Back to the grocery store. I had no idea what aquafaba was and Googled it in the middle of the pasta/grains aisle. Turns out, it’s a pretty basic pantry item.
Aquafaba is the liquid from a can of beans.
Apparently, it can be used to replace egg whites in many recipes. Here are some vegan cooking tips for aquafaba from www.care2.com:
- use aquafaba from white beans; it has the most neutral color and taste
- to collect aquafaba, pour a can of beans into a colander with a bowl underneath to collect the liquid
- aquafaba can keep in the fridge 1-2 days
- 1/4 cup aquafaba = one egg
Confession: I’ve never actually tried to cook with aquafaba and neither has Daughter. She usually uses a cider vinegar/ baking soda/ baking powder combination that mimics the action of eggs in baking recipes. Her cookies and cupcakes remain the yummiest around, despite the lack of chicken eggs.
What unusual words from cooking have you come across lately?
Thanks for getting nerdy with me!
Bean photo credit: Dan4th Nicolas via Flickr CC-BY
Um, totally fascinated. I truly learned something new!
Hey… MaisyMak hasn’t featured a recipe lately… how about something aquafaba? 😉
That’s a good one! I’ve seen many recipes that call for draining and rinsing cans of beans, so it’s nice to know that the “aquafaba” (first time hearing that word!) is useful 🙂
True- but honestly, I’m not sure how much I’m going to use it!
I suppose I should have been able to get that since it’s straight-forward Latin, but I was stumped. Great word!