What to do with Crystalized Egg Whites in the kitchen

This one belongs in the kitchen cupboard, next to the flour and the oats. Not in the gym bag. That’s the first useful thing to say about Crystalized Egg Whites, because I think a lot of people buy it, put it on the shelf with the gym stuff, and then leave it there wondering when they’re supposed to take it.

There’s no when. It’s egg whites and it’s dry. You cook with it.

Written down that sounds obvious. Standing in front of the cupboard first thing, holding a tub that looks like every other tub in the house, it’s less obvious, and that’s how a perfectly good tub ends up sitting there unopened, lol.

It tastes of very little, and that’s the trick

It’s unflavoured. That sounds like a downside until you’ve lived with it for a while, and then it’s the reason you keep reaching for it. A flavoured powder decides what it’s going into. Chocolate goes in chocolate things, vanilla goes in vanilla things, and if you put vanilla in something savoury you’ve made a mistake you’ll be eating for the next ten minutes.

This one doesn’t decide anything. It goes into whatever you were already making and the flavour of that thing stays the flavour of that thing. The question stops being what does this taste like and starts being what am I making with it.

What happens when you mix it

Worth saying up front, because I don’t think anybody tells you: this isn’t a flavoured protein powder and it doesn’t behave like one. If that’s the last tub you had open in the house, put that picture down before you start.

There are two ways in. You can bring it back to liquid egg whites with water, which is what a shaker cup is for, or you can skip that entirely and put it in dry, along with the flour and the oats and the rest of the dry things.

What you don’t get is a milkshake. A flavoured powder is built to go thick and sweet in cold water and this one isn’t, so a shaker of it on its own comes out thin and tasting of almost nothing. That isn’t it going wrong, it’s the thing doing exactly what it says on the tub. It’s egg whites. The flavour is meant to come from whatever you put them in.

So give it a proper stir and then stop thinking about it. The mixing isn’t the interesting part here. What you’re making is.

Oats, and overnight oats

Oats are the easiest place to start with it, and overnight oats are the easiest version of that.

Jar, oats, the powder in with them while everything’s still dry, then the milk on top. Stir it, lid on, into the fridge, go to bed. In the morning it’s oats. It tastes like oats and milk and whatever else went in, which is the entire point.

Dry in with the dry first, then the wet on top. There’s no rule behind that, it’s just easier.

After that it’s whatever you’d normally put in oats. Berries, a spoon of peanut butter, cinnamon, a banana that’s going soft on the side and needs using anyway. None of that changes because the powder is in there, and that’s the thing I keep coming back to. You’re making your oats. You’re not making some protein oat product that happens to resemble oats.

Do a few jars at once if you’re organised enough, which is easier said than done. Four jars on a Sunday is four mornings where breakfast already exists, and that’s worth more than it sounds.

Shakes and smoothies

A shaker bottle or a blender, and they’re two different jobs.

The shaker is the quick one. Cold drink in, powder in, shake it, drink it. That’s for the mornings where you’ve got about a minute and no interest in washing a blender jug afterwards.

The blender is where it gets more useful, because it goes in with everything else and disappears into it. Banana, ice, a handful of frozen berries, a spoon of oats if you want it to be the meal rather than the drink. It comes out tasting like the smoothie you made, and that’s all.

Cold coffee is the one worth trying if you haven’t. Coffee, ice, the powder, blend it. It’s a better breakfast than no breakfast.

Pancakes and batter

Batter is the one that gets overlooked. Whisk it in with the flour the way you would any other dry ingredient, then the milk and the egg go in and you carry on with the recipe as it’s written.

Pancakes, waffles, the base of a mug cake, banana bread if you’re the sort of household that buys bananas faster than anyone eats them. It doesn’t fight the recipe.

Where it doesn’t work

Two things worth knowing before you buy it.

It won’t rescue anything. Because it tastes of so little, it also can’t fix a recipe that wasn’t very good. If the smoothie was watery, it’s still watery. If the pancakes were dull, they’re dull with more in them. A flavoured powder at least drags whatever you made towards chocolate. This one hands the whole job back to you, and some days you don’t want the job.

And it asks you to be cooking. That’s the bigger one. A tub that goes in water is a tub you can use on a bad day, standing at the counter, half awake. This one mostly wants you to be making something already, so on the days you’re not making anything, it stays shut. That’s the trade, and it’s the same reason it earns its place the rest of the time. I’m just not going to sell it to you as the low effort option, because it isn’t.

Where I’d start

Overnight oats. Make it the night before, eat it, decide whether you like it, then try it in a batter at the weekend when you’ve got time to make a mess.

There’s a pan method on the tub as well, cooked like eggs rather than stirred into something, and the directions for that are on the product page.

That’s how it ends up in the cupboard rather than in the bag. It turns into something you cook with, and the things you cook with get used.

Crystalized Egg Whites is here if you want to put one in your own cupboard.

Stay Swole,
Justin