Has anyone used pasteurized eggs? They have recently become available in our area, and are suggested for use in recipes where the eggs are not cooked, since pasteurization removes the risk of salmonella poisoning.
I like them since they take the risk out of some of the recipes I regularly make (I was never able to resist the temptation of raw chocolate chip cookie dough, although I didn’t offer it to my kids.)
I was hoping to use them to make my grandmother’s boiled frosting recipe for my son’s birthday cake, but was unable to do so because I couldn’t get peaks to form when I was beating the egg whites. Does the pastuerization process make it impossible to beat the egg whites to form stiff (or even soft) peaks?
This has happened to me twice, by the way, and on both occasions I was careful to make sure that both my bowl and beaters were clean, dry, and free of any oils before starting. Also, I was careful to make sure that there was not a trace of yolk left in the egg whites when I separated the eggs.
Sheesh. I’ve got to examine my relationship with this board. When I saw your question I don’t think I even knew there were such things as pasteurized eggs, and now I know how they are pasteurized and I’ve even learned the following from a review of pasteurized eggs:
I use Eggology eggwhites for uncooked mousses, frosting, things like that. They come already separated in clear plastic containers (You’re using the eggs pasteurized in shell I take it, which are great for cookie dough you can eat, etc).
Not only do they whip up just fine (takes a little longer than fresh eggwhites you separated yourself I think) but you save the hassle of separating.
I am able to buy these retail in my area. The website has a store locator. You can also order them, but unless you are a big time baker, I doubt you want a case.
Found out the hard way while making a wedding cake in a hotel room (with kitchen) in a distant city that not all whites are the same. A product by Papettis called, I think, “Just Whites” that claimed to be nothing but egg whites pasteurized DID NOT whip up. AAAAA!
Thanks, beatle. The people in that test kitchen were a lot more patient than I was. I have a pretty heavy duty mixer, and I gave it probably 3-5 minutes, tops. It just looked like I wasn’t going to get much further than that, so I gave up on them.
I do recommend them otherwise, though.
One caveat: If you do buy them, when you’re checking through the carton to make sure that none of the eggs are broken, also make sure that they also have the stamp on top to denote that they’re the pasteurized ones. (The brand we have locally is Davidson’s, and they stamp it with a pink D on the top.) I’ve noticed a time or two where it looked like someone had traded a few regular eggs for the pasteurized ones.
Don’t you just love someone who would do that — knowing that the person who would eventually buy the eggs probably would do so because they planned to eat the eggs without fully cooking them, they slipped them eggs which put them at risk of salmonella poisoning. I hope they enjoyed that quarter they saved in doing so.
Thanks, carlotta. I had not heard of the Eggology ones before. As your surmised, I was using the ones pasteurized in the shell.
I had tried the “Just Whites” before, too, and was also frustrated that I couldn’t get them to whip up, either. I’ll have to check to see if I can get the Eggology ones locally, as I haven’t gotten any of these other ones to whip. Even though one source I have claims that the boiled frosting does actually cook the egg whites, (since you beat a just-boiled sugar/water/cornsyrup mixture into the beaten egg whites), I don’t think that it would qualify as actually cooking the eggs, and I don’t want to try out the theory on my kids.