Bacon and Cheddar Egg Bites
Cooked in a bain-marie so they set like custard rather than scrambling into rubber. Twelve of them, and they reheat properly, which is the whole reason to bother.
Photograph credit: sous vide egg bites by sousvideguy · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr
Where This Goes Wrong
The water bath is the recipe. Baked dry they are a completely different and worse thing.
Blend, do not whisk. A whisked mixture bakes into scrambled egg in a cup.
They reheat in 30 seconds in a microwave, which is what makes them worth making twelve at a time.
How to Make Bacon and Cheddar Egg Bites
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Heat the oven to 160°C / 320°F and butter a 12-hole muffin tin thoroughly.
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Fry the bacon over medium heat for 7 minutes until crisp, drain, and chop.
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Blend the eggs, cottage cheese, cream, salt, pepper and cayenne for 30 seconds until completely smooth and slightly frothy. Blending is what gives them the silky texture.
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Stir in the Cheddar, bacon and chives by hand.
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Divide between the muffin holes, filling each three-quarters full.
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Set the tin inside a large roasting tin and pour boiling water into the outer tin to come halfway up the sides of the muffin tin.
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Bake 25 to 30 minutes, until just set with a slight wobble at the centre. They will puff and then settle.
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Lift the tin out of the water, rest 5 minutes, then run a knife round each and lift them out.
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Why It Works
Egg protein sets somewhere around 65 to 70°C / 150 to 160°F, and above that it contracts and squeezes out water — the reason a baked egg muffin turns spongy and weeps. A water bath keeps the surrounding temperature at 100°C / 212°F but the mixture climbs slowly and evenly, so it reaches setting point and stops. The cottage cheese is doing the same work as cream in a custard: its fat and protein get between the egg proteins and stop them binding too tightly.
Leftovers, Reheating and Keeping
Refrigerated for 5 days, or frozen for 2 months. Reheat from frozen for 90 seconds.
Changing the Recipe
- In a sauce, full-fat crème fraîche can usually take the place of the double cream; single cream is thinner and more likely to split if it boils, so keep it below a simmer.
Good With
- Hot sauce
- Black coffee
- Sliced avocado
The Numbers per Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. Garnishes, greasing and other items with no amount are not counted. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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