JUST Egg. Ironically, this bottled product is not made from eggs at all. It’s made from plants.
Perhaps like me, you’ve seen this stuff on store shelves next to cartons of eggs and assumed it was another liquid egg product. You know, one that’s made from chicken eggs.
But JUST Egg is entirely different. It’s made with mung beans. As such, you might think of JUST Egg as the eggy, plant-based equivalent of Beyond Meat. JUST Egg touts its product as having even a bit more protein than traditional chicken eggs, while having no cholesterol.
Now, I cook and eat lots of eggs — I even feed eggs to my dogs. Eggs pack quite a bit of nutrition, all the essential amino acids, and are still relatively cheap — despite the current high egg prices.
But when I read a recent article about how the price of JUST Egg is reaching parity (or below) that of traditional eggs, my interest was sparked. Then, while shopping at my local grocer, I saw them on sale for less than $4 for an 8-ounce bottle, about 50 cents off their normal price. A trial was in order.
So I purchased a few bottles and went to cooking. I happened to be cooking my dogs a big, open-faced omelet from traditional shelled eggs (I use a Dash griddle that I bought years ago new in the box from a thrift store).
I whisked up three traditional, shelled eggs and cooked them up into a lovely disc — like a shortcut frittata. Then I poured in an equal amount of JUST Egg and cooked that. It took a similar time — Just 2 or 3 minutes.
As I lifted the JUST Egg out of the griddle, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it looked like, well, real eggs, just a bit less dense. It took on a similar color, similar browning, and even had a similar texture. But how would it taste?
I tried them both, back to back, and was even more surprised that I enjoyed the JUST Egg as much — if not more — than traditional eggs.
It just tastes… good. It doesn’t replicate the exact egg taste, and that’s ok. It is quite similar, and has a distinct nutty taste. (It also smelled more pleasant to me when cooking, lol).
Since then, I have purchased more JUST Egg and now am substituting it for traditional shelled eggs. Now, of course, there are some limitations vs. traditional eggs. For example, you can’t make over-easy eggs, hard-boiled eggs, shirred eggs, and the like. But any recipe calling for a beaten egg has worked well thus far.
In case you’re wondering, I also had success making a traditional scramble in a regular pan. And in case you’re also wondering, yes, the dogs love JUST Egg, too.