How to make vegan meringue and other recipes with aquafaba

The next time you open a jar of chickpeas to prepare a hummus or make a delicious curry, it will not occur to you to discard the liquid. This yellowish or translucent liquid in which chickpeas are preserved is called aquafaba and in vegan cuisine it has a great place: it can replace the egg and especially the whites.

In the vegan pastry, the egg can be replaced by many other ingredients, such as chickpea flour to make an omelette, ground flax seeds, chia seeds, apple or banana compote to make muffins or biscuits, or tofu to make fillings or creams. But in the traditional recipes that attract us by the use of whipped egg whites, which give a very light texture, none of these foods works. Minus the aquafaba.

As strange as it may sound, this liquid can be mounted until you get a frothy meringue-like consistency.

And, yes, you can use the liquid from other legumes, but chickpea aguafaba has the mildest flavor and it is the one that best rides.

How to make summer meringue or assemble the aquafaba

To do so, you simply have to open the jar of chickpeas, drain them well and save the liquid. From a 400 g jar we will obtain 200-250g of liquid.

Pour the liquid from the chickpea jar into a bowl and beat with the rods until you get the meringue. some are needed 5-7 minutes until you get the meringue.

Some advices:

We have to use a clean dry bowl without any fatty element; otherwise, the meringue will not mount. It is best to use a hand mixer with rods.To stabilize cream or meringue and mount them more easily, we should add 1 teaspoon vinegar white wine or apple or lemon juice.To have an even firmer meringue and help it not download afterwards, we should add 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, which is a kind of salt. In cake or cake batters it is not necessary, but if we want to make meringue properly, without the cream of tartar it tends to go down.

Once the aquafaba has been whipped, it looks, smells and tastes similar to whipped egg whites. Can add sugar or vanilla essence.

We can use this vegan meringue in:

Cake doughsLight biscuitsIce creamsMoussesMayonnaises

How to substitute whites in recipes: To replace an egg we will use 3 tablespoons of aguafaba, for a yolk 1 tablespoon and a white 2 tablespoons.

make aquafaba at home

It is possible to prepare aquafaba at home. We simply cook chickpeas as usual. The ration would be 1 cup of chickpeas for 4 cups of water.

Once the chickpeas are cooked, leave them stand in the water about 4 hours for them to cool down.

then we have to strain the chickpeas and cook the cooking water until it thickens by half and is gelatinous and dense, the same consistency as the chickpeas in the can.

Is very it is important that the liquid is thick to be able to mount it.

How to save aquafaba for later

If we open the jar of chickpeas and we are not going to use the liquid at the moment, it is possible to freeze it. We simply drain the chickpeas, pour the liquid into a container or a boat and freeze.

When we need it, let it thaw in the fridge and use as usual.

5 recipes with aquafaba

With aquafaba we will mainly create healthy pastry recipes, although we also have other options. In these recipes the aquafaba will allow us to obtain the mousse texture in a creamy chocolate and avocado mousse; give fluffiness to a cake that children will love; create some gluten free macarons; make a perfect Meringue for our lemon pie; and even make one creamy mayonnaise for all kinds of savory recipes.