You telling me a plant laid this egg?

What the heck is going on with the price of eggs!?

Egg talk

Chicken eggs aren’t going away, but in the future, they might not be as easy to find or afford.

Eggs are awesome in sandwiches, especially breakfast sandwiches, but you might not think about the fact that they are used in other parts of sandwiches as well, like in mayonnaise and bread recipes and they are even used as a binding agent when cooking or frying foods. Is there a worthy alternative?

Disclaimer: I am not a vegan. The point of this sandwich blog post is not to try to convince anyone to become a vegan or buy these products. This is 100% not sponsored content. This is simply a thought experiment that became a real-life test to see what would happen to breakfast sandwiches if regular chicken eggs simply weren’t available.

What sandwich are we making?

This week I’m focused on making a meatless breakfast sandwich made with a base of plant-based eggs or egg substitutes. I’m going to test out a scrambled egg alternative, compare plant-based eggs to a regular egg wash on top of buns, and even try to see if a homemade eggless mayonnaise recipe can work.

It’s not going to just be an egg sandwich though. I have a couple of other solid additions to a breakfast sandwich that I’ll be adding. Come along for the ride as I tackle a few challenges and see what I think about these fake eggs.

Eggs from plants

JUST Egg is a company (with a sweet url: ju.st) that makes vegan food products, the first of which is called Eggs from plants. They sell it in two formats, a liquid pourable egg substitute and they also sell frozen folded egg patties. Today I am writing about the liquid variety that is sold in small plastic jugs or paper milk cartons.

Important for this blog post: I will be using the phrases “JUST Egg” and “Eggs from plants” a lot and they aren’t just phrases, they refer to a specific company and product from that company. I will reiterate that none of this content is sponsored.

Eggs from plants are made primarily from water and mung bean protein. The company that makes these egg substitutes has an interactive page dedicated to explaining how Eggs from plants are made. This page also goes deep into their beliefs about how their product is much more sustainable and better for our planet than the factory farms that produce chicken eggs.

Are Eggs from plants healthy?

Here’s an easy-to-read breakdown comparing a regular egg to an equivalent-sized amount of Eggs from plants. Wikipedia has a nice “chicken egg sizes” chart that sets a large chicken egg at 56.8 grams which is very close to what you see here. The Eggs from plants data comes right from the back of the container.

I’m not a dietitian or someone who even pretends to be knowledgeable about health, but Eggs from plants don’t seem to be a standout choice over regular chicken eggs based on their healthiness. They’re not bad either, they just seem to be fairly close to regular eggs in all categories other than cholesterol. You also should note that they do contain sodium. This is fairly important when it comes to seasoning before cooking. Go lighter with the salt than you would with a regular egg.

Plant-based egg prices vs regular egg

Eggs are more expensive right now than they have ever been, but are plant-based eggs a better deal when it comes to pricing? This is an easy question to answer. At the current time, no. Eggs from plants are more expensive than even the most expensive eggs at the stores that I shop at. The following three photos are from a small grocery store called Cermak Produce that’s a short walk from my house. The prices are almost always a little higher here than at the big box chain stores.

I did some test online browsing at three stores, one of which is a national chain, and got some sample pricing on Eggs from plants vs a dozen large eggs. Please note that I live in Chicago and your prices could vary wildly and they will differ from store to store as well.

If we take the least expensive priced Eggs from plants and compare that to the most expensive 12 chicken eggs we get:
Eggs from plants: $7.36 / 10 = 0.736 per egg
Mariano’s: $8.00 / 12 = 0.749 per egg.
But that’s looking at the most expensive, normal large eggs and the cheapest Eggs from plants so it wasn’t really fair. If you shop around, even in this day of expensive eggs, you can and probably will save money buying real chicken eggs.

How do Eggs from plants taste?

I cooked a chicken egg and then a JUST Egg: Eggs from plants in the same pan one after the other with the same amount of seasoning as a test. My wife and I both took samples of the results. I was a bit shocked at how closely the Eggs from plants tasted to actual eggs. This was not a blind tasting.

I rarely eat an egg on its own like this, I typically will add cheese or meat or veggies if I am making an omelet or I will use it as a component in a biscuit or breakfast sandwich.

Both my wife and I could tell the difference when the two eggs were cooked and sitting side by side. But we both felt that the texture of JUST Egg was close to regular eggs. The taste is different, and you should note that the plant-based eggs already have some sodium in them, so be careful not to oversalt.

My wife felt that she could taste something similar to mung bean sprouts that she enjoys in Chinese or Asian dishes but also felt that the texture was very similar to the regular chicken egg and agreed with me that if you tucked these into a sandwich with bread and other ingredients, you’d never know.

Now that we have all the Eggs from plants content sorted, let’s start on the sandwich.

Simple vegan burger buns

Using oil in place of butter

Butter is considered to be a solid fat because at room temperature it retains its shape and is solid. Oil on the other hand is a liquid fat because it is liquid at room temperature. They are both often used in baking all sorts of things, from cookies to bread to cakes. Fat in a bread recipe brings moisture and helps the crumb be more tender.

Oil is composed of almost all fat or lipids but butter contains water which brings the lipid level down to around 84%. Because of this difference when you are removing the butter and instead adding oil, you should only use 3/4ths of the stated amount. It’s different when you go the other way, but to turn my bun recipe vegan we need to add a smaller amount of fat in the form of oil.

Do Eggs from plants work as an egg wash?

If you have been reading along with my sandwich blog for a while, you probably have noted me mentioning egg washes before. They’re usually composed of a whole egg, cracked and mixed in with 1 tablespoon of water. The water helps the egg to be just a little bit thinner and the wash itself serves the purpose of helping the baked bun retain a shiny and brown appearance. It’s purely visual. If some sort of egg crisis happened and we no longer had the option to purchase chicken eggs, I would 100% stop egg washing anything, because it’s only about appearance.

With that said, I just wanted to see what an Eggs from plants egg wash would do. I baked a batch of buns and created a chicken egg wash and an Eggs from plants wash and then compared them against unwashed buns. Turns out the Eggs from plants wash did leave the buns a little bit shiny, but it didn’t do much other than that. It is nice that you don’t have to waste an entire egg, and can simply pour out a tablespoon of the egg alternative to create an “egg” wash, but since it didn’t do much, I would not use Eggs from plants in the future for this purpose.

As you can see, the differences between Eggs from plants and non-washed buns are pretty much the same. There’s a tiny bit more shininess in the ones washed with plant-based eggs. But they aren’t nearly as brown or shiny as the ones with the regular egg wash.

Below is my simple burger bun recipe that you can adjust slightly to be vegan-friendly.

This is an easy bun recipe that you can make without eggs and you can easily convert it to a vegan recipe if you desire. I did not create a new recipe with the vegan substitutes, but I did put the vegan suggestions in the notes at the bottom.

If you’re a beginning baker, this is a great recipe to start from. I wrote a fairly large blog post about this recipe and a simple sandwich to go along with it. I also created a YouTube video of the process for making these buns if you’re more of a visual learner.

Simple soft hamburger buns

Recipe Card

2 hours and 45 minutes

Simple soft hamburger buns

With only six ingredients, this is the most simple, soft bun recipe I could create. Perfect for your next burger night or grilled chicken sandwich.

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Try: Simple soft hamburger buns in our Bun Calculator

Plant-based mayonnaise

I did not try to use JUST Egg Eggs from plants in a mayonnaise recipe. I did some quick googling and it seems like some have tried it and it doesn’t work. We already know that it shouldn’t work because the product isn’t meant to help with emulsification so it’s not going to help the oil thicken. The egg’s job in a mayonnaise recipe is to allow the oil and other ingredients to mix together smoothly and stay that way. When the egg is removed, you will likely have the oil separating and “breaking” the mayonnaise.

If you really are in a situation where you are unable to get your hands on eggs and you’re desperate for mayonnaise you could look to a pantry staple item that you should be able to find in most grocery stores which is a can of chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans. The beans themselves aren’t the magic, it’s the liquid that they are canned in—known as aquafaba—that does the work in helping us create a mayo without egg.

Aquafaba

I did not do the science for vegan mayonnaise, I simply found and made J. Kenji López-Alt’s Easy Vegan Mayonnaise recipe from Serious Eats. Because we all know that you never have to do the science when Kenji already did it for you. This is a good recipe and it’s really similar to the homemade mayonnaise recipe that I normally use (that uses egg). Kenji’s recipe uses aquafaba and 12 chickpeas to do the work of an egg here and the consistency turned out just like regular mayo.

Is homemade vegan mayo good?

It is. I promise you’d have a super hard time telling the difference between this same mayonnaise recipe made with aquafaba vs with an egg. It’s better than store-bought mayonnaise as well. Give it a shot and if you have an immersion blender you can make the recipe in less than 10 minutes right in the jar that you’re going to store the mayo in. It’s easy and very good mayonnaise.

Ssamjang mayonnaise

I don’t really need to talk about this too much but I used the homemade vegan mayonnaise and merged it with a little bit of ssamjang to create what I have creatively named Special ssamjang sauce. It’s just 50% mayonnaise and 50% ssamjang added together to create a sauce that has a lot of savoriness, a little bit of earthiness, and almost a bit of meatiness. I’m marking it as optional in the full sandwich recipe, but if you’re worried about your breakfast sandwich missing something meaty, this is a nice trick.

Special ssamjang sauce

Recipe Card

5 minutes

Special ssamjang sauce

Super simple combination of savory flavors that add complexity to your next burger or grilled cheese. Add it to a plain deli meat sub for a big pop of flavor.

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You can also just use regular mayonnaise in the recipe if you want or if you don’t have ssamjang available It works great like that too. I know this because in the last of these sandwiches I used just the regular vegan mayonnaise.

Quick brown sugar onions

Recipe Card

20 minutes

Quick brown sugar onions

This is an easy and fairly quick way to make sweet onions that almost seem like they've been caramelized. These onions will bring a big pop of excitement to your next sandwich or burger.

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Hash brown patty

I have made my own hash brown patties before, but I also like to keep a package of frozen hash brown patties in the freezer for breakfast emergencies or special occasions. The beauty of these things is that they can be cooked right in a pan with just a little bit of oil until they are crispy.

For some reason, the stovetop cooking method isn’t in the instructions on the packaging, but it’s my preferred method of cooking because typically when I am eating these things, I already have plans to have a skillet heated up for the eggs or breakfast meat and can just stick a hash brown patty in the pan with everything else.

For this particular sandwich, I toasted the buns and cooked the hash brown patty in the same skillet side by side, then I moved the bun and hash brown patty to a cooling rack, wiped out the pan, turned the heat way down and got the pan ready to cook the Eggs from plants.

If you really don’t want to use these frozen things, as I said above, I have a recipe for crispy hash brown patties that are much better than the frozen ones. But they take a bit of time and effort. If you want a better sandwich, this will elevate things with a big crunch.

Crispy hash brown patties

Recipe Card

2 hours and 50 minutes

Crispy hash brown patties

A crispy, fried patty of grated potatoes that will work perfectly as a side to your next breakfast sandwich or even be used as a component in the sandwich itself.

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How were the sandwiches?

I’ll be honest, I was shocked at how close to regular scrambled chicken eggs these Eggs from plants are. If you eat them on their own with just salt/pepper/seasonings you might notice that they’re not real eggs. But when you add these cooked and folded “eggs” to a sandwich, you’ll probably never notice any of the textures or tastes—or at least I did not.

I would buy Eggs from plants and use them if I was unable to find chicken eggs and maybe at some point in the future the prices could come down and they could become a more viable alternative to real eggs for even more people.

Eggless breakfast sandwiches

I use cheddar in some of these sandwiches. It’s real cheddar, not vegan cheddar. But you can use whatever cheese you want or leave it out altogether.

JUST Egg, cheese, and mayonnaise

This was my test sandwich that I made with the first round of cooking Eggs from plants. This sandwich had a slice of cheddar and some mayonnaise slathered on the inside of the top and bottom bun and those flavors mixed with the eggs and fooled my brain into thinking this was just an egg sandwich on a nice, soft homemade bun.

I did sneak my first taste of the eggs by themselves during the cooking process and was genuinely surprised. If you like an egg sandwich you would have enjoyed this simple sandwich.

The potato, cheese, onion, and plant-based egg version

Here’s the final plant-based egg sandwich with all the bells and whistles. It didn’t need those extras, but they definitely brought a bit more excitement to the sandwich.

Plant-based egg breakfast sandwich

Recipe

Plant-based egg breakfast sandwich

This savory plant-based egg-filled breakfast sandwich has a kick of sweetness from brown sugar onions and extra texture from a crispy hashbrown patty. Note: you can easily make this same sandwich with a chicken egg if you want.

Tags: cheese potato vegetarian

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by Jonathan Surratt

Ingredients:

Brown sugar onions

• 1 tablespoon olive oil or vegetable oil
• 1 to 2 sweet yellow onions, peeled, sliced and roughly chopped
• salt and black pepper
• 2 to 4 tablespoons water
• 1 to 2 tablespoons brown sugar

Special ssamjang sauce

• 2 tablespoons ssamjang paste
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise

Sandwich cook and build

• 1 teaspoon olive oil or vegetable oil
• frozen hashbrown patty
• sandwich or hamburger bun
• butter
• 3 to 4 tablespoons JUST Egg: Eggs from plants (liquid) (or use a regular egg whisked in a bowl)
• cheddar cheese slice (or vegan cheese)
• ssamjang sauce (from above)
• brown sugar onions (from above)

Direct Link to Recipe

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Directions:

Brown sugar onions: peel, slice, and roughly chop 1 or 2 sweet yellow onions. 

Place a small pot (with lid) onto medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the pot. 

Once the oil is shimmering, add all of your onion and then add a pinch of salt and ground black pepper. 

Stir the onions and then place the lid on the pot and cook for 2 minutes. 

Remove the lid, and stir everything again. Place the lid back on, and cook for another 2 minutes with the lid on followed by another big stir. 

At this point, you should be around 6 minutes of total cook time and the onions should have started to soften and might start looking lightly browned around the edges. If you see brown bits, add 2 tablespoons of water to the pot. Stir the onions and place the lid back on the pot. Cook for another 2 minutes remove the lid, stir, and cook for an addition 2 minutes with the lid on. 

This should be around the 10-minute mark. The onions should be softened fairly well and there should be a bit of browning in the onions. Add 1 tablespoon of brown sugar per onion to the pot and stir well. 

Cook the onions for an additional 4 to 5 minutes or until they have started to look brown and are softened. Remove from the heat. You will have some onions left over; place them in a sealed container in the fridge to be used within a week. They can be warmed up in the microwave or briefly in a skillet or pan. 

Special ssamjang sauce: combine ssamjang and mayonnaise and stir well to combine. 

Hash brown patty: add a teaspoon of oil to a pan over medium heat. Place the still-frozen hash brown patty on top of the oil and cook for 5 minutes per side or until the exterior is brown and crispy.  

You should be able to toast both sides of a bun in the same pan while you are cooking the hash brown patty. Toast each half of the bun for about 2 or 3 minutes or until it is just slightly golden brown and toasted. 

Move both the bun and hash brown patty to a cooling rack to rest while you cook the egg. Wipe out the pan with a paper towel to get ready for the egg. 

Folded plant-based egg: shake the JUST Egg into a small bowl (or if using a regular egg add it into a small bowl and whisk to combine fully). Add salt and pepper to the egg to season. Add the pan back to medium-low heat and add a teaspoon of butter.

Once the butter is bubbly and melted, pour your egg on top of the butter. Immediately start letting the egg spread out on the bottom of the pan so that it all starts to cook. While it is cooking, you can help it out by keeping the egg in a round or square-ish shape and tilting the pan to allow the runny egg on top to roll off and touch the pan itself. Try to keep the shape somewhat consistent. This will help with folding.

Once most of the egg is set (after 1 to 2 minutes) you can start to fold. Using a spatula, attempt to scoop up one side and fold it over the other. This isn't always easy to do, and it doesn't really matter if you mess it up. But you effectively want to fold everything over itself once or twice until the egg is folded into a size that is consistent with your sandwich. 

Once the egg is fully folded, add a slice of cheddar cheese on top and cook for an additional 1 minute, which allows the cheese to melt.

Move the fully cooked egg to a plate to start sandwich assembly.

Sandwich assembly: add some special ssamjang sauce to the bottom bun. Top with the crispy hash brown patty. 

Add egg and cheese on top of the potatoes and then scoop on some brown sugar onions. If desired, add more ssamjang sauce to the top bun and use it to complete the sandwich. Serve and enjoy. 

Check back next week

Next week we’ll be making a sandwich and drinking some beer! Or maybe, we’ll be eating some beer!? Come back and find out for yourself.