In this episode we talk about the art of mixing whole eggs and/or egg whites into cocktails and why you should probably try it.
In this episode we talk about the art of mixing whole eggs and/or egg whites into cocktails and why you should probably try it.
This is a housemate podcast where your house, Nick bobbin and John veer, we're here to cover your questions about home bartending. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2:What's up guys, uh, back with another episode of house-made podcast today, uh, we're going to talk about eggs in drinks. It's something that I think kind of scares people,
Speaker 3:Scares everybody because that's the first thing. When they look at the menu and they read the menu in the bar, they usually get a weird like snarky, you know, like scroll like scrunchy face. And they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, I think pretty much all the drinks that we have at our bar right now, um, are pretty much just egg white, which is, yeah. They're all egg whites, even less invasive. I know during the holiday time we'll do like flips and things like that.
Speaker 3:And, and eggnog Bush is kind of funny that everybody's okay with that kind of egg and a drink, but they're not, they don't think that the like egg whites and a drank
Speaker 2:That's funny. Well, I can appreciate the curiosity as far as like the safety concern, because as I was kind of Googling and just looking up information, that was most of what I found is it was just like every caption was like, is it safe to consume rags this and that?
Speaker 3:So actually thanks to our modern practices, like salmonella from eggs, raw eggs is actually very low. Cause it's not actually the egg itself, the salmonella, there are the inner and sorry, the Seminole lives on the shell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I S I don't know if this statistic is real because apparently all of them are made up. I saw a statistic that said that one in 40, there's a one in 40,000 chance, um, that you will get some kind of, uh, uh, contaminant, uh, or foodborne illness or something like that from an egg, uh, at any capacity. Gotcha. Uh, but there's a one in 4,000 chance that you'll choke on a piece of food. So it's quite a bit less.
Speaker 3:Are you more concerned about choking on food then getting salmonella from eggs, but, okay. So also like if it lives on the shell, right. And it's coming out of a clean facility and the bar you're buying it from looks clean and they look not like a bunch of dopes, essentially, as long as they're not using more or less damaged. Okay.
Speaker 2:Eggs. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's very little risk involved. And if you're in a place like you wouldn't go to a dive bar and ask for a
Speaker 3:No, you wouldn't go to a dive bar and ask for a vermouth either. Cause they'll just pull off the back bar. Yeah. It's probably eight years old.
Speaker 2:So there is, there is something to consider though what we use at the bar. And I think what's probably most convenient for a lot of you guys at home. Um, is pasteurized egg whites. Oh yeah. You can buy him. Got it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You can buy little tiny ones at the supermarket too. It's super nice because I mean, if you're, if you're worried, I still think that a raw egg texture is better.
Speaker 2:There is a difference in texture. And that's what I was going to say is, uh, that convenience, especially the volume that we do at the bar, it's really, really nice to have the pasteurized. It's nice to be able to tell the guests, Hey, this is past your highs in cases.
Speaker 3:So also the health department got on my butt the last time. Yeah. They were in, because she looked at our menu and she was like, you, you have raw eggs in here, mostly because I didn't have the disclaimer on the menu that said like, Oh, consume this at your own risk. It's raw. And I was like, no, no, it's it's pasteurized. And she did not believe me. She's like show it to her. She's like, show me. And I'm like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Took her in the back. I opened the fridge and there's like a whole case of pasteurize white. So I was like, look, she was like, Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's, it's a, it's a big thing. Um, but back to what you said, I do when we did those, it wasn't even supposed to be a test. It turned into like a comparison though, when we were making the cocktails at your house that day for all the content, uh, because we didn't have, we forgot to grab the, uh, pasteurized egg whites when we grabbed everything. And so we were just using eggs out of your fridge and, um, it does have a different, and in my opinion, better texture, uh, because it was proteins aren't already broken down. Like they were in the pasteurized egg whites. And so you get that like kind of gross snotty texture, but that's, what's so beautiful when you go to, to shake it. That's what gives you that really, really tight foam. Um, cause those proteins that are in, in an egg are so tightly wound that by agitating them or whisking them or shaking them or anything like that, you're kind of, you're breaking those up. And so that, that texture that you get, it's just so unique.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it's kinda, it's essentially like the way that I like to explain to people, it's almost like a Marangu is what you're doing. Yeah. Because everybody understands that. So we're just doing a liquid Marangu at this point with those egg whites and drinks.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Which is delicious. Uh, the, the thing. So the reason why egg white in drinks, if you guys are familiar, the reason why it gives you that, that tight cappuccino foam that, um, just that like sultry kind of thing, that it adds to it, that nice mouth feel and that texture, um, the reason that that happens is because most egg white drinks have a citrus component. Right. So there are things like gin, fizz, um, stuff like that. And it like has to have a citrus component. It kind of has to, I don't know. I didn't want to try it
Speaker 3:Without it, but I would almost guarantee that it has to have.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I guess I didn't want to say it has to, cause I don't know for sure. And I could be proven wrong, but um,
Speaker 3:Well we'll try it and get back to you. I'm confident that
Speaker 2:It needs to have that citrus component because that's, what's actually breaking down the proteins in the egg white.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because without it there's nothing. I mean, it would take, I think it would just take a lot longer to get where you're going or at least the texture would be very different. It would be super different because I don't think that it would hold without the acid. I don't think that it would separate those proteins in a way that they can hold air in such a small amount of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. And it, it, it plays a really big part in that whole equation because you have, you have booze, right. That's just gonna, that's gonna be across the board, but, um, you've got whatever your, your sweet component is. You might even have, um, like cream products of some kind or things like that. So you can have all these variations, right. You can play around with it, just like any other cocktail, but that egg white has to be treated a certain way within that mixture. Otherwise you're not going to get that same texture and that same mouth feel and the same result, which is the reason why you do it. Right. It's why everyone loves the whiskey sour with the egg.
Speaker 3:Well, so what the egg actually does is it cuts back on the asset, like the taste of the asset itself. I can't remember exactly. I was, I was reading that. Um, but it was emerging in bars back before there was ice. So back before that there was any dilution involved, you were using the egg white, essentially as your diluter and softening that acid bite and the harshness out of bad spirits. And so just move that up to today where the spirits are good and you have ice to dilute it as well. So it's balanced already and now you're cutting the acid even farther with that egg.
Speaker 2:It makes sense because flavor-wise, um, when you add egg white to a drink, it really does kinda round things out. It kind of turns down the volume on things like bitter and sweet. Uh, so it almost creates like a fo balance to your cocktail. So like, even if it wasn't even super balanced to begin with. Um, but yeah, it really does that. It creates a margin of error. Yeah. It's like, um, it's like a, it's like a mouth pillow. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's like training wheels, you put egg in anything and it gets better
Speaker 2:For sure. And on that note, uh, so when I was looking stuff up, I thought this was really funny. Um, apparently, uh, in the 18 hundreds, a glass of beer with a raw egg cracked into, it was like a pretty common and reliable breakfast for, uh, laborers and miners and things like that. Rocky Balboa status. And, uh, I think that's probably where it came from, but they would literally call it a miner's breakfast. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And um, I guess beer back then in the, in the 19th century, wasn't really viewed as an intoxicant. It was literally considered like a source of nourishment. So drinking a beer early in the morning was like, no,
Speaker 3:Well that was the only, uh, reliable method they had to decontaminate water at at that point in history. Do you just drink beer all the time? Instead of water, water could kill you a beer. You knew wasn't going to kill you. Right. Yeah. Which is okay, so eggs and cocktails. So the egg white, like where'd it come from? Right. Just like everything else. Uh, Jerry Thomas was the first guy to write that down, came out in his book, 1862 and
Speaker 2:Right where we were talking about whole eggs.
Speaker 3:Okay. So yeah, this was just egg whites. So actually whole eggs in, in, uh, liquid drinks of alcoholic varieties comes way back all the way to like 13th century. Oh, okay. Yeah. So we're starting with, I mean, that's, that's where you get British monks drinking, weird obscure variations of like essentially like an eggnog, right. With figs. I mean, and you're talking about beer eggs, um, and, uh, and, and fig, and then fast forward a little bit to like late 16 hundreds. Now you're talking about flips, which were all designed or they were all, um, so they were like a sailor's drink if you will. And so the flip it, it was beer rum, sugar, and then it was, I found a lot of different things. It might've had egg to begin with. It might not have had egg to begin with, but the biggest thing about the flip is it was a hot drink. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:So you went from like a, like a classic egg nog kind of thing. Probably served, I don't know that I would call it class
Speaker 3:Eggnog. I mean, it was almost the same thing. So these were all like just versions of health tonics. Right. So they were all viewed as a nourish.
Speaker 2:Everyone was just drinking beer with eggs in it in some way. And then other people got more creative and started putting liquor in it as well. No, exactly. Okay. Well, cause like, so sailors, right?
Speaker 3:Rum they're sailing around the world. Rum is like the cheap spirit as we found out in our last few episodes that like when the new world discovered rum, like heads exploded and then was everywhere. Um, anyways, so by some accounts, when the flip hit the Americas, the beer was dropped and the egg was added. If you follow the accounts where there was no egg in it to begin with. Gotcha. Yeah. I th it was really confusing trying to research this because everywhere you look had a different story, like most cops.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, that's kind of cocktail history in a nutshell for you though. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, it's all hearsay and most of the people that are recounting the information are drunk anyways.
Speaker 2:Right? Well that's yeah. Actually that's not even just cocktail history. That's just history history in general. Yeah. Especially American. I don't think anyone, not even the children, they weren't even sober.
Speaker 3:No, not even anyways. So that's, uh, that's the egg whites. Oh, we did want to touch on, um, dry shaking and what that means.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when you, when you were making, uh, and an egg cocktail of any kind will specifically say egg white, because if you're making a whole egg cocktail, you're definitely just going to shake the living crap out of it.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah. I don't think I don't we'd have to experiment. Well, shaking is important on a flip.
Speaker 2:I don't, I could be wrong, but I don't think it was, I don't remember.
Speaker 3:Cause I think the yolk is gonna, it's been along the way, made one the, Oh yeah. Anyways
Speaker 2:Breaks down differently than everything else too. It's just, there's just more mass to it, but yeah. So let's say you're making a egg white cocktail, something like a whiskey sour you're going to do, what's called a dry shake, which means you're gonna put all of your ingredients for the drink into your tins. Um, but before you add ice, you're gonna shake it up. Really good that citrus that's in there is going to emulsify, uh, or at least start to emulsify the egg white start to create that, uh, that mixture in that, that kind of texture, I guess, before you even add the ice, because if you add the ice first, it takes longer to get that incorporation. And you're just going to over dilute your drink.
Speaker 3:Um, well also too, on a couple things that I've read is that by adding the ice into that mixture, you're essentially now breaking down whatever airation, you've, you've done to the drink itself,
Speaker 2:Which might be why, uh, I've never actually used this technique, but there's, there's people that claim reverse dry shaking is the way to go for some of these tricks.
Speaker 3:So that's shaking it first with ice and then taking the ice out of it and shaking it without ice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So you're getting your water content and they're getting everything exactly the way you want to serve it, but then you're choosing a shake it again. Gotcha.
Speaker 3:And then you can literally shake it until it gets hot again, if you want it to yeah. You could recommend it. Okay.
Speaker 2:And I'm just the reason why I'm kind of curious on that technique is as you guys have probably learned in your home bartending journey, that when you go to shake something with ice in it, the thermodynamic properties of those tins cause them to shrink up and latch onto each other so that you don't really get a lot of those spills and leakage out of the tins.
Speaker 3:Yeah. If you dry shake it, it will pop on you.
Speaker 2:Right. So something to note, whether you're dry shaking or reverse dry shaking, I guess, is that anytime there's not a cold component, your tins aren't going to seal the same way. So you might have to
Speaker 3:Literally your mixture is now going to expand in that 10. And I have, it has popped on me before. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And egg white. And it does not look pretty. Um, but it's just something to know. It's you just have to make sure that you keep a firm grasp on it. A lot of you guys are probably shaking with two hands anyway, which helps a lot. If you are shaking single-handed, which is kind of the way I've always done it, you just have to hold it like a football. You got to make sure you have a couple of fingers on each side and just really firmly, um, shake, hang on to it. You know, keep, keep the open side. I think we've talked about this before, but when you fit the two tins together, there's always kind of a sizable gap. Um, and, and that gap portion should always be facing you the bartender and never the guest, just in case something does leak or the table
Speaker 3:Crack. Oh yeah. Or cracks that way. When you're shaking, you get the mixture on yourself and not on your guests. Exactly. For us when they're paying, that's kind of crappy. If we covered you in a cocktail buffer behind the bar, but also like when people are at your house, that's also kind of not good. Cause you're welcome over. Here's a whole drink on you wack.
Speaker 2:So like if it, if it's facing you, something happens. Yeah. It's going to get on you, but it's also, it's going to land on the floor, which you can easily clean. If it goes the other way, it's going to go on your counter. It's going to go into your bar top. It's going to go on. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. Everywhere across, yeah. Across the Island.
Speaker 2:It will be cleaner or easier to clean if, if you do it that way. And one thing actually that I should probably bring up, I, I think I forgot to mention this previously. Um, what we like to do with the bar anyway, I think it's a really good practice at home too, is to, especially if you're using real egg to crack the egg and separate the egg white in a separate tin. So we usually do it in the larger tin. And then you build your cocktail and your smaller tin. The reason for that is that if you accidentally get a, if you mess up your egg, you drop the yolk and drop the yolk or you get a bunch of shell or something like that. You don't have to ditch all of the booze and ingredients that you just pour it in there. Yep. Um, that's a, that's a great, that's a great point. It's just, it's just a nice habit to get into and you're using that 10 anyway. So it's not like you're, you're dirtying stuff that you're, you're literally going to pop those things together and shake it anyway. Um,
Speaker 3:It might be worth noting about how you actually separate an egg with the shell. Cause that's, that's something that a lot of people don't do commonly.
Speaker 2:It is, it does take a little practice. So it might be, this might be a really fun way to practice it. Just have a friend or a couple friends come over and make yourself some whiskey sours or something and just practice this. But yeah, the way that I think works best, you've got this large tin in front of you that you're going to crack the egg into anyway, and you're going to take your whole egg and you're going to gently kind of wrap it on the top edge of the tin where it it's not super sharp, but it comes up to its probably finished point. Um, so the very lip of this tan as if you were drinking out of it like a cup, so you're gonna wrap it on there a couple of times and kind of create like a nice little linear cut, cut, or crack in that shell, along the circumference of it. And then you can kind of gently just pull it apart. Um, and you're gonna rock it back and forth. So you want to pull it apart into two cups, essentially. You're going to rock it back and forth and yeah, you got, you got to catch the yolk obviously in the little basket that you're creating. Otherwise it's going to fall in,
Speaker 3:You're playing Tom, Tom with the yolk and you're letting the whites spill over the side and fall into your shaker underneath.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much. And it, it is it doesn't, it does take a little bit of practice. Yeah. It's kinda, um, I eat a lot of eggs in the morning, so I got really used to just like cracking eggs in general. But if you guys don't eat a lot of eggs, that might not be a skill that you have. Um, there is a really cool
Speaker 3:Kitchen tool. That's extremely inexpensive and it is a white separation.
Speaker 2:Is that, that little like thing, it kind of looks like an egg and it sits on like, yeah, they come in day,
Speaker 3:All different forms. So the ones that I've seen that I like that are really inexpensive. They are like a big spoon, if you will. And it has, the bottom is flat. And then as it curves up, the outside is almost all cut out. So what you do is you crack the egg into it and it holds the yolk. So it's about the size of a yolk and it lets all the whites slip through.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. You might have to give it a little jig sometimes. Yeah. Depending on your egg, but that's cool. I've never used one of those. Yeah. Uh, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The kitchen Sergio was the one my back in the day he was like, look at it
Speaker 2:And I was like, Oh wow. That is really cool. I guess when you're, when you're doing like considerable volume, like when we make our, um, eggnog. Yeah. And around Christmas time, that's a lot of, it's a lot of egg yolks, a lot of yolks and you obviously want to keep the whites to mix in drinks as well. So you gotta be smart about it.
Speaker 3:That's funny. That's, that's how we wound up using pasteurized whites, just in our bar program to begin with, because we were cracking all these eggs for eggnog, just using the yolks. And then we were putting the egg whites in squeeze bottles and putting them up front for service. So we weren't wasting anything and come to find out that was way more convenient for our volume.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that was the turning point in our volume where we were man, we were just slamming these things out and especially that time of year or two, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, you're talking about doing 60 to 80, um, whiskey sours in a night
Speaker 2:At least. Yeah. Well, yeah, back then it was obviously a little less, but I think also at our time, at the time, um, probably close to like 60 or 65% of our menu cocktails had egg white, so we were just through thing. So that makes sense. But, um, man, well, okay. I think that's, um, that's pretty much it for egg white drinks, right? So it's just, it's kind of everything you guys need to know whether you're making them at home or whether you just see them, you know, at your local bars and restaurants and you just want to try them or, you know, if you guys, if you haven't tried them, if you guys live around here, um, please come in to craft some time and just flag me down. Um, what we can, we can make some serious stuff where it just based on whatever mood you're in, what kind of flavors you want, what kind of booze you like, there's an option for everyone. So, um, if you've never had anything like this or, or never had like a traditional whiskey sour with the egg white in there, come down and try it out. Cause it might, it might change you forever. It might. Cool. Well, yeah. If, uh, questions, comments, concerns, uh, hit us up house-made syrup.com. Yeah. Let us know. Yeah. We we've been posting a lot of recipes and blogs on there as well to you guys. So if you guys are interested in any of that kind of stuff, just go check out that blog that's on there once again. House-made syrup.com. Yeah. Cool. Till next time. Yep.
Speaker 1:[inaudible].