Ingredient: Chickpeas / Cholle

Hey Foodies,

Whipping cream is a thing we face a lot of problems finding it.. Specially the availability in India is bad, easily only available in big cities and that too mostly only for Industrial purposes.. The second issue we vegetarians face is making recipes without eggs..

Worry not, there’s a new revolutionary(Sounds like a marketing gig but not at all, it’s true keep reading) egg replacer in market your own kitchen that not only replaces eggs very well in normal recipes but whips very well to make meringues, macaroons, and many more recipes..

 

What is it and more about it :
It is aquafaba. Aquafaba means – Bean Water. The liquid which we get after cooking beans/chickpeas or the brine/water from the can of chickpeas/beans. No complexions, Extremely simple.

It can be made at home very well using almost beans, better to use chickpeas/cholle as they are very neutral in flavor.
More about Aquafaba :
When we cook/boil chickpeas/beans, the water that is left behind is the aquafaba. It has a very similar protein structure to egg whites and also has a few properties similar to yolk..
It works as an emulsifier, leavening agent, foaming agent.. So great stuff many of us used to throw away earlier.. History – In December 2014, Mr Joël Roessel discovered about it through a investigation and blogged about it – revolutionvegetale.com
In Feb 2015 – Mr Goose Wohlt who is a software engineer in the states discovered and started working on it.. Soon in March he shared about it in a Facebook group and then created a new group for the same : Vegan Meringue Hits & Misses. (Join the group for more stuff about this)
That’s how it all started and since then it has been a storm in the social media.. You can read more about aquafaba here : www.aquafaba.com.. Also donate if you can to help fund a phytochemical analysis take place about it.. If you can’t, please share the word 🙂

More about me working with it..
Aquafaba had started popping in my news feeds & more places in early May 2015 but I had not taken interest in it.. June is when I got interested & started finding more about it and started working on it.. Everything dint start well..

My First Attempt : I made the aquafaba, started whipping it.. No, It just wont. It dint whip it all.. Even after whipping for over 30 minutes..

Second : Same story, Dint gave up.. Tried again, strained the aquafaba twice to make sure nothing is there.. Choice of bowl was also not good, it was way too wide.

Third : Thickened the aquafaba, Slight Ray of hope but not so well.. It whipped a bit.. Pic from my third attempt.. Please excuse the image quality of my experiment images, they were a quick snap with bad settings, bad lighting and all..

Fourth : Finally, it whipped. And I made more, and was just admiring it and it all finished. Remember, it was just from 2 tbsp aquafaba 😛

Fifth : Tried making meringues, total disaster. They all melted. Found Reason after making 4 more times : Was not whipped enough, and oven temperature too high.

Ninth Attempt : Yuhoo, On cloud nine when I successfully made these. Not perfect, but yes I did it.

Tenth onwards : Started Flavoring and making more versions, playing around with oven temperatures, aquafaba thickness, how much to whip and more.. Also started working on other recipes..

 

For now, let’s get to making whipped cream substitute.. There are other ways of working with aquafaba which I’ll share soon.. And If I’ve missed anything in the post to put up which I should, I will update it very soon.. Wrote this late night in half sleep, will update this post as often as I can with more stuff 🙂

Recipe Makes 2 Cups of Aqua Faba.

I use 1/4 cup of aquafaba with 1/4 cup sugar and whip it, and it is a little over 1 1/4 cups of whipped cream substitute. Feel Free to adjust as you need to.

[widget id=”text-5″]

Well, that was easy wasn’t it? Why not try it out and let us know how it goes.. Tastes great, is light like clouds.. That’s all for today, Thanks 🙂