UK Review: Follow Your Heart VeganEgg

Follow Your Heart VeganEgg

At launch, we 'scrambled' to get our hands on it, and our review is now complete. This US import hasn't hit UK shelves yet, but we couldn't resist paying the shipping fees to try this stuff out. Read on to find out if it's worth placing the order yourself:


VeganEgg arrives in quite a crowded egg replacer market, but it does have a very unique selling point - it scrambles. The product has an unfamiliar set of ingredients to make that happen, being made of algal protein, cellulose and carrageenan. 


The distinct packaging too, is also part of the buzz, but inside that recycled cardboard 'egg box', you'll find a familiar plastic bag... 


Get yourself a bag clip to keep VeganEgg fresh, and to allow you to store it in the original funky box. 


The powder in the bag looks distinctly like soya flour, but you haven't just splashed out on shipping fees for soya flour... the product is soy-free.


The 114g pack makes a dozen 'eggs', of around 10g each, although the volume of each egg is about double a chicken egg, once you add half a cup of water. You'll need to factor that into your egg substitution strategy. 



The water needs to be 'ice cold' or at least fridge cold (not sure why, but probably helps it whisk smoothly).


It does whisk really easily, unlike The Vegg products which require blending (a pain when you only want one serving).


The texture is quite like beaten eggs when whisked, like a thin custard. Subtle changes in the amount of water added make it thick or thin quite easily, so be careful with your measures. Do season well with salt and pepper at this stage.


The instructions for scrambling say pour into a hot pan and stir IMMEDIATELY, and they do mean immediately. It sets instantly and you have to scramble it very quickly to avoid making an omelette. 

Follow Your Heart VeganEgg Scramble

Despite the quick set, you do have to cook it for 6 or 7 minutes to avoid the texture being too soft, but the amazing thing is, it doesn't really burn.. you can kind of just shuffle it every minute or two. (If you add anything other than water, e.g. rice milk, it burns pretty quickly...we tried it so you don't have to...)


This really is uncannily like scrambled egg (says a vegan who hasn't eaten eggs for 24 years...), or at least as close as you'd want to get. The texture is great, although the eggy smell of the powder is quickly lost when cooked, and the scramble is quite blandly flavoured (see note above about seasoning before whisking)


If you do allow the scramble to brown in the pan, you can add plenty of flavour that way too. Scrambled VeganEgg makes a great addition to a full English breakfast (a fry up).


If you choose not to scramble, you'll get something between an omelette and an eggy pancake, but do allow it to cook through. 


VeganEgg has lots of potential for baking, but the most exciting is the ability to make a quiche. We adapted an old Mary Berry recipe for Quiche Lorraine, subbing the bacon for Taifun smoked tofu, the gruyere for Vegusto and the cream for Alpro.


This quiche was amazing, but perhaps the crispy fried tofu and tasty melty cheese had as much to do with that as the VeganEgg. What the VeganEgg does though is make it all really easy - we just whisked the soya cream into the egg mix and poured it into the quiche. It sets really well.

Vegan Quiche made with Follow Your Heart VeganEgg

Served with a another Follow Your Heart product (review soon), a blue cheese dressing on some salad, we couldn't be happier.


Next up was back to the frying pan to make a sausage and egg muffin. A couple of egg rings help to keep the egg and the sosmix neat, although we overdid it with the height of these two...


...Resulting in very chunky egg and sausage patties. Again though, you can see that the VeganEgg doesn't stick to the pan or burn, even if you leave it to cook through for 10 minutes.


Add a toasted English muffin, a slice of Violife cheese (plus a squirt of ketchup), and you've got a rather tasty breakfast sandwich. Aim to make yours a bit thinner though..



Round Up


That's it, we're out of VeganEgg, and we'll have to wait until it arrives in the UK to make all these things again. VeganEgg is a great addition to the shelves of the vegan grocery store. It's probably not something to give to your non-vegan friends, but if you're a vegan who misses that eggy texture, it will definitely please. The eggy flavour is a little too subtle once cooked, but you could always add some more black salt (kala namak), if you can find it in the UK.

We bought our VeganEgg from Food Fight Grocery, who ship to the UK, although it's so popular they keep running out of stock!


Veganoo Score: ★★★
Follow Your Heart - VeganEgg
~
The Good: Scrambles before your eyes
The Not-so-Good: Needs seasoning well to add flavour


Footnote: Ingredients
Here is the ingredients panel from the pack we reviewed.






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17 comments:

  1. Looks great. Any idea when this might be available in the UK? Also, have you tried aquafaba (chickpea water) in the same recipes you tried here? I'm interested to know if that works the same way.

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    1. We got a response on Twitter saying "2016 hopefully" so take that any way you like.

      Aquafaba is great as an egg replacer for fluffyness and leavening but it replaces egg white rather than whole egg and wouldn't scramble or set a quiche.

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  2. This looks amazing! I can't seem to find it anywhere which will deliver to the UK though :( I looked on Food Fight Grocery as the article suggests but they say they don't deliver outside the USA anymore. I also looked for stockists on http://followyourheart.com/buyveganegg/ but Seasons Exeter and Ms Cupcake don't seem to have it listed on their sites, and Ethica don't seem to have an online shop. Has anyone found it here? Or somewhere which will deliver here for not too extortionate a price?

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    Replies
    1. It's a pity those UK stockists aren't geared up properly, or perhaps they have low volumes of the product. FYH said they're working to extend UK availability

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    2. They have it on Seasons Exeter here http://www.seasonsexeter.co.uk/onlineshop/prod_4473451-Follow-Your-Heart-Vegan-Egg.html if that helps! :)

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  3. I've found out that a vegan café near me (The Den at 23 in Colchester) will be stocking it from around next week! As far as I know they don't have an online shop though. But very handy for me!

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    Replies
    1. Great news if VeganEgg is rolling out more widely

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    2. Saw on Ethica's facebook that they just got a shipment a few days ago. Loads of people reserving, so probably not much hope of grabbing one until next shipment.

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    3. Thanks for the update Celandine

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  4. Quick query - what sosmix did you use for the muffin??

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    Replies
    1. It's one from Out of This World, an organic supermarket in Nottingham. They advertise it as being identical to sosmix, which you can't get any more.

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    2. Cant wait to try! Oh my Goodness Vegan shop in Eastbourne is getting it in this week!!

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    3. Yeah, heading for Nottingham next week too. Great news all round!

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  5. Just to say Harvest on Gloucester Road in Bristol now stock this!! ;-D

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  6. I have only tried this scrambled. It's interesting the way it starts to look like egg as you mix it and when it first starts to cook, but after that it goes downhill rapidly. We tried it three times to vary the recipe.
    First time I did some for the whole family so had to make up the equivalent of 8 eggs. It took 30 minutes to cook! The instructions recommend 6 - 8 minutes for 2 "eggs".
    The texture was very rubbery and it was tasteless so lots of seasoning was required. The family hated it.
    Next we tried with a little oil and pepper added, for about 2 people and this cooked in about 10 minutes but tasted of little but badly mixed pancake with pepper.
    Final time reduced the amount of water by about 10%, added some vegan butter, salt and oregano and it cooked in 7 minutes and tasted slightly better, but still like a pancake. The texture was extremely rubbery still.
    One thing I noticed is you have to keep stirring all the time otherwise it goes back to being a pancake again as it melts and reforms itself into a blob, so on the third attempt I kept chopping it and took it off the heat quickly and on to a plate when ready to serve.
    It still tasted rubbish - I shall be sticking to scrambled tofu.

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  7. You're right about the flavour - it's really very bland. Best to add bouillon powder, black salt, smoked paprika, onion powder etc. The texture is variable but its another food in the vegan arsenal. Try the quiche - it works great for texture in that

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