Whisking egg whites. By Lee Davison.

Your cook book says..

"beat the whites until they peak"

..and all you have is something that looks like a bowl of snot. Well it's not too hard to do,¹ here's the how-to.

Just the whites of eggs, no yolk, no bits if shell.

If you have a food mixer then you're laughing. Just set it to nuke, power up, dip into the whites and go directly to the last bit. If however,like me, you don't you're going to need a whisk like this one.
You don't just stir, you thrash the whisk about like crazy. Very quickly you should have a bubbly snot mix that looks like this.
With a bit more effort, and thrashing, the mixture starts to turn whiter and firm up a bit. Don't stop now though, there's still work to be done.
Closer but still not there. If the egg white drops off the whisk when you lift it out you still have a way to go.
Now the eggwhite is starting to form a 'peak' when you pull the whisk out. What you want is for this 'peak' not to slide back into the mix.
Done. Pointy peak on whisk, pointy peak in bowl and no slithering back into the mix.

[1] Actually it isn't, but only just. It's quite hard going and your shoulder(s) may ache the next day.

Last page update: 7th July, 2003.

e-mail me