Egg Substitute Ideas for Baby-Led Weaning (...that actually work)

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Okay, this is brand new unchartered territory for me. But last year I felt so bad because parents emailed me and DMed me on Thanksgiving Day and asked if we were gonna do a Black Friday sale on our program. And we had never done that, but I'm doing it this year. If you wanna get access to the most comprehensive baby Led Weaning program out there, my signature program, it's called Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. It's 20% off now through Sunday only. So if you are sick and tired of poking around the internet, trying to figure out how to make beef into soft shreddable strips, or how to get those high iron hole grains into finger foods for your baby, the baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro program is your one-stop solution for safely starting solid foods.

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Basically, I have spent the last eight years of my life building the exact system and program that I wish I had when I was starting baby led weaning with my kids. So if you head to baby led weaning dot co slash program now through Sunday, you'll see on the website the program is marked down by 20%. There's no code needed when you join. You're gonna be getting a proven system to help your baby learn how to eat a hundred safe baby led weaning foods before they turn one. I'm gonna share my step-by-step program with the original a hundred FIRST FOODS Daily Meal Plan that shows you exactly how to prepare the foods. Plus you get guided expert instruction for new food introduction so that your baby ends up safely eating and loving real food.

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Head to baby led weaning dot co slash program now through Sunday to get 20% off and get started making your baby some safe finger foods the right way.

EasyPeasy (1m 33s):

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And if you're looking for the emulsifying properties of an egg, but you're not cooking with egg aquafaba actually works really well. So aquafaba is like the viscous liquid that's left over from cooking or storing legumes like chickpeas or WIP beans, like if you have canned chickpeas or garbanzo beans, right? It's gained a lot of popularity. You've probably seen it like Instagram and TikTok, but it's a great plant-based egg substitute because the aquafaba mimics the binding and the thickening and the foaming properties of eggs 'cause it's got this like unique protein and starch composition and you can whip it into soft or stiff peaks. It's really similar to egg whites, but you can use it if your baby is allergic to eggs or if you're vegan and your family doesn't eat animal foods like egg. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby Led Weaning here on the baby led weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast.

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I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to Solid Foods using baby Led Weaning. What if your baby can't eat or doesn't eat eggs? The internet is full of egg substitute ideas, but a lot of them don't actually work. And I, I know I use egg a ton when I'm making baby Led Weaning recipes. It's a really effective binder that helps hold grains together in fritters, for example. But if your baby is allergic to egg or if your family is vegan and you don't eat animal products like egg, then you might be interested in learning about some egg substitutes that you can use in place when you're making recipes.

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In today's episode, I'm going to cover what type of babies can't have eggs and why. I'll explain what eggs do in cooking and baking and then what happens when you leave them out. And then I'll share some egg substitutes that you can make in your own kitchen that will actually work in recipes. I like to start out these mini training episodes with a baby Led Weaning tip of the day. And today's tip is even if your baby has an egg allergy, it is possible that you will be able to reintroduce egg safely into their diet eventually. Babies can increasingly tolerate amounts of baked egg if you move them up what's called an egg ladder. So the egg ladder is a validated concept used in pediatric food allergy management. It is not something that you do on your own at home, but if you want to learn more, I would encourage you to go back and listen to episode 124 called Using an Egg Ladder for Babies with egg allergy.

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That's an interview with Carina Venter Carina is a PhD RD, she's one of the world's leading researchers in pediatric food allergy. She's the one who wrote the egg ladder that's used in international practice and you can find that episode@blwpodcast.com slash 1 2 4. So in this episode I wanna go through some ideas about egg substitutes for you and I'll share which ones have worked well and not so well for me. And if you're totally new to Baby Led weaning and you're not even sure, wait, my baby can safely eat egg. I would invite you to join my free online workshop. It's called Baby led weaning FOR BEGINNERS. That's a free online training where I do cover the safe introduction of the top nine potentially allergenic foods. And everyone on this free workshop gets a copy of my 100 First Foods list.

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You can sign up to take this workshop, do it right now, later today, tomorrow when your baby naps whenever is convenient for you. That signup link is at baby led weaning dot co slash workshop or it's linked below this podcast. And if you are ready to start making all those foods on my hundred First Foods list and you wanna do it safely for your baby, all of these egg substitutes from today's episode, they're included as a feeding guide inside of my comprehensive online program called Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. This is an expert led proven approach to help your baby learn to eat real food. The program is packed with video trainings to help you master baby led weaning along with meal plans and feeding schedules, shopping lists, recipes, videos, and instructions for preparing over 100 foods for your baby's current age and stage.

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And when you join the baby led weaning with Katie Ferraro program, you also get access to my hundred First Foods, Daily, Meal Plan plus all these egg substitutes that we're about to cover. So you'll never have to worry about which food to feed your baby. Next you can sign up for the whole program and get started with that hundred First Foods challenge today at baby led weaning dot co slash program or check out the link in the episode description below and let's dive in to egg substitutes. So what does egg do when you're cooking and you're baking food? Right? Eggs are not only delicious. I remember when I was pregnant with my quadruplets, I, I wasn't feeling great and I was trying to be vegan for a couple days. I don't even know why I thought it would be vegan. It lasted two days because I love eggs and cheese. And then I was like, what do you eat for breakfast if You don't eat eggs and cheese?

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But beyond how delicious they are, eggs are super useful in cooking and baking because they do lots of different things. They hold ingredients together, they make baked goods rise, they add moisture, they make things smooth and creamy. And eggs are also used to add flavor and color to recipes. So what they do kind of depends on how you use them and we'll go through each of them. But in my dietician training and the fellow dieticians listening will remember Marie, you took a food preparation class and I loved the experimental foods class. So after college I ended up going to the Peace Corps and I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal and I was in a group, a reproductive health group, extolling the benefits of small families, which is ironic now that I have seven children, but that's neither here nor there.

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In my group it was mostly nurses and they were like, wait a minute, like what'd you do as a dietician? And I was trying to explain like our training and one of my friends, he was a little snarky, he's like, oh dietician, you're basically like a glorified fitness instructor aren't you? And I was like, I am not, I have taken all of these science classes including experimental foods and one time, you know, and they're like, what's experimental food? I was like, oh, you do all these interesting things like you make cakes without eggs and see what happens. And they like, they put that one in the back of their head and for the entire two and a half years that we hung out together, they'd always be like, Katie, tell me more about the time that you made a cake without an egg. It, I didn't explain it properly, but it's really fascinating what happens when you take eggs out of recipes. I actually went on to teach experimental food.

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So after grad school I ended up teaching in the nutrition and dietetics part department at uc, Berkeley for a number of years. And every time I taught experimental foods and showed the students how to make cake without eggs, I was like, this is gonna impress your friends someday down the road. So what do eggs do in cooking and baking A number of things. They act as a binder. So they hold other ingredients together. Eggs are important for leavening. They help baked goods, they, they trap air so they help the baked goods rise. So you know, if you've cooked with egg whites right, you can create a foam that will grow like six or eight times larger than their original size. And then when you whip those egg whites up, the proteins stretch and they form this web that traps air bubbles, right? If you know this, if you've ever made like meringue or if you've made an angel food cake, eggs are important also from a thickening standpoint.

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They will help your, your batters get thicker, which in turn will help things rise. They add moisture, so they add liquid to recipes and that affects the texture. Eggs are important 'cause they're an emulsifier, right? If you know about making mayonnaise or mayonnaise, however you choose to call it, the lessen in there that actually comes from egg yolk helps blend oil and water, it makes a smooth texture. So they're used in a lot of foods as a smoothing texture. And emulsifier eggs provide flavor and color like a rich flavor, a golden color to different baked foods. So what sort of egg substitutes might you use? Okay, now it depends what you want the egg to do in the recipe that kind of determines which of the egg substitutes you use. And again, we have an a whole feeding guide on egg substitutes inside of the program.

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Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro because not that this, some of this is advanced, but the, the egg substitute you use for an egg fritter is different than the one that you would use in a baked good, for example. So probably one of the most common egg substitutes I know, the one that I use the most is flaxseed and or chia seed. Okay? So I make a substitute and this is a lot of times for thickening, okay, I'll make a substitute. This equals one egg. You take one tablespoon of flaxseed or chia seed and you mix it with three tablespoons of water. You stir it up, you let it sit for about 10 minutes. It gets to like the viscosity of the thickness of like egg white basically. And then that equals one egg. Okay? So that works really well for thickening.

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Now as a binder, another good one is arrow root starch. Okay? So you can use two tablespoons of arrow root starch, I just buy it online from Amazon. You can also use in some baking, a quarter of a cup of mashed banana or a quarter of a cup of unsweetened applesauce or that flaxseed or chia seed substitute that I just mentioned. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

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Now as far as leavening agents go, so when egg is required to make things rise, okay, you can do things like a combination of baking soda and vinegar. You usually just like look it up like for how, what type of recipe you're using and how much you would substitute. Another great one that I've been using more often is aquafaba. So aquafaba, if that's a new term for you, it's like the viscous liquid that's left over from cooking or storing legumes. So primarily we think of it from chickpeas. Okay? Chickpeas or white beans. So if you have canned chickpeas or canned white beans, I'm sure you've probably like seen it all over TikTok or Instagram, like it's the, the liquid, don't drain it, keep it, okay? And what aquafaba does is it mimics the binding and the thickening and the foaming properties of eggs.

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'cause it has a pretty unique protein and starch composition. So you can whip the aquafaba into soft or stiff peaks kind of like egg whites. So it makes it ideal for recipes like meringues or mousse if you know, basically if you need it for like the rising the leavening agent, you can also buy commercial egg substitutes. So personally I've used the Bob's Red Mill one in the past, but it just has too much sodium for baby lead wheated. So I've used it for like if I have friends coming over that aren't babies, I do have some friends that are not babies who don't eat eggs, but there's like 320 milligrams of sodium in a tablespoon of that which equals one egg white or one egg rather. So that's for me, I I don't use products more than a hundred milligrams of sodium per serving. So the Bob's Rub mill one, it's, it like works really awesome in baking but it's just too high in salt for babies.

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There are some other ones that are lower in sodium. There's a brand called Energy Egg Replacer Egg substitute that only has five milligrams of sodium. There's another brand called or Grand, no egg, mixed egg substitute that has zero milligrams of sodium. There's also one called just Egg, egg substitute. That one has 180 milligrams of sodium. So I prefer the first two that I, the second two that I mentioned rather that have lower sodium. But you know, at the end of the day we're just just trying to keep the salt low and you don't wanna add high sodium ingredients in place of egg. 'cause we want the baby to learn to taste the food and not necessarily the seasonings that we're adding to it or the salt rather seasonings are fine, but salt we wanna stay away from as far as moisture goes.

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Okay? If you're making something that turns out really dry 'cause you're not putting eggs in it, you can do plain unsweetened yogurt. Buttermilk is also a great substitute. Or I've done pureed silk in tofu and that works really nice for adding moisture. Now you gotta remember, tofu is a soy-based food. Soy is another one of the top nine allergenic foods. So you know, you just wanna make sure that your baby has tried soy a number of times on its own without reaction before you offer that as an egg substitute. If you need an emulsifier, probably the best emulsifying egg substitute is that aquafaba for flavor and color. If your stuff is looking like really anemic 'cause you're not putting eggs in it, you can just do like a pinch of turmeric or also nutritional yeast. So I know for like people who do like tofu scrambles for example, and kind of look like very boring, add a little bit of turmeric or add a little bit of nutritional yeast, which also kind of gives you a savory flavor.

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Okay? You've gotta keep in mind when you're doing EV substitutes that some of them may alter the flavor. So you kinda have to pick your egg substitute based on the recipe. I'm doing the chi and flax seed a lot. I, I'll do buttermilk in cakes and brownies for adult stuff. I'm not making cakes and brownies for babies. But we do have, for example, in our program, we have a banana bread that's made with spel and we have a egg-free version of it and we use buttermilk in that. Now, buttermilk includes milk, which is a dairy food, and that's cow's milk protein. That's a separate allergenic food. But these are all the recipes that are in phase two of our program. So after your baby's tried all the individual solitary allergenic foods and Solid Foods for about eight weeks, we move them into combination food recipes and that's when it gets really fun because you can make these recipes that have a variety of the different foods your baby has already had.

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We cut 'em into finger foods and the baby can pick it up and feed it to themselves. A couple other options. I mentioned the arrow root powder. I buy that one online vinegar and baking soda. If you mix a teaspoon of baking soda with a tablespoon of vinegar, that equals one egg. 'cause when you mix them together, the vinegar and the baking soda start this chemical reaction. It produces carbon dioxide and water and that makes like your baked goods kind of light and airy. Another one that I know that vegans use very frequently, I personally don't use this one regularly, but I have a friend who's a vegan and she's always crowing about agar agar agar. It's this vegan alternative to gelatin. It's made from like red algae or seaweed, and it's used in vegan recipes as a substitute for gelatin.

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Since that's not vegan friendly. It can thicken and gel stuff, so you can use it as an egg substitute. But because mostly in my recipes what I'm doing is looking for binding agent. Like when I'm making a fritter out grains and I want it to stick together, I need the binding agent. That's what I'm missing from the egg because when you, any fritter that you ever make for your baby, if it's not sticking together or burgers, for example, just put an egg in there right When you're cooking the egg, the protein coagulates and it kind of holds everything together. Well, when you leave the egg out, you miss out on that option. She swears by egg or agar. You guys gotta tell me or egg or agar, this one works. Again, one teaspoon of egg or agar. If you mix it with one teaspoon of cold water, that will be the equivalent of about one egg. So I hope that some of those eggs substitutes can help you out if you're looking for some egg alternatives.

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If you're not sure if your baby can eat egg, there's a really good episode to listen to if your baby's had a reaction, but you're like, Ugh, is that true? Like egg allergy. Go listen to episode 2 74. It's called Baby Has Skin Reactions to Milk Egg and Peanut What, Should I, Do Next. I interview Corina Venter, the same researcher who did the egg ladder. And she is a wealth of knowledge about like your baby probably does not have an egg allergy in most cases. Now, certainly some babies do have true food allergy and they need to avoid egg until they can start working with a pediatric dietician to get through that egg ladder. So if that's you, try out some of these egg substitutes. I'll put links to the program where I include the full egg substitute feeding guide. That'll be on the show notes page for this episode, which you can find@blwpodcast.com slash 4 8 7.

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A special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave. We're online@bwpodcast.com. Thank you so much for listening. Happy Cooking.

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