What the hell is Aquafaba, and why anyone who cooks should know about it

It started as a Facebook post from a buddy of mine: "Dude! Vegan Eggs!" Of course I had to see the crazy monstrosity that must be contained therein, So I clicked! And it turns out, that this vegan egg substitute is none other than the liquid you drain out of a can of chickpeas. Wait.......what?

Yeah, you heard me. Chickpea water. A.k.a Aquafaba (Italian for bean water).

I know, I know, this is not making this sound too good, but just give me a second: So I am doing some research. and it turns out that this french chef, Joël Roessel, figured out that the essence-of-chickpea containing water, from the can, or in my case, out of a pressure cooker, can be used in place of eggs in many dishes. 

I can't really imagine how this discovery was made.

"chef, we need to make a mousse, but we're out of eggs"
"I don't know, use that yellow water we got out of the garbanzo can!!!" And a legend was born......

Now. let me start of by saying, I am not really sure why I got so excited about this. Maybe it was because it gave me yet another reason to play with my electric pressure cooker that I got for christmas. Maybe I thought I could make some cash dehydrating the aquafaba and turning the shelf stable, wholly shippable substance around the world. Perhaps I just needed yet another excuse not to do work today, I don't know, but let me tell you. I tried it, and thiscrap is amazing!!!

I came upon a Facebook group devoted to Aquafaba (hereby known as AF). No seriously. that group exists.......

And I found a great looking recipe for meringue cookies. For some reason, I thought of my friends kid, who has some serious food sensitivities, and cannot have any meat products. If you think about most sweets, there is something tied to meat in just about everything. Butter, milk, lard, gelatin, you name it. So I set out to make something fun for her to chew on.

I started off with 3 lbs. of garbanzo beans (if you guys are confused, garbanzo beans ARE chickpeas) and cooked them for 40 minutes in my pressure cooker (more on that magic in later posts!!) I hoped the top, and had like 6 cups of garbanzo beans and like 3 cups of yellow, bean scented water. So into the kitchaid it went, along with your standard meringue ingredients, vanilla and cream of tarter (what the heck is a tarter and why are we extracting cream from it???). Run that bad boy for a few minutes and the yellow liquid becomes fluffy and cloud-like. Slowly add the sugar, a teaspoon at a time until it gets fully incorporated, before you add the next one, all the while, increasing the mixing speed. turn the mixer off and check if you have your prescribed stiff peaks, and that's it!

I have seen people mix in melted and cooled chocolate to form a chocolate mousse, you can flavor it and color it however you want to, just pipe it onto your non-stick dehydrator sheets and throw it in your dehydrator at 155* for two or more hours! Oh, you don't have a dehydrator? no worries, just put it into an oven on super low heat (155*-200*).

I am not going to lie. I licked the whisk. this stuff tasked like marshmallow cream. It did have a slight SLIGHT beany flavor to it, but I bet to a vegan, it just tastes like clouds. Thats why, henceforth, I will no longer be calling these meringues, they shall be known only as mouth clouds........





This stuff has changed my view on vegan cooking, and really opens up new avenues like vegan pasta, breads, cakes, icings, and a bunch of other items that were really hard with out a binding agent as good as eggs. I have many a vegan friend and family member who always seems to get left out of the dessert table. Now, at least they will have some mouth clouds to chew on...............