How to Cook Sous Vide Egg Bites

Have you heard all the hype about Sous Vide cooking? Sous vide cooking has become more common and it’s popularity has increased significantly since Starbucks introduced egg bites to their hot breakfast menu. Many of my friends are following a low carb or keto diet and egg bites are the perfect protein packed breakfast.

Instead of making a Starbucks run for egg bites each morning I decided I could easily make them at home with my new Christmas gift, an Anova precision cooker. I confess, I am a foodie nerd, so I actually enjoyed doing a bunch of research on how to make sous vide egg bites. Armed with tons of information I decided it was finally time to give it a try and see if all the hype was true.

I did some pretty extensive research before purchasing my precision cooker and deciding on this particular model. It has tons of positive reviews online and it’s nice and quiet while it’s running; that was an important feature for me since this cooker will be running for several hours at a time when cooking certain recipes. This model can be programmed manually right on the top of the stick or it can be programmed and operated via an app on your phone. So whether you are old school like me, or high tech, this model works great it can be programmed manually or remotely! You can purchase the same sous vide Anova precision cooker that I have here on Amazon.

If you have never heard of Sous Vide cooking it is going to sound like a very strange way of cooking food. Some of you may remember boil-in-bags; dropping a sealed plastic bag of food into a pot of boiling water to cook it. Sous vide cooking is similar in that you cook food in a sealed plastic bag, but it does not require boiling water. The precision cooker maintains the water at a very precise cooking temperature which produces very moist, juicy and flavorful foods making it almost impossible to overcook foods.

Because of the precise temperature control you have when cooking sous vide, it eliminates overcooked, dry food and produces juicy, tender, flavorful foods.

With Sous Vide cooking you have to change the way you normally think about cooking food. The temperature you use to cook food is about the doneness of the food and the length of time you cook the food is about the texture of the food. The longer food cooks the more tender it will become.

Temperature = Doneness

Time = Texture

The Sous Vide method of cooking has actually been around for quite a long time. Restaurants have used it for ages, and until just a few years ago, it was just too cost prohibitive for home cooks to really justify this method of cooking. The price for a reliable Sous Vide cooker has come down significantly in recent years and ranges from about $75 – $200, making it affordable and within reach for most home cooks.

The precise temperature control from the device produces very tender, flavorful, juicy and moist foods. I work with a gal whose husband cooks using the sous vide method of cooking and she raves about how flavorful and tender the foods are that he cooks. She piqued my interest and I decided I wanted to give this form of cooking a try. I elected to try egg bites as my first foray into sous vide cooking.

There are many versions of egg bites that you can try. Starbucks has three versions available on their menu, Ham, Cheddar & Peppers, Bacon & Gruyere, and Egg White and Roasted Red Pepper sous vide egg bites.

I decided to use ingredients I already had on hand, to make a few versions to try; Cheddar & Bacon, Cheddar & Sausage, Mozzarella & Bacon, Mozzarella & Sausage, Queso Fresco & Bacon, and Queso Fresco & Sausage; plus plain Cheddar, plain Mozzarella and plain Queso Fresco.

To start I got the sous vide cooker set up. I filled a large pot with water, clamped the sous vide cooker to the side of the pot and set the temperature to 172 degrees. While the water was coming up to temperature I prepared the ingredients for the egg bites.

I started by frying up some bacon nice and crisp and then I cooked the breakfast sausages in the bacon grease left in the pan. Why cook them in the bacon grease? Because I could and there’s a lot of flavor in that pan! No sense in letting all that bacony goodness go to waste!

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Typically you cook most foods in a plastic bag or vacuum sealed bag when cooking sous vide, but for egg bites you will want to cook them in wide mouth mason jars. Cooking them in mason jars will produce nice little rounds which you wouldn’t get if you tried cooking these in a plastic bag.

If you don’t have small glass jars like the one’s I used, you can order them from Amazon here. They have a nice wide mouth which made it easy to fill them and easy to remove the cooked bites.

Once I had the bacon and sausage cooked, and the cheese grated it was time to make the egg “batter”. I used 6 large eggs to make 9 egg bites. If you are making these with just cheese you will probably need one egg for each jar but since the bacon and sausage took up a bit of room in the jars I didn’t need as many eggs.

TIP: Using wide mouth jars will make it easier to slide out the egg bites once they are cooked.

The ratio of egg to cheese is 1 part egg to 1 part cheese. First I pureed the eggs using my emersion blender.

I am not a big kitchen gadget person, but I do use my emersion blender all the time. It is so much easier to use and clean than a traditional blender. It’s great for blending hot soups too; so much safer than blending hot liquids in a traditional blender.

If you would like to purchase an emersion blender similar to the one I have you can purchase it here. This one is an updated version of the model I have. It has a removable arm that will make cleaning it a breeze! I’ve had years and years of excellent results using my KitchenAid emersion blender. The one I have is an older model that gets quite a bit of use in my kitchen and I have never had any problems with it. You are going to wonder how you managed without one.

Alright back to cooking; I then weighed the egg batter and divided the egg batter into 3 equal parts of 126 grams.

I then added 126 grams of cheese to the beaten eggs for a total of 252 grams. To this I added 1/4 teaspoon salt.

If you need a kitchen scale, you can purchase one just like the one I have here.

I pureed each batch of egg and cheese with my emersion blender until I had a really, really thick, smooth batter.

I then prepared the jars by spraying them lightly with non stick cooking spray to ensure the egg bites wouldn’t stick and that they would slide easily out of the jars once they were cooked.

I placed bacon in the bottom of three of the jars and a cut up sausage link into the bottom of the other 3 jars. I left 3 jars empty; they would be plain with just the cheese and egg mixture with no meat added to them.

I poured the batter into 9 jars, filling them about 3/4 of the way full. I ended up with a Bacon & Queso Fresco, Sausage & Queso Fresco, and a plain Queso Fresco, Bacon & Cheddar, Sausage & Cheddar and plain Cheddar, Bacon & Mozzarella, Sausage & Mozzarella and plain Mozzarella.

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Top each jar with a lid and finger tighten.

IMPORTANT: Do not over tighten the lids!

If the lids are on too tight and air cannot escape while they are cooking, the glass jars could crack and break! Just finger tighten them enough to keep the water out but loose enough to allow gasses to escape while the egg bites cook under water.

TIP: It’s important to completely submerge the jars under water while they cook. It’s ok to stack them, just make sure they are completely submerged.

Slowly lower the jars into the preheated water and let them cook for 1 hour. Now you can go read a book, take a nap, go for a walk or just relax; there’s nothing that needs doing while the eggs are cooking.

Once they are cooking you should notice small air bubbles coming up to the surface of the water. This is a good thing! It means that you have not overtightened the lids and air is escaping.

Once they have cooked for an hour remove them from the pot.

Open the jar and run a knife along the edge of the jar to loosen the egg bites so that they easily slide out of the jar.

They are fully cooked and ready to eat at this point, but I decide to take an extra step to make them really cheesy. I placed them on a foil lined cookie sheet, topped the Cheddar and Mozzarella bites with a little sprinkle of additional shredded cheese. I popped them in the oven to broil them for a few minutes. I kept an eye on them to make sure to melt the cheese until it was hot, bubbly and just until the cheese started to brown up a bit along the edges.

Now for the taste test! I called in my 15 year old foodie for his input.

The verdict? Hands down the egg bites with the sausage where our favorite! The bacon coming in a close second. My son’s favorite was the Sausage & Cheddar and my favorite surprised me. I would have guessed I would like the Cheddar version best, but my favorite ended up being the Sausage & Queso Fresco. It was the least salty and I really liked the texture of the Queso Fresco/egg batter the best. It had the creamiest and smoothest texture of all 3 of the cheeses we tried.

I tried the plain Queso Fresco egg bite smushed onto a toasted English muffin and it was absolutely delicious! It was by far my absolute favorite of the entire bunch! The soft, creamy texture made it easily spreadable on a toasted English muffin and made for a delectable breakfast!!!

Here are a few other ingredients I want to try that I think would be delicious:

• Cream cheese
• Cottage cheese
• Diced Ham
• Swiss, Gruyere, smoked Gouda,
• Provolone or Havarti cheese
• Pepper Jack or Monterey Jack cheese
• Sliced green onion
• Finely diced onions
• Minced chives
• Minced garlic
• Diced red bell pepper
• Sliced mushrooms
• Sliced jalapeno
• Queso crema
• Roasted red pepper
• Diced artichoke hearts

These turned out so well, I will be making them often and storing them in the fridge. I can’t wait to play around with different ingredients and combinations in the future.

You can easily make these on the weekend and store them in the fridge after they have been cooked. You have a quick nutritious breakfast at the ready for those busy weekday mornings.

To reheat, cook one or two egg bites sous vide for 20 minutes and you have a tasty protein packed breakfast to get you off to a great start every day. These can also easily be reheated right in the jar; microwave for 30 – 45 seconds. Just be sure to remove the metal lid before placing them in the microwave.

Ditch the sugar laden cereals and send your kids off to school in the morning with a hot, tasty, and healthy breakfast in their bellies.

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