Making sous vide egg bites without the mason jar mess

January 10, 2018 7:20 PM

I love making the ChefSteps recipe for sous vide egg bites in mason jars. But, the jars don’t get clean in the dishwasher and we have to wash them by hand (the egg proteins become hard as a rock after a hot wash). Is there a way to either package them differently to cook them in the water bath in something other than a mason jar, or line/coat the mason jar so they could be removed or less sticky with the mason jar?
posted by jroybal to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

Have you tried a coating of cooking spray? That usually works when making eggs in a mug in the microwave, for instance.
posted by cabingirl at 7:39 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

My mom always told me to use cold water on protein. So maybe try soaking the mason jars in cold water first, then washing with warm water.

I would totally view this as an experiment and make a batch with one lined with parchment paper, one very lightly oiled, and maybe one lined with greased parchment paper, one control jar with no lining or oil, plus any other ideas that emerge from this thread, and document the results. Number the jars to keep track.
posted by bunderful at 7:39 PM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

How about shoving a silicone muffin cup into the mason jar?
posted by gregr at 7:59 PM on January 10, 2018

What if you used the same recipe but baked them in oiled or silicone-lined muffin pans?
posted by pseudostrabismus at 8:14 PM on January 10, 2018

There are also nonstick paper muffin liners, which I guess would be an average of the silicone and parchment options.
posted by rhizome at 8:38 PM on January 10, 2018

plastic wrap works great for this.
posted by TestamentToGrace at 9:12 PM on January 10, 2018

What about a silicone bag? Another sous vide egg recipe I saw linked to something like these, which the review says can just be successfully thrown in the dishwasher. They wouldn’t be pretty but it seems possible.
posted by charmedimsure at 11:19 PM on January 10, 2018

I just threw a bunch away because of this. Silicone is your friend!
posted by k8t at 12:08 AM on January 11, 2018

If cooking spray or buttering the jars doesn't work for some reason, soaking them for a bit in hot water and vinegar (or citric acid, which you should probably have around to descale your circulator anyway) should do it.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:29 AM on January 11, 2018

I used the older version of this with surprisingly great success. It's leak resistant, not leak proof, so I rigged a setup which had it submerged up to the lid. Everything came out great, and more importantly the egg bites popped out mostly cleanly and the apparatus was easy to pop in the dishwasher to get clean.
posted by photovox at 8:25 AM on January 11, 2018