How to make powdered eggs, and why the store-bought kind is safer

Eggs are cheap protein and hold half of all baking together, yet they are fragile and keep for weeks rather than years. Dried into powder they take up a fraction of the space and need no refrigerator, which is why powdered eggs turn up in camping kits and long-term pantries.

Commercially made egg powder is pasteurized in the factory, and in sealed #10 cans it keeps for years when stored cool and dry. Making it at home is another matter, and the method most often recommended online is the one that food-safety specialists warn against.

The two home methods

Both methods start the same way: a half-dozen eggs beaten in a blender until completely smooth, and a dehydrator set to about 145°F. Each half-dozen gives close to half a cup of powder.

Cook-dry

1. Scramble the beaten eggs in a non-stick pan until fully cooked, with no wet egg left. Eggs cooked to 160°F have had their salmonella killed before drying starts.
2. Spread the cooked egg on the dehydrator trays.
3. Dry for about 4 hours, until every piece is brittle and snaps.
4. Grind the pieces to a fine powder in a blender, food processor or coffee grinder, then seal.

Wet-dry

1. Lightly oil a fruit-leather sheet.
2. Pour on the beaten raw egg.
3. Dry for about 16 hours, until brittle throughout. The result is orange.
4. Grind and seal as above.

How they compare

On texture the wet-dry powder wins easily. Reconstituted and scrambled, it turns yellow again, fluffs up and tastes close to fresh, and it keeps the rising power that baking needs. The cook-dry powder is quick but gritty and stale, and it does not rise in the pan.

On safety the order reverses, since the cook-dry method is the only one of the two that heats the egg to a safe temperature before drying. Even so, neither is a tested process. Home-dried egg of either kind is best treated as a short-keeping product, stored in the freezer, and cooked thoroughly before eating.

Using and reconstituting egg powder

Egg powder does anything a beaten egg does: baking, pancakes, French toast, scrambled eggs, quiche. What it cannot do is a poached or fried egg with an intact yolk.

For one medium egg, stir about one heaping tablespoon of powder into two tablespoons of water, leave it five minutes, then use it. Commercial powders print their own ratio on the can, so follow the label when there is one. Cook anything made from reconstituted egg until it is firm, and do not use egg powder raw in drinks, dressings or unbaked batter.

Is it worth doing?

The numbers say mostly not. The wet-dry method takes 16 hours for six eggs, and a #10 can holds the powder from about 7.5 dozen eggs, so filling one with a small dehydrator is a week of running time. In 2010 a case of six #10 cans of commercial whole-egg powder, equal to about 45 dozen eggs, sold for about $90, or around $2 a dozen.

The case for home drying was always the backyard flock that lays more in spring than the household can eat. For that surplus, freezing is the tested route. Mix yolks and whites without whipping in air, stir in 1/2 teaspoon of salt or 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar or corn syrup per cup depending on whether the eggs will go into savory or sweet dishes, and freeze in measured portions with half an inch of headspace, as the NCHFP’s egg-freezing guidance describes. Three tablespoons frozen in an ice-cube tray equals one egg. Thaw in the refrigerator and cook thoroughly, and the spring surplus covers the winter slowdown without the salmonella risk.