Made in Portugal: 100% vegetable egg replacement traditional egg
A Portuguese food research and development company created a 100% vegetable egg, which can be used in food or in the pastry industry, maintaining the flavor and aroma of the traditional chicken egg.
“It mimics the egg, in its flavor, in its aroma, in its nutrition. We managed to create a product 100% from plant extracts, which makes delicious scrambled eggs, makes good omelets and is used in bakeries and pastries”, he told the agency. Lusa Daniel Abegão, administrator and technical manager of CFER – Center for Food Education and Research, located in Alcobaça, district of Leiria.
Created from – a plant that has “physico-chemical properties that allow it to replace the egg and imitate it, also in terms of the way it is cooked” – it incorporates other plant extracts, resulting in a product “that your egg, smells like an egg, tastes like an egg, but it’s not an egg”, explained Daniel Abegão.
“It allows the final consumer, whether vegetarian or just a fan of a healthier and more sustainable diet, a product similar to the egg and that will certainly not miss the original chicken egg”, he guaranteed.
The vegetable egg is not yet on the market, but, according to Daniel Abegão, it will be “still in the first half of this year”, after “more than five years of research and development”.
“We are currently finishing the industrial implementation of the project [em fábricas parceiras com as quais o CFER trabalha]to study the latest technical details soon, for the most advanced in the national and international market”, revealed the technical manager, trained at the University of Coimbra in biochemistry and industrial chemistry.
The vegetable egg already has customers and clients in Europe, in Africa in the USA and Brazil.