Yes, You Really Should Cook With Room Temperature Eggs: Here’s Why

It makes a difference.

For many of us who have been cooking for a long time and learned from our mother or grandmother (or in my case, our great-grandmother), it is all too easy to sometimes overlook the fact that preparing a cake relies on chemistry, as much as it does on muscle memory. As a result, producing the best possible result (i.e. the most tender cake) often relies on understanding and recognizing certain chemical principles.

Most of the time, a recipe will provide some clues and reminders of where these details of ingredient chemistry are really important, such as when a recipe calls for a select number of “large eggs, at room temperature.” Using room temperature eggs is a fairly common instruction in baking recipes, and I imagine it’s also a commonly ignored instruction in many kitchens. I mean, let’s be honest, if an instruction requires additional time and/or effort for a project, and we don’t really see what difference it makes whether we adhere to it or not, many of us will proceed as if it was the case. weren’t even there.

So really, why is this instruction there?

Related: Amazon’s Black Friday Sale Starts Today – Shop Kitchenware, Cooking Tools, and More, Starting at $10

Why should you cook with room temperature eggs?

When you see a note about temperature on a recipe ingredient list, understand that it is an indicator of temperature. do truly matters for the ultimate success of your baked goods. In fact, you can consider this as important as accurately following the measurements provided. You can think of baking as an art rooted in science.

Most of us immediately understand why butter needs to be at room temperature if you intend to cream it with sugar (and remember, you tend to see some iteration of the phrase “beat until foamy consistency”, in tandem with this ingredient at room temperature – this is telling. /important). The most obvious reason is that room temperature, or “softened,” butter is much easier to combine with the sugar and then the other ingredients; the same goes for eggs.

Eggs at room temperature are more easily and quickly dispersed and mixed with the other ingredients to form a stable emulsion. You will recognize this “stable emulsion” as a smooth, cohesive paste.

In some cases, using refrigerated eggs can effectively prevent the formation of a well-emulsified dough. Mixing eggs straight from the refrigerator into room temperature butter causes a temperature disparity that can shock the fat, leading it to seize and curdle. This will ultimately not prove beneficial to the texture of your cake.

Now, the less obvious, but entirely essential, role that temperature plays when it comes to these ingredients is air pockets. You see, when you beat an egg, the proteins in the egg tend to capture air pockets or bubbles – and eggs are able to do this more effectively when they are at room temperature. These contained air pockets expand during cooking and result in an airy, tender and moist cooked product. Think about it, this is why we whisk eggs well before scrambling them in a pan or making an omelette… we want softness!

Related: How to Bring Eggs to Room Temperature Quickly and Safely

Do eggs always need to be at room temperature for cooking?

In short, no: eggs don’t have to be at room temperature for every type of baking recipe. In general, it’s always a good idea for cakes and other baked goods that you want to have a moist texture. Otherwise, you can rely on your recipe to tell you when it is necessary to bring them to room temperature.

For example, when making most cookies, I never really worry about having room temperature eggs to work with, because softness is not a texture I’m looking for – it’s more important to me than my chocolate chip cookie is soft rather than fluffy. .

What about other refrigerated ingredients in the recipe?

There are a few other ingredients that you will typically see called for brought to room temperature before adding them to a baking recipe: butter, cream cheese, and “liquid” dairy products such as milk, buttermilk, yogurt and sour cream. For all this, the logic is pretty much the same as for eggs.

Related: How to Soften Butter 5 Easy Ways

Ingredients at room temperature are more easily incorporated together. And all of these dairy products contain proteins that will do the best job of trapping tiny air bubbles if they’re at room temperature.

That said, may this be the day you start taking the term “room temperature” recipe seriously.

Read more cooking tips: