Late to the Party posts are about first time experiences with products or brands that have been around for a while.
Just Egg, a plant-based egg substitute, is made from mung bean. If this is the first time you’ve ever heard of mung bean, I want to let you know that I was in your shoes back in 2018 when I first read about this product. If you’d like to take up some space in your brain to learn about it, here’s the Wikipedia link.
While I’ve known about Just Egg for years and have wanted to try it for the same amount of time, I just never came across it. That ended while pushing my virtual cart through the aisles of my local Whole Foods via the Amazon website to find out what kinds of dairy-free milk alternatives it offers. (Side note: It’s A LOT.)
Why would I want to try not-eggs? While some people are fascinated with Star Wars, I’m that way with products that attempt to recreate meat and animal products using plants. Yes, you’ll regret asking me what my hobbies are at a party.
While an egg is just, well, an egg, Just Egg has (takes a deep breath) water, mung bean protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, dehydrated onion, gellan gum, natural carrot extractives (for color), natural flavors, natural turmeric extractives (for color), potassium citrate, salt, soy lecithin, sugar, tapioca syrup, tetrasodium pyrophosphate, transglutaminase, and nisin (a preservative).
All those ingredients create something that looks and feels like scrambled eggs. You might notice that I didn’t include “tastes” in the previous sentence. I’ll get to that later.
When it’s poured out of its bottle, it looks like an Egg Beaters product, but grainer. But the magic begins when the product starts to curdle in the pan. The liquid’s pastel yellow color turns into a vibrant yellow, it looks like scrambled eggs, and it has a soft scrambled eggs-like texture.
While Just Egg can fool my eyes, it cannot fool my taste buds. The instant they got to experience the plant-based egg product, they knew something was up. Its flavor is like vegetables, although seasoned vegetables. But I think the way it looks and feels has my brain thinking it’s an omelet with A LOT of vegetables.
I’m fine with the way it tastes. So much so that if chickens went extinct for some reason, like bird flu or way too many foxes protecting all the chicken coops, I’d be okay with eating Just Egg for the rest of my life.
The instant I looked at that third pic, with it initially poured into the pan, I thought: That looks like a bushy mustache, towards the left! Ahhh…pareidolia, at its finest.
Thank you for teaching me a new word! My daily dictionary.com emails haven’t introduced me to it yet! #wordnerd
Interesting product and review–thanks!
Sorry, the label is a flat-out lie. A product which contains no eggs should absolutely NOT be called “Just Egg”.
You can file a class action lawsuit to change this labeling, but I’m sure some persnickety folks are doing just that, a la “Lobster” at Rubio’s about 15 years ago: https://www.fastcasual.com/news/rubios-settles-class-action-lawsuit/
It’s likely an uphill battle given it states it is made from plants “not chicken” on the top of the bottle.
It does look remarkably like Eggbeaters. Color me intrigued.
I’ve tried this product but found it has a very salty flavor. If mixed with the right items you can cover it up.
If I had any interest in trying this at all, your comment would’ve killed it. I’m really not a fan of the salt! Except for salt and vinegar chips. Yum, yum!
Judging by your review, it sounds like you’re one of those weirdos who likes the way that vegetables taste. I kid. 😀 Just keep them away from me and we’ll be cool (including this product).
I had the exact same experience Marvo after just trying them recently. They remind me of an egg in all but taste, and for some reason, I’m fine with that. Maybe I just think “mung” is a fun word.
It is fun to say.
Adding black salt (kala namak) helps achieve more of an egg-y flavor. It definitely needs some seasoning to help with the taste.
Good advice, thanks!
I wish I wrote this post a few months ago, which would’ve led to you telling me about adding black salt back then because I had black salt that I received as a gift. But I threw it out during a spring cleaning of our kitchen because we’ve had it for three years and never opened it.
I agree, “Just Mung” would have been spectacular.
Oh my gosh! Yes! Brilliant. Time for some rebranding.
I always see this on the shelf and just thought it was straight up liquid egg with no additives. Wonder how it holds up in baked goods.
Can second the comment about black salt. It really gives it that sulfer taste that makes eggs distinct tasting. Great product, just a little too expensive to eat casually unless you really need to avoid cholesterol.
It’s wonderful to have this alternative out their for vegans too.