How do I use up leftover egg whites or yolks?
Where each half actually goes, how long they keep, and how to freeze them so they are usable later.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 10 min
- Read
- 2 min
- Safety
- caution
Short answer
Whites keep about four days in the fridge and freeze perfectly — meringues, macarons, omelettes, cocktail foams. Yolks keep about two days and go into custard, mayonnaise, hollandaise, pasta and enriched dough. Freeze yolks with a pinch of salt or sugar or they turn to jelly.
Almost every recipe that calls for one half of an egg leaves the other sitting in a bowl. Both halves are genuinely useful, but they keep for different lengths of time and freeze very differently.
Safety
Step by step
- Store them properly straight away.Into a small covered container in the fridge, not left in a mixing bowl under cling film. Note the date — this is the thing people forget and then throw away.
- Use whites within about four days.They keep noticeably better than yolks. Meringue, pavlova, macarons, financiers, egg white omelettes, and clarifying stock all use them in quantity.
- Use yolks within about two days.Custard, ice cream, crème brûlée, mayonnaise, hollandaise, carbonara, lemon curd, enriched doughs, and brushing pastry for a deep glaze.
- Freeze whites as they are.They freeze and thaw perfectly with no treatment. An ice cube tray gives portions of roughly one white each; bag them once frozen and label with the count.
- Freeze yolks with salt or sugar.Yolks alone go gelatinous and unusable when frozen. A pinch of salt per few yolks for savoury use, or a pinch of sugar for sweet, prevents it. Label which you used.
- Thaw in the fridge and use promptly.Overnight in the fridge, then use the same day. Whites whip better at room temperature, so let them stand for half an hour after thawing.
- Scale the recipe to what you have.Meringue is straightforward to scale: roughly twice the weight of sugar to whites. Weigh the whites rather than counting them, since egg sizes vary considerably.
- Keep a simple default for each.Whites: a batch of meringues that keeps for weeks in a tin. Yolks: a small custard or a jar of mayonnaise. Having one default recipe means the leftovers actually get used.
Tips
- Weigh leftover whites and write the weight on the container. Meringue recipes work by weight, and counting whites from memory is unreliable.
- Leftover yolks brushed on pastry give a much deeper colour than whole egg, and it is a use for a single yolk.
- Freeze whites in the quantity your usual recipe needs rather than singly — thawing four cubes is fine, but thawing eight is a nuisance.
Questions people ask
How long do leftover egg whites keep?
About four days covered in the fridge, and they freeze perfectly with no treatment. Yolks are more perishable — use those within about two days.
Can you freeze egg yolks?
Yes, but not on their own — they turn gelatinous. Stir in a pinch of salt for savoury use or sugar for sweet before freezing, and label which one you used.