Egg “Porridge”

Here is a fascinating (and satiating!) option for those who are after porridge or oatmeal for breakfast but are lacking proper gluten-free and ketogenic oatmeal recipes. This sweet, creamy and rich breakfast “porridge” keeps you satisfied for hours. (NB. There is a dairy-free version at the end of the post!)

This creation is quite close to scrambled eggs, but grainier, creamier, and sweeter. In fact, when spiced with cinnamon, it resembles rice porridge that we eat here in Finland during Christmas time. It also reminds me of Milchreis (“milk rice”), that Germans eat any time.

If your daily quota of carbs allows, top this porridge with berries or slices of apples or peaches. Berries are highly recommended because of their valuable nutrients.

Tips for making the egg porridge

It might come as a surprise (and don’t let this fact turn you off!) but this whole recipe is based on the curdling of eggs. The curdles are tiny and create an oatmeal-like effect. There are not that many occasions in this life where curdling is preferred, but here curdling is a must!

This porridge is very easy and quick to make — perfect for busy mornings — and it’s almost foolproof. (How could you go wrong with curdling, when it anyway happens so easily, also when it’s the last thing you wish?) The most important thing is to mix the egg and cream mixture all the time when heating, also along the bottom. Use low enough heat to ensure that the mixture doesn’t burn to the bottom of the saucepan and doesn’t get any brown color.

Let’s take a look how to make this easy porridge:

Combine the eggs…

 

…cream…

 

…and the sweetener in a small bowl.

 

Give it a little whisk so that the egg yolks break and the ingredients are mixed.

 

Heat a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Place the butter in the saucepan. Let the butter melt but don’t let it get browned. Turn the heat to the minimum once the butter is melted.

 

Add the egg and cream mixture.

 

Continue heating. Mix all the time along the bottom to ensure that the mixture doesn’t burn to the bottom of the saucepan. Reduce the heat — if you can — or take the saucepan from the heat for a while if the mixture gets brown color or gets stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.

 

Just continue mixing and heating until the mixture is quite thick and a little bit curdled. Don’t make it too dry and grainy, but leave it creamy and with only tiny “grains”. Those grains get bigger and the porridge drier the longer you cook. You want to keep the porridge creamy and not too dry, otherwise it will be like scrambled eggs…

 

Now your porridge is ready! Just season it as you wish.

 

My egg porridge experiments

I got the idea for this porridge when developing my Cauli ‘n’ Cheese recipe. Some of the experiments curdled, and I got the idea to turn the flop to my advantage by developing a recipe for porridge based on this curdling reaction. For porridge, I didn’t need cheese anymore, just eggs and cream, even cheese porridge definitely sounds revolutionary.

To increase the fat content and make the preparation easier, I wanted to use also butter. I combined the eggs and cream in a small bowl and mixed a little. I added the mixture to a saucepan where I had melted the butter over low heat. Then, I just mixed and mixed, heating all the time and waiting what happens when the mixture thickens.

At first the mixture looked like thick sauce, but very soon it became even thicker and a little bit curdled. This curdling made it look like real porridge! Wonderful!

After tasting the porridge I have to admit that the taste was very bland — so I needed to season the creation with something. Well, you season the gluten-filled porridge too, at least with salt.

But since I wanted to use spices, I thought cinnamon would be a perfect spice to my egg porridge, maybe vanilla as well. I also wanted to have my porridge sweet, so I added some stevia. In the end I left out the vanilla and just sprinkled plenty of cinnamon on top of the ready, sweetened porridge. Perfect! I was so happy to include one more gluten-free low-carb porridge recipe to my arsenal!

I don’t expect everybody fall in love with this creation, but for serious low-carbers and health-conscious people it will be a great breakfast alternative.

 

 
And here is the recipe:

 

Nutrition Information	In Total (recipe makes 1 serving)
Protein	17.3 g
Fat	64.5 g
Net carbs	2.9 g
kcal	661 kcal

 

Tips for variation

You can vary and season this porridge endlessly. Like said, my personal favorite spice is cinnamon, I just think it’s a perfect spice with this porridge. I also love to top my porridge with fresh raspberries if I happen to have them at hand. Naturally, any berries — fresh or frozen — are super healthy and they add vitamins and nutrients to this satiating breakfast.

If the amount of calories is too much for you, you can replace the heavy cream with half heavy cream and half filtered or spring water. One serving will have 527 kcal and 1.7 grams net carbs. Alternatively, you can reduce the amount of butter by half, using 1 tablespoon (1/2 oz = 15 g) butter. In that case one serving of porridge will have 417 kcal and 1.6 grams net carbs.

For those who don’t tolerate dairy, I created a dairy-free version with coconut oil and coconut milk. I have to say that if possible, it’s even more delicious than the version with cream and butter! Since coconut milk has a naturally sweet taste, you don’t need to use that much sweetener. Below the recipe and a photo about dairy-free porridge topped with frozen wild blueberries (thanks for my mom for picking and freezing them!)

 

Dairy-Free Egg “Porridge” 2 organic free-range eggs 1/3 cup = 80 ml organic coconut milk without food additives 1 package NuStevia™ NoCarbs Blend™ OR your preferred sweetener to taste 1 tablespoon organic extra virgin coconut oil to taste ground organic Ceylon cinnamon   Directions Combine eggs, coconut milk and the sweetener in a small bowl. Give the mixture a little whisk. Melt the coconut oil in a medium saucepan over low heat. Add the egg and coconut milk mixture. Cook, all the time mixing along the bottom until the mixture thickens and starts curdling. When you see the first signs of curdling, i.e. those tiny grains, take the saucepan immediately from the heat. Now the porridge is ready! Transfer the porridge in a serving bowl. Sprinkle plenty of cinnamon on top and serve immediately.

 

Nutrition information	In Total (recipe makes 1 serving)
Protein	15.8 g
Fat	40.5 g
Net carbs	4.4 g
kcal	445 kcal

 

 

 

P.S. I’m sorry for being so late with this blog post. The thing is, that I wanted to shoot my first ever cooking video, or actually just rehearse how to do it. The very first video was far too shaky to be published anywhere — it would have just made people seasick! I used GoPro with chest mount which wasn’t a very good idea when the video needed so much whisking.

With my next video I used GoPro with chest mount but tried not to move that much. Everything went relatively okay until I started editing the files. I used Camtasia which is a very user-friendly program and extremely easy to use, but for some reason it wanted to corrupt my videos every time I tried to do some cutting. I have been fighting with the problem almost for a week now, and still didn’t find a proper solution how to prevent the files from corrupting. I would have liked to shorten the videos even more, but that had meant more corruption. I just don’t happen to like corruption in any form…!

Lessons learnt: 1) Use camera stand, no chest mount 2) Make the videos much shorter 3) Plan the whole thing better.

These are not very good-quality videos, but I wanted to upload them in YouTube anyway, though I might remove them quite soon if I start feeling too ashamed! I promise you better videos next time!

And now, I would like to know which you prefer here on my blog, progress photos or (better made…) videos. Please leave me a comment!

 

 

 

 

Finally, some bloopers for entertainment: