Four uses for egg whites

One of my go-to recipes for a quick and easy dinner is spaghetti or tagliatelle carbonara.

If I'm feeling lazy I'll mix whole eggs with the cream and parmesan cheese to make the sauce. However, the children aren't overly keen on the grainy consistency and I always worry a little bit about salmonella (yes, I grew up in the Edwina Currie years!).

So if I've got time, I'll separate the eggs and just use the yolks.

This leaves me with several egg whites and rather than let them go to waste, I like to try and use them in something else.

Here are some of my favourite recipes to use up egg whites.

1. Meringue

This is such an easy recipe - well it would be if you had an electric whisk that worked - but even whisking by hand and getting a lovely arm work out wasn't too bad.

I used this recipe from BBC Good Food but as my eggs weren't large, I used five alongside the 115g of caster sugar and icing sugar.

My kids aren't big fans of cream so we served them up as pudding with ice cream and strawberries and then crushed them up to make our own version of Eton Mess.

2. Egg White Omelette

This is a really quick and easy tea that helps you use up lots of other ingredients. It's also good if you're on a fitness regime because egg whites contain very little, if any, fat and lots of protein. But probably the best thing about this recipe is that you can adjust the contents of each omelette to suit each fussy member of the family.

Just whisk up the egg whites with a splash of milk and pour into a hot pan. Then add whatever ingredients you have to hand, My kids love ham or chorizo and cheese and maybe even a bit of tomato, while I like to add a bit of chopped pepper, mushrooms and spinach. 

3. Sesame Prawn Toast

I love prawn toast. Again this is handy as a snack or tea - although my lot are far too suspicious of the sesame seeds to give it a try. They also make a good party food.

This Sesame Prawn Toast recipe from Good Food is pretty easy to follow. Although it does ask you to deep fry the toast. I don't own a deep fat fryer and so I just toast one side of the bread before spreading the prawn mixture on the uncooked side and then fry up the prawn side in a regular frying pan.

4. Tempura

Jazz up vegetables by coating them in a light tempura batter or make tempura prawns. You could even pass off tempura chicken as an alternative to chicken nuggets! I use this recipe from allrecipes.co.uk. I have read that using sparkling water instead of the still water suggested can make this batter even lighter. Sadly, I'm not posh enough to have sparkling water in the house and I've not yet been organised to buy any in anticipation of making this dish.

What are your go-to recipes for using up egg whites?