Why Baking Powder Should Never Be Used In Scrambled Eggs

When whipping up a batch of scrambled eggs, it's important to many that they turn out both fluffy and flavorful. While a lot of folks have some tricks up their sleeves in order to achieve this desirable result, there is one method in particular that has come to fruition: Adding baking powder. 

By incorporating this ingredient into your breakfast scramble, you're actually inflating your eggs with carbon dioxide once they hit the heat, which yields light and fluffy results. This is because baking powder consists of sodium bicarbonate, which is essentially baking soda, cornstarch, and an acid. All it needs is moisture and heat to activate carbon dioxide, which you get from the eggs and the hot stove. 

But, while this addition definitely benefits the texture, it doesn't improve the flavor and can actually lead to a not-so-great aftertaste.

Taste and texture go hand-in-hand, but when one is off, it can negatively impact the balance of a dish. The aftertaste that the addition of baking powder yields in scrambled eggs resembles a pungent chemical flavor, which is far too overpowering to reap the benefits of the fluffy texture it brings.

Baking powder is used with the same purpose in pancakes, producing a fluffiness that is crucial to flapjacks. But eggs are a different story as they cannot mask the taste of an ingredient like a sweet batter can. Therefore, it's best to leave baking powder out of your scrambled egg equation, or better yet, replace it with something more flavorful.

While there are many ways to prepare a good scramble, it seems that more and more people are folding dairy products such as heavy cream, whole milk, sour cream, or even crème fraiche into their beaten eggs in order to yield a richness in flavor while also aid in fluffiness. If you're looking for a lower calorie option, while it is an arm workout, whisking your eggs vigorously beforehand will actually inflate air into your mixture, resulting in a more fluffy outcome. For an even easier method, try beating them with a hand mixer.