Italian Meringue question

[barbaracaporaso]

Hi.....I have a question regarding meringue.....I have 24 egg whites and rather than freeezing to make meringue in a few weeks I'm wondering if I can make the italian meringue now and freeze it for a few weeks?

thanks for your help
Barbara

[Suzanne]

Moving this to Baking and Pastry.

[jessiquina]

what are you making with the meringue?

[newbiechef]

im not an expert, but i think it would be better if you didnt make the merangue first. my experience with lemon merangue pies and stuff like that, when you put them in the refridgerator, they get that little oily beading on the surface and get a bit soggy (i have no idea what causes this either, so if somebody wouldnt mind helping me out...), i dont know if it happens in the freezer, but it could happen somewhere along the freezing/thawing process and then youd have soggy merangues... test batch?


by the way... barbaracaporaso... it says youre an instructor, may i ask what school you instruct at?

[HeavyMetal Chef]

you can make the meringue and put it in the freezer and it will be just fine because it freezes the moisture and moisture is what makes sugar get those "oil beads". At work thats what we do with our lemon tarts......we decorate it with the meringue freeze it and when ever the steakhouse needs some desserts from us we give it to them already decorated.....they just need to plate up. But from my experience with just plain frozen egg whites is that you might want to add some cream of tartar or egg white powder to it to help stablize it so it won't be too loose when you whip it up and when you do make a meringue (yes i am doing meringue 101 here....lol) start whipping on a lower speed until sugar is incorperated then whip on medium and when it starts looking pretty stable end it on high. This help the air bubbles not get too big so you have more structure to your meringue.

[sucrechef]

Although you can freeze merringue, you will have a better product by making the merringue fresh after freezing the egg whites. Also ... did you consider that you will need a HUGE increase in space to freeze merringue rather than just the whites? You will in essence be freezing air bubbles.

[qahtan]

But I use the Italian recipe....
Once they are finished and really cooled down I keep them in very large jars to keep the humidity out.
DON"T FREEZE THEM, they need to be kept dry.
I make small ones like mushrooms for cake decorating, like choc log etc. and larger ones that can be sandwiched with whipped cream, single servings.

qahtan

[Eeyore]

What are you going to be doing with the meringue?

Im assuming you wont be baking the meringues (like mushrooms or whatever) I think that is what qahtan thought you meant.

Personally I would never try to freeze a meringue. I cant say definitively that it wont work because......well.....as I said, I would never try it. lol

I could see trying it if you were doing small pies or tarts and you made them up completely then wrapped them well. Heavy Metal Chef apparantly does it and has good results.

However I really doubt that you could freeze a meringue and then spread or pipe it after thawing.

Let us know what happens.
eeyore