These Make-Ahead Bacon and Cheese Egg Bites Will Energize Your Mornings

I’ve spent my fair share of money at Starbucks, especially on seasonal lattes and extravagant iced teas. Their food menu is also expansive, and one of their most popular items is the sous-vide egg bites, which were introduced in 2017, according to various sources, including Business Insider. It’s easy to see why these portable breakfast bites are popular nationwide; they are an ideal protein- and flavor-packed breakfast featuring smooth custard-like cooked eggs, filled with a variety of savory add-ins.

Since the egg bites were introduced, many copycat versions have appeared online—but most of these aren’t really sous vide (Most are baked in muffin tins and have a tendency to be rubbery.) With this recipe, we set out to recreate these bites using a sous vide cooking method, which gives the egg bites a particularly silky, custard-like texture. They’re a great low effort, mostly hands-off breakfast option that you can easily make ahead at home so they can be enjoyed on the go anytime.

For our version, our Birmingham-based test kitchen colleague Elizabeth Mervosh cooked batch after batch of eggs with an immersion circulator to develop this recipe for velvety egg bites that are loaded with savory bacon and nutty Gruyère cheese. They’re portioned and cooked in individual mason jars that can be enjoyed right out of the jar or popped out onto a plate for serving. Here’s how to make them at home.

What Is Sous Vide Cooking?

As we pointed out in our guide about how to get started with sous vide cooking, the French phrase sous vide literally means “under vacuum,” referring to the vacuum-sealed bags that are often used in the cooking technique. However, these days, when someone says “sous vide cooking,” they’re generally referring to any kind of cooking that takes place in a precisely temperature-controlled water bath, whether using a vacuum-sealed bag or not.

Sous vide cooking offers unparalleled control over whatever it is you are trying to cook, whether it’s small steaks and chops, large cuts of meat such as pork shoulder and leg of lamb, seafood, vegetables, and, yes, even eggs. With fast-cooking foods like eggs, sous vide removes all the guesswork that traditional methods like baking have: There’s no poking with a thermometer, no cutting, peeking, or jabbing with your finger to check if the eggs are fully cooked—just perfect results every single time when using the correct temperature and time.

Sous vide cooking allows us to cook the egg bites at a temperature that is significantly lower and more stable than baking—here we cook the eggs at 172℉ vs. a typical 325 to 350℉ for oven-baked eggs. This means that we can achieve the most tender results possible, which would be very challenging to achieve if baking in the oven. Your egg bites will come out of the water bath cooked perfectly from edge to edge. 

If you are unfamiliar with sous vide cooking, the process and set-up might seem intimidating at first, but we assure you it is fairly simple, and really only requires two pieces of equipment: an immersion circulator and a large vessel for holding the water for cooking. An immersion circulator is a device that you insert into a tub or pot of water. It draws water from the tub, heats it up to a precise temperature, then spits it back out, simultaneously heating and circulating the water. You can check out our review of our favorite immersion circulators. As to the best water container to use for sous vide cooking, an immersion circulator can be used with any old pot, like a large soup pot or Dutch oven, but we strongly suggest using a large, sturdy food-safe plastic container such as a Cambro container. Plastic is a better insulator and will actually do a better job at maintaining a constant controlled water temperature. If you own an immersion circulator and are planning on sous vide cooking frequently, then it’s worth the investment to find a sturdy large plastic container for cooking.

How to Make Sous-Vide Egg Bites

We’ve kept the preparation and cooking process for these egg bites as simple as possible in this recipe. The first step is to set up your immersion circulator and water bath following the instructions for your specific model. I recommend starting with room temperature tap water. It will take some time for the circulator to reach the set cooking temperature, 20 to 30 minutes depending on the circulator brand. This is plenty of time to blend the egg mixture and portion it and the bacon into individual jars for cooking. Once the water bath has reached 172℉, you’ll use tongs to gently lower the egg filled jars into the water bath. At this point, the egg jars don’t need any monitoring or checking while they cook. It’s a simple, hands-off cooking process. 

Elizabeth performed many side-by-side temperature- and time-controlled tests before deciding that the ideal cooking temperature and time for the eggs is 172℉ for one hour. With this temperature and time combination, the eggs cook to a perfectly set baked custard–like consistency; they are firm enough to hold together when turned out of the cooking jars, but still tender when bitten into.

Key Techniques for Perfect Sous-Vide Egg Bites

While the prep and cooking process is fairly straightforward for this recipe, there are a few key elements that Elizabeth incorporated into her recipe to ensure great results.

Add rice starch or cornstarch to the egg mixture to guarantee silky cooked eggs. The starch acts as a binding agent, preventing the egg proteins from setting too firmly, resulting in a much creamier and more tender texture, essentially protecting the eggs from overcooking and becoming rubbery. Elizabeth performed many side by side tests to confirm that using just 1 1/2 teaspoons rice starch or cornstarch blended with the eggs made a noticeable difference in the egg bites’ final texture. When too much starch was added, the eggs became unpleasantly pasty, and when starch wasn’t added, the eggs verged on rubbery.

Blend the eggs with the cheeses until completely smooth. Using a blender to mix the eggs with the cottage cheese, Gruyère, and Monterey Jack is not only an easy way to combine all the ingredients, the sharp blades of the bender also ensures that everything is processed until fully smooth, which helps achieve the best custard-like texture.

Don’t over-tighten the jar lids. Both water vapor and air expansion can happen at elevated sub-boiling temperatures, which can increase pressure inside tightly sealed jars. This can cause a small risk of the jar breaking when cooking and can also trap unwanted moisture inside the jars. So it’s prudent to only go “fingertip tight”—simply screw the band lid onto the jar until you feel slight resistance, using only your fingertips—to allow any built-up pressure to escape.

Wait a few minutes before serving. Similar to when baking muffins or a cake, it’s best to wait a few minutes before trying to invert the egg bites out of their cooking jars. This allows time for the eggs to cool slightly and set into a firm cohesive custard, so the egg bite holds together when flipped out of the jar and doesn’t fall apart.

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