Hi everyone! Today in the kitchen, we’re going to make Meringue. I’m in the process of making
a Lemon Meringue Pie and I thought I’d step out and do this as a separate video.

There are a couple of tricks to making meringue but if you’re doing things properly in the
kitchen, they shouldn’t be a problem. So in this bowl, I have egg whites and just the white and
the first mistake that everyone makes is if you get a little bit of the yolk, even just the tiniest,
little bit of yolk into the white, you’re going to blow the whole thing; they won’t fluff up.

Second thing is, this bowl has to be spotless. If you’ve got any sort of grease, oil, butter or any
sort of oily residue at all; or even a dairy residue in the bowl or on the beater, they’re not going
to fluff up. So, you can never do it in a plastic bowl. Plastic holds on to the little oil molecules,
you’ll never get it right.

So onto the stand mixer, put the beater on. Now, you want to start it out and you want it to beat
until it froths up a little bit. So, once the egg starts to get frothy you can slowly start adding in the
sugar.

Now, there are different stages of whipping egg whites and you’re going to hear these terms used
and the first is soft peak. With the soft peak, it slouches back on to itself very quickly. So, it’s
sort of stiff but it’s not really stiff. Now for meringue on lemon pie, you want to take it to a stiff
peak stage and the egg whites will start to look glossy and shiny. So, we need to go just a little
bit further.

You can hear the sound start to change and you start to get a really hollow sound coming out of
the beater. We’re now at the stiff peak stage. So, at stiff peak, they hold their shape completely
and you start to get a really nice sort of glassy look to them. That’s all it takes to make meringue.

Now, if you beat it in a cup or bowl, the peaks are going to happen faster. If you add a little bit of
cream of tartar, the peaks are going to happen faster and they’re going to hold a little bit better
but you don’t have to do those two things. So now, this meringue is ready to use on our pie.