The $15 Amazon Find That Saves Me a Fortune at Starbucks

The day Starbucks came out with their sous vide egg bites was the best day and the worst day. Because I don’t eat a ton of pastries and bread, there hadn’t been much in the way of sustenance there (aside from coffee, which is life). Especially if I was passing through an airport, or on a road trip, those warm, cheesy, bundles of goodness became my go-to snack at Starbucks. But they were not cheap, at about five bucks for two.

Also, I do prefer to support local, independent coffee shops, so for as much as I loved these egg bites (specifically, the Gruyère and bacon ones), I didn’t get to have them nearly as often as I’d have liked. Every time I did get them, though, I’d wonder if we could make them at home in the Instant Pot; I’d seen a few people online mention that they’d perfected a copycat version of the egg bites, but it seemed too good to be true.

Finally one day, months ago (before COVID), while we were driving to see family and stopped at Starbucks to fill up on caffeine and egg bites, I looked up the molds for making them on Amazon. (What else did I have to do in the car?) I found some that were only 15 bucks for a set of two, so it wasn’t a lot to lose if they didn’t work. With a one-click order, we had the set the next day. 

The molds came with a recipe, but we also took a spin around the internet and sort of cobbled together our own version. You basically just need eggs and a bunch of good stuff like cheese and half-and-half and crumbled bacon. Cottage cheese seems to be the trick to keeping the bites together, but additional cheese is always good. Gruyere is delicious, of course, but we tend to use whatever is hanging out in our cheese drawer (everyone has an entire drawer of their fridge dedicated to cheese, yeah?). The ratio we use is 10 eggs, whisked; 1 cup of cottage cheese; 1/2 cup half-and-half; several ounces of grated/shredded cheese; crumbled bacon; and some salt.

You whisk everything together, hit the mold with cooking spray, and pour it all in, making sure to get all the ingredients spread out equally into each cup. We don’t always do it, but topping the mold with aluminum foil keeps them from getting too big. The kit comes with a little metal tray, and you set that in the Instant Pot along with a cup of water, so the tray is slightly elevated over the water. The filled mold sits on the tray, then you steam the mixture for eight minutes at high pressure and do a natural release. 

They poof up like little savory muffins and are super hot when you take the lid off — so be careful getting them out. The trouble is they’re so good, you’ll scald your fingers trying to scoop them out to have one immediately. But try to be patient, and use a utensil to pop them out and onto a plate. The molds come with lids, so that you can store the baked bites in the fridge, but I feel like they get a little too waterlogged from condensation when you do that. Instead, we let them cool off a bit, then cover them with something on a plate or stash them in a reusable baggie in the fridge.

But I’m skipping the most important part: The resulting egg bites are amazing! They’re that kind of incredibly versatile food that you can eat hot, cold straight from the fridge, or in between. They’re good at breakfast, lunch, or for a snack. You can also play around with what you want in them — bacon or no bacon, ham, endless kinds of cheese, maybe even tiny chopped cooked veggies, although I’ve never tried. 

And you can make seven at a time, for just the cost of ingredients. Even with the spendy (and oh-so-delicious) farmers market eggs, it comes out to a fraction of the cost at Starbucks. Better still when friends with urban chickens give us their fresh-from-the-coop eggs! I swapped them a batch of the egg bites the last time they shared their bounty, and they immediately ordered the mold for themselves and requested the recipe. 

Now, do they taste exactly like the Starbucks version? Nah. But they’re really, really good, and really inexpensive. And I can have them anytime I want, so overall I’m calling it a win.