With egg prices up, Penn State students scramble to find plant-based substitutes

By Rivka Wolin, WPSU

This story was first published on April 4, 2025.

During our last grocery run, my roommate and I were shocked to see the price of eggs was almost $6 for a dozen. We’re both Penn State undergrads on strict food budgets, so we decided to see if we could find an egg-like substitute until prices go down. We cooked up a couple of plant-based alternatives and tested them on our most real-egg-loving friends.

LISTEN to the story

The tofu scramble

First, we tried out a tofu scramble. My roommate, Alli Schroeder, is a vegetarian and instead of eggs she sometimes uses tofu to get more protein in the mornings.

She described the process of making tofu scramble as she turned on the stove.

“I’m going to crumble it in a bowl. I’m gonna use about half a block, and I’m gonna put in my spices, so it’s gonna be ground turmeric, pepper, garlic powder,” Schroeder said.

Then Schroeder added the secret ingredient that she said makes the scramble taste like eggs — black salt, or Kala Namak. She bought a one-pound bag online and has barely made a dent in it.

Schroder added oil to a preheated pan and began cooking the tofu scramble.

“Once the tofu scramble is done cooking a little bit, I’m gonna add a little bit of cream cheese to the pan and a little bit of milk,“ Schroeder said. “This can be done non-dairy, but I use dairy because I still eat it. It’s gonna give that more ‘eggy’ texture, and it’s gonna be a little bit more moist than just doing the spices in the pan.”

She bought the tofu for $1.75 at a bargain grocery store in State College, and it makes two servings.

The “Egg” Taste Testers

We invited two egg-loving friends over to be our egg testers. Robert Schiff and Graham Lively have never tried plant-based eggs before.

Schiff said he enjoys the taste of a good fried egg in the morning.

“You can’t beat the simplicity of a really good fried egg,” Schiff said.

However, after tasting it, he said the tofu scramble is closer to an egg than he expected.

“Actually, that’s not too bad, actually, that’s all right. That’s all right. I would eat this,” Schiff said. “It doesn’t quite exactly replicate a good egg, but it gets closer than I would have expected, to be honest. I would eat this.”

Lively said if someone told him the tofu scramble was egg, he would probably believe it.

“It kind of tastes like an egg, but a little bit squishier,” Lively said. “But if you gave me this at a restaurant and you insisted that this was an egg, I would believe you. You’d have to be pretty insistent, though.”

The mung bean omelet

The next egg-speriment was a mung bean omelet. I call it an omelet because it holds together and doesn’t get stirred.

I blended up yellow mung beans with nutritional yeast, turmeric, garlic powder and — again — black salt. We got a two-pound bag of mung beans for $7.99, and I’m estimating we’ll get about 24 omelets out of it.

This recipe takes more preparation than a tofu scramble. I had to remember to soak the beans overnight then blend them for a couple of minutes until they were about the consistency of a smoothie. This recipe makes three medium omelets per half cup of dried beans.

See Also

Energy bills driven by data centers threaten Pa. small businesses, report says

I poured the mixture into a preheated, oiled pan. I left it untouched for a couple of minutes, flipped it, and after a couple more minutes, it was done.

Taste test #2

Schiff said the mung bean omelet reminds him of hummus or a falafel.

“It’s actually very good, but an angry waiter screaming at me that this was indeed an egg, would not convince me that it was an egg,” Schiff said. “I would stand up for myself in that situation. I’d stand up, and I’d say, ‘No, waiter, this is not an egg!’”

Lively said he also preferred the tofu eggs.

“I would eat tofu scramble purposefully,” Lively said. “And I would eat this (mung bean omelet) occasionally on purpose, but I would not eat this as an egg substitute.”

The verdict

Roughly doing the math, the tofu scramble costs about half as much as our three-egg omelet and the mung bean omelet is about a quarter of the cost.

But the mung bean omelet is not as convincing an egg substitute as the tofu scramble.

I actually prefer the mung bean omelet. It will be easy — and cheap — to get through that two-pound bag of beans.