What Can I Make with Egg and Mozzarella?
Mozzarella and egg is the khachapuri combination — a boat of bread filled with molten cheese and finished with a raw yolk stirred through. The top match is Adjaruli Khachapuri, and Custrd also matched air fryer mozzarella sticks, garlic cloud bread and a tomato galette. Six tested recipes.
Top recipeAdjaruli Khachapuri
A Georgian cheese-filled bread shaped like a boat, with a molten cheese center and a runny egg, finished with butter. This quick version uses store-bought pizza dough for a fast, satisfying meal.
Ingredients
- •pizza dough
- •shredded mozzarella
- •feta cheese
- •egg
- •butter
Steps
- 1"Preheat oven to 450°F. On a floured surface, roll the 1 lb pizza dough into a 12x8 inch oval. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet."
- 2"Mix 2 cups mozzarella and 1/2 cup feta in a bowl. Spoon the cheese mixture down the center of the dough, leaving a 2 inch border on all sides."
- 3"Cut the dough edges into 1 inch strips on each side. Fold the strips over the cheese, pinching the ends to form a boat shape with a well in the middle."
- 4"Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the crust is golden and the cheese is bubbly. Remove from oven and make a well in the center of the cheese."
- 5"Crack the 1 egg into the well and return to the oven for 3-4 minutes, until the egg white is set but yolk is still runny. Top with 2 tbsp butter and serve hot."
- 6"Tear off pieces of the crust and dip into the egg and cheese mixture to eat."
Why this works
Mozzarella melts differently from almost every other cheese, and that is the whole reason it works with egg. It is a pasta filata cheese: the curd is stretched and kneaded while warm, which lines its proteins up into long fibres rather than a random network. Heat it and those fibres slide past each other, which is where the stretch comes from. What it does not do well is emulsify — molten mozzarella tends to sit as a stringy mass with fat pooling around it.
Egg yolk fixes exactly that. Yolk is full of lecithin, one of the most effective natural emulsifiers there is, and stirring a raw yolk into hot molten mozzarella pulls the fat and water back together into a smooth, glossy sauce. That is the entire trick of Adjaruli khachapuri: the bread is baked, the cheese melts, and the yolk goes in at the table to be stirred through with butter until a puddle of cheese becomes something you can dip bread into.
Elsewhere in this pairing the egg does more familiar work. Beaten egg is the glue that holds a breadcrumb coating to a stick of mozzarella, and because mozzarella is so wet that coating has to be complete or the cheese escapes. Whipped egg white gives cloud bread its structure, with mozzarella supplying flavour and enough fat to stop it tasting of nothing.
Moisture is the one thing to manage. Fresh mozzarella in water is around 60 percent liquid and will flood a tart or a galette. Drain and pat it dry, or use the firmer low-moisture kind. Custrd matches the eggs and mozzarella you have against tested recipes and shows the rest.
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Open the recipe finder →Frequently asked
Fresh mozzarella or the low-moisture block?
Low-moisture for anything baked, melted into a filling, or breaded — it browns properly and does not flood the dish. Fresh mozzarella in brine is better raw or barely warmed, and if you must bake with it, tear it, drain it on paper for twenty minutes, and pat it dry first.
Why does my melted mozzarella turn greasy and stringy?
Because it does not emulsify on its own. Its stretched protein fibres hold together while the fat separates out around them. A raw egg yolk stirred through, as in khachapuri, or a little starch will bring the fat and water back together into a smooth sauce.
Do I need to freeze mozzarella sticks before frying?
Yes, and it is the difference between success and a pan of leaked cheese. Freezing the coated sticks solid means the crumb crust sets and browns before the cheese inside melts through it. Coat them, freeze for at least an hour, and cook them straight from frozen.
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