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Omelettes, part 2
The basic procedure for a basic omelette without any add-ins goes more-or-less thusly:
Crack your eggs into a small or medium-sized mixing bowl. Those in the know claim that striking your eggs against a thin surface like the edge of a bowl leads to more shell in the egg because it fractures it into pieces. You're supposed to crack them against a flat surface like the countertop. In practice, find that I get way more eggshell in the bowl and way more egg on the counter with the latter method, so I stick to the edge of the bowl (unless I managed to grab one of the plastic jobs instead of the metal mixing bowl).
The more eggs you have, the larger your bowl should be. You'll need to beat them reasonably vigorously, so don't err on the side of too small or you'll end up with egg all down the front of your shirt. A cereal bowl will just barely work for two eggs if you're careful, but I'd rather use a larger mixing bowl.
Add a dollop of milk, preferably whole because of the properties of the fat explained in the previous post, or cream if you've got it, or even skim (or even a bit of tap water) if that's more to your taste as the water in it will help the texture. If you prefer an exact amount, start with 2 teaspoons of liquid per egg for large eggs, 1 tablespoon per for jumbo, and adjust as you cook the recipe again to figure out what works for you. Add salt and pepper if that's what you're into.
Using a fork or a whisk, beat the hell out of the eggs until they're uniform in color, or close to. If you don't beat them enough, you'll end up with white streaks in your omelette and the fat probably won't be evenly dispersed. It'll still taste fine, but the texture may not be all there. (Which is, really, still not that big a deal if you're not picky.)
Put your pan over medium-low heat, and melt butter in it, about 2 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon. As you cook the recipe again and learn your pan's behavior and your preferences, you can adjust that amount up or down. Once the butter is melted, swirl it around the pan and up the sides a bit to coat.
Pour your beaten eggs in once the butter is melted and coating the pan - you don't want to put them into a cold pan or it'll take forever to start. Using a spatula, gently push the eggs around the pan as they start to coagulate, scraping them off the bottom and letting runny egg cover the pan surface you just scraped curds off of. This kick-starts the cooking. If you don't do it, the bottom part of the omelette will cook faster than the top, and it may overcook before the top surface is cooked at all. Granted, some people like their eggs runny, but I find them icky that way and prefer to get them as evenly cooked as I can without overcooking and making them tough.
Alternative technique: use chopsticks instead of a spatula. Hold 4 or 5 chopsticks in your hand and use them to stir and push the eggs about. This makes smaller curds and the final omelette will be somewhat more tender, although unless you practice it's hard to get all the curds scraped off the bottom.
Once you've hit a point where the egg is no longer runny enough to come back into the path of your scraping, pat the curds down into a more-or-less even mass covering the bottom of the pan, and stop touching them. You have a couple of choices to make, depending on how your prefer your eggs:
You want to stop just a hair before the consistency you like because the egg will continue cooking a tiny bit from the heat within the eggs. There's no way to figure exactly what point this is for your tastes without experimentation, but if you like your eggs on the wetter side, guesstimate earlier and if you like them on the drier side, guesstimate later. I find that the omelette is done to my tastes right about the point where the edges of the omelette conveniently start unsticking themselves from the pan. If the edges haven't started unsticking themselves by the point you think you're done, gently encourage them with your spatula.
Now the fun part: turning the omelette out! Really fancy French omelettes are rolled, and Japanese omelettes are folded (and made slightly differently than the generic European technique I use anyway) but that's way more effort than I want to put in.
If I have fewer eggs, I attempt to trifold the omelette, and succeed maybe seven times out of ten. Take your spatula -- and you'll want to use a spatula for this, instead of chopsticks -- and gently fold one third of the omelette over itself. The specific third you want is the third opposite the handle of the pan, for reasons that will come clear momentarily.
After that's folded over, grasp the handle of the pan with your non-dominant hand, upside down from your usual hold so that your palm is facing up underneath the handle and the back of your hand is facing down. This will give you more control as you slide out the omelette.
Use the spatula in your dominant hand to gently unstick the omelette from the pan and to guide it out onto the plate as you lift the pan, tilting it with the handle straight up, to encourage the omelette to slide out. When it's partly on the plate and partly still in the pan, maneuver the pan so it folds the last third of the omelette on top of the already-folded part, producing a nice trifold. This is harder to explain than to do, and I can't find any YouTube videos explaining it, so you'll just have to figure it out as best you can.
If a trifold arrangement is more than you want to do, or if your omelette is too thick or too well-cooked to fold in thirds without cracking, just fold it in half. Skip the bit in the instructions above where you fold the first third over in the pan, and start sliding the flat omelette out onto the plate. When it's halfway out, use the pan to fold the last half over the half on the plate.
Season to your taste, and eat!
Part 3 will involve fillings, and also a variation that produces an ENORMOUS fluffy omelette, but which may be way more work than you're willing to do.
Crack your eggs into a small or medium-sized mixing bowl. Those in the know claim that striking your eggs against a thin surface like the edge of a bowl leads to more shell in the egg because it fractures it into pieces. You're supposed to crack them against a flat surface like the countertop. In practice, find that I get way more eggshell in the bowl and way more egg on the counter with the latter method, so I stick to the edge of the bowl (unless I managed to grab one of the plastic jobs instead of the metal mixing bowl).
The more eggs you have, the larger your bowl should be. You'll need to beat them reasonably vigorously, so don't err on the side of too small or you'll end up with egg all down the front of your shirt. A cereal bowl will just barely work for two eggs if you're careful, but I'd rather use a larger mixing bowl.
Add a dollop of milk, preferably whole because of the properties of the fat explained in the previous post, or cream if you've got it, or even skim (or even a bit of tap water) if that's more to your taste as the water in it will help the texture. If you prefer an exact amount, start with 2 teaspoons of liquid per egg for large eggs, 1 tablespoon per for jumbo, and adjust as you cook the recipe again to figure out what works for you. Add salt and pepper if that's what you're into.
Using a fork or a whisk, beat the hell out of the eggs until they're uniform in color, or close to. If you don't beat them enough, you'll end up with white streaks in your omelette and the fat probably won't be evenly dispersed. It'll still taste fine, but the texture may not be all there. (Which is, really, still not that big a deal if you're not picky.)
Put your pan over medium-low heat, and melt butter in it, about 2 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon. As you cook the recipe again and learn your pan's behavior and your preferences, you can adjust that amount up or down. Once the butter is melted, swirl it around the pan and up the sides a bit to coat.
Pour your beaten eggs in once the butter is melted and coating the pan - you don't want to put them into a cold pan or it'll take forever to start. Using a spatula, gently push the eggs around the pan as they start to coagulate, scraping them off the bottom and letting runny egg cover the pan surface you just scraped curds off of. This kick-starts the cooking. If you don't do it, the bottom part of the omelette will cook faster than the top, and it may overcook before the top surface is cooked at all. Granted, some people like their eggs runny, but I find them icky that way and prefer to get them as evenly cooked as I can without overcooking and making them tough.
Alternative technique: use chopsticks instead of a spatula. Hold 4 or 5 chopsticks in your hand and use them to stir and push the eggs about. This makes smaller curds and the final omelette will be somewhat more tender, although unless you practice it's hard to get all the curds scraped off the bottom.
Once you've hit a point where the egg is no longer runny enough to come back into the path of your scraping, pat the curds down into a more-or-less even mass covering the bottom of the pan, and stop touching them. You have a couple of choices to make, depending on how your prefer your eggs:
- If you like them somewhat runny, excuse me, "more tender" as people say, then don't do anything. Leave the pan as it is while the omelette cooks.
- If you like your eggs drier and slightly more solid, put a lid on the pan at this point. Check every so often by lifting the lid and poking the surface of the egg with your spatula until it is almost at the consistency you like. If you find that the bottom of your omelette is getting more browned or tougher than you'd like, then next time either turn the heat to low or take the pan off the heat altogether and let the residual heat within the pan finish the cooking.
- If you're REALLY adventurous, you can flip the omelette over and cook the top half, but if you're able to do that without making a mess, you're probably experienced in cooking enough not to need this tutorial! Once I figured out the lid trick -- which took way longer than it should have! -- I stopped trying to flip omelettes.
You want to stop just a hair before the consistency you like because the egg will continue cooking a tiny bit from the heat within the eggs. There's no way to figure exactly what point this is for your tastes without experimentation, but if you like your eggs on the wetter side, guesstimate earlier and if you like them on the drier side, guesstimate later. I find that the omelette is done to my tastes right about the point where the edges of the omelette conveniently start unsticking themselves from the pan. If the edges haven't started unsticking themselves by the point you think you're done, gently encourage them with your spatula.
Now the fun part: turning the omelette out! Really fancy French omelettes are rolled, and Japanese omelettes are folded (and made slightly differently than the generic European technique I use anyway) but that's way more effort than I want to put in.
If I have fewer eggs, I attempt to trifold the omelette, and succeed maybe seven times out of ten. Take your spatula -- and you'll want to use a spatula for this, instead of chopsticks -- and gently fold one third of the omelette over itself. The specific third you want is the third opposite the handle of the pan, for reasons that will come clear momentarily.
After that's folded over, grasp the handle of the pan with your non-dominant hand, upside down from your usual hold so that your palm is facing up underneath the handle and the back of your hand is facing down. This will give you more control as you slide out the omelette.
Use the spatula in your dominant hand to gently unstick the omelette from the pan and to guide it out onto the plate as you lift the pan, tilting it with the handle straight up, to encourage the omelette to slide out. When it's partly on the plate and partly still in the pan, maneuver the pan so it folds the last third of the omelette on top of the already-folded part, producing a nice trifold. This is harder to explain than to do, and I can't find any YouTube videos explaining it, so you'll just have to figure it out as best you can.
If a trifold arrangement is more than you want to do, or if your omelette is too thick or too well-cooked to fold in thirds without cracking, just fold it in half. Skip the bit in the instructions above where you fold the first third over in the pan, and start sliding the flat omelette out onto the plate. When it's halfway out, use the pan to fold the last half over the half on the plate.
Season to your taste, and eat!
Part 3 will involve fillings, and also a variation that produces an ENORMOUS fluffy omelette, but which may be way more work than you're willing to do.
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Punching? I found that took too much control to do consistently.
Cracking one egg against another? That was interesting. Done gently, I found it fractured the shell of one (not sure why both eggs don't usually crack and usually just one does) into lots of pieces that stuck together and were easy to pry open, with no bits of shell falling in.
So now I do use a flat surface or another egg, but have to remember to be gentle and not go nuts.
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And you are clearly more, ahem, patient in the kitchen than I am. I'm not very good at gentle. *g*