I like to watch Gordon or Jacques prepare omelets. All that whipping and stirring, the folding, the pan tilting and final rolling and voila - you have a perfect omelet. Usually “creamy”. But I’m sitting here eating my eggs and they taste great. Today I cut a few pieces of bacon into pieces, fried them a bit and cracked two eggs and just dumped them in the pan. I stir it up with the spatula until it is mostly even and flip it a time or two until just done. Soft but no creaminess for me (I call it runny). And I like it when you can still see white and yellow bits.
Well, your resolve impresses me.
I like a good soft scramble myself. Eh, who needs a chef prepared omelet?
Egg. The nearly perfect food.
The Bear omelet
Yeah I get that there are those who love that soft fluffy to creamy that slow even accomplishes, and I will do a fair imitation of it for company, but I’m with you for myself.
I’ve tried multiple times to make a rolled French-style omelet but have never accomplished it, so instead I make folded American-style omelets. They taste good enough for me. And lately, I’ve been making scrambled eggs. I’ve never tried to make soft-boiled or poached eggs.
Julia Child’s entire TV career originated with her frustration that the average American housewife erroneously thought omelets were too difficult to make at home. Eggs are easy…except over easy; that takes some practice.
I go to a lot of small New England diners for breakfast on the weekend. The one thing I don’t like is an omelet made on the flattop. They pour the egg mixture on a too hot flattop, cook it too long until it turns into an egg tortilla, then they put the filling on top and roll it all into a burrito. This may be a New England thing.
I just like them fried. But it has to be done properly with the yolk still liquid with just the right skin over the top, and the white solid but not rubbery.
Can’t trust anyone else to do it right: I have to make my own….
Well…kinda. It is hard to screw up cooking eggs but there are definitely differences in the final results. So, while none may be said to be really “bad” some are definitely better than others.
Watch these videos and judge for yourself:
I should note it can happen. A few years ago I was in Italy to attend a wedding. It was in a small town and there was nothing like a fancy hotel around but the one I stayed in was fine (clean, had a pool). A continental breakfast was part of the fee. WORST EGGS EVER! OMG! I can’t imagine how they managed to ruin scrambled eggs so much but boy did they ever. And it was not just my opinion, it was the opinion of absolutely everyone I talked to about it (friends and other guests).
It was just…bad. My breakfast consisted of a seriously mediocre croissant and a bland apple for the rest of that trip.
IMO, the quality of the raw ingredients can make all the difference…there’s no comparison between farm-fresh eggs from a local henhouse vs. supermarket eggs shipped halfway across the country.
I have heard this but, as a city boy, I only ever get the stuff shipped halfway across the country.
Someday I’d love to try the farm fresh eggs. Somewhere on my list of things I’d like to do. Better would be a side-by-side tasting but that is not likely to happen.
I make eggs in one form or another every day of the week. The wife loves them and so do I, so I’ve gotten pretty adept at making them. I do fried and scrambled (usually with some cheese, low/slow so they’re fluffy), Child-style omelet (shaking the pan and then rolling: takes about a minute or so), fried egg sandwiches ( toasted and buttered English muffin, egg on the bottom half, S&P and Sriracha on the egg, top with bacon, mayo on the top half, mash down until yolk drools out the side), fried egg on oatmeal, fried egg on buttered toast, poached eggs on toast, pancakes/French toast, both of which have eggs, hashbrowns with eggs. Unless otherwise noted, all eggs are over easy. I hate eggs that are hard-cooked unless they’re deviled or in an egg salad. Also, I can flip my fried eggs without using a spatula.
One of my favorite ways to do eggs is to take two slices of bacon and cut each in half. Arrange them like a picture frame in your frying pan. Actually, it’s better to arrange them like a capital “E” with a three-sided frame and one piece across the middle space. When the bacon is mostly done, break* an egg into the middle of the structure. Puncture the yolk if you’ve a mind to, or not. When the egg is 80% done, flip the whole thing over for another minute or so. Serve on a piece of toast, or between two pieces of toast. One of the few sandwiches IMHO that requires mayonnaise.
* This is one of my pet peeves (is someone keeping track of these?). I watch tons of cooking programs on all networks, including YouTube. It makes me nuts when someone says, “crack two eggs into a <whatever>.” They should be saying, “break two eggs into a <whatever>”
In my world, to CRACK an egg means to make a crack the shell, which may or may not give you access to the egg within. Don’t you look in the egg carton at the store before you buy to make sure none of the eggs is cracked or broken, knowing that those are two different things, the former meaning there is a flaw in the shell, and the latter meaning that the egg is leaking out of the shell and running all over the inside of its little compartment?
If your recipe requires depositing the eggs into a bowl, pan, ramekin, etc., then you need to BREAK the eggs so that the innards disengage themselves from the interior of the shell and fall out into the container. A simple CRACK won’t do the trick. If you CRACK the egg hard enough so that the egg falls out, then you’re are doing more than CRACKING; you are, in fact, BREAKING the egg.
Now that I think of it though, a good huevos rancherios is an excellent breakfast.. all goes splendidly together.
If you like that give a Shakshouka a try. Very yummy (I think).
Many mid-price hotels I stay at in the United States have free breakfast, with steam trays of sausage or bacon, hash browns or some other potato dish and scrambled eggs. I believe the eggs are scrambled in enormous quantities in central kitchens and delivered to the hotels in five- or ten-pound bags to be reheated. That may be what you were seeing in Italy.
Have your eggs however you like them but personally that custardy, wet, half-cooked crap Gordon Ramsay makes looks like old vomit.
Typical of soooo many Americans (of which I am one) who like their food waaaay overcooked.
I admit there is a fine line between Ramsay vomit eggs and just barely done eggs and the rubber bullets most Americans seem to prefer.
To be sure, eat whatever makes you happy. Rubber bullet eggs…go for it (that actually would be a good name on some menus where people like that shit).
I can’t stand overcooked hotel buffet scrambled eggs and any egg with a hard-cooked yolk (except maybe for a hard-boiled egg, but I prefer soft-boiled.) I also tend not to like omelets that are aggressively browned. A little browning is okay–it all doesn’t have to be a french omelet–but when it starts developing that dry, papery texture, I’m not a fan.