4 Levels of Omelets: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

Hi I'm Emily and I'm a level one chef Hi I'm Lorenzo and I'm a level two chef Hi I'm Barb and I'm a level three chef It's been a while since I made an omelet because normally I just give up and make scrambled eggs with stuff in them. The recipe comes from many lunches I have attended. I'm going to make a French omelette with wild mushroom filling and goat cheese and fresh herbs as a filling. My omelette is pre-cooked ham sticks and a little green pepper. When I'm calculating how much filler to use, I just look at it and that's it, so that's the first thing I'm going to do. actually going to start cooking the bacon the vegetables I'm using today are red pepper spanish onion green onions white mushrooms and softened goat cheese with the mushrooms we're going to mix them with olive oil salt and pepper so these are going to be roasted I could also do my decoration.

I'm just going to use a green portion. We are going to use Italian parsley, chives and chervil. And there's our fresh herb blend. Let's start sautéing my vegetables. I'm going to add a little bit of red pepper flakes because I like it a little spicy. I'm not going to cook this all the way through, I just wanted a little bit of the raw bite of the mushrooms that came out of the oven, we're going to cook roughly Chop them, we're going to add our mushrooms with just a little bit of black pepper, so while this is going I'm going to add a little salt, okay, we've already sautéed the vegetables, so I'm going to put the filling in a pipe. bag so it's easy to fill our omelette, now we're going to do the egg mixture, so what I'm going to do is crack some eggs into this bowl, two eggs and then I'm just going to mix some other things together, so first I have the egg number one.

Egg number two didn't break off there this time, so quite professionally, I actually cracked the eggs into a separate container just to make sure I didn't. I don't have any shells at the bottom of the bowl, from here I slowly pour it into my mixing bowl. We will start with three eggs for the omelet, break the eggs from the bowl where we are going to mix them. so we don't trip over the shell and get it into our egg mixture and I always use two hands to separate the eggs. I'm going to beat these eggs, but it needs salt, salt actually helps break down the proteins in the eggs, so you're going to have a fluffier omelette, what I'm going to do next is mix it with a little bit of water, so what I'm doing here is I'm just whisking it with a fork, I use a fork, but of course I do have a great whisk on hand, so I tend to whisk up and up in a circular motion to catch all the eggs.

Whipping from side to side doesn't really do anything for you. We want to beat vigorously because we want to make sure the whites and yolks are completely homogenized so that we don't end up with big white spots on our omelette. I like a little bit of texture in there, you know, a few more bits of yolk, a little more egg white, I just want to get a little bit of air in. the egg mixture and I incorporate all the salt that I put in there, so as far as seasonings, I pretty much just eyeball it, yeah, it's a good amount of pepper, I'm just going to put just a pinch of salt and we'll add a pinch generous amount of our fresh herbs and simply mix them in right before you start cooking.

Right now, I'm going to start heating up my skillet, I'm going to put this on medium heat, we're going to use two teaspoons of whole butter, this is going to add some flavor to our omelet and it's going to help the omelet from sticking, it's a pretty quick process and It will swim as soon as the eggs go into the pan, we start stirring and I'm making little circles until it makes a big circle. I move it around a little bit and you can see as I do it that it starts to wrinkle a little bit, that means it's cooking.

The reason I do this is because I want the eggs to cook evenly if I let them sit. The ones that are touching the bottom of the pan are going to cook more than the ones on top even though this one is thin I'm only going to give it about a second more obviously this is an exact science I personally like it to be loose so it's still there a little runny so I'm going to cook the eggs until they're about 85 percent cooked. I'm going to turn off the heat and then I'm going to spread this again.

I'm going to throw some fillings in here now, so I'm just going to put my ham and my peppers on the side. Let's start with my cheese, this is freshly grated cheddar cheese and I put it right in the middle and then you take your vegetables and do the same thing in the middle. Oh my gosh, that already looks good, so what I'm going to do is take my filling and add a generous amount in the center and then I'm going to take this side and then I'm going to flip it like this. I'm going to fold the omelet. a third of the way, slide it to the end of my pan, now I'm just going to roll it up on a plate, pick it up and roll it up and then roll it up like a plop, so I like to put hot sauce on my tortilla.

I still have a little left. dressing to go with my fresh chives because I love the onion flavor of chives and then don't forget the bacon, I like to break it up and put it on top and then we're going to take a nice generous pinch and just garnish it near the end so This is our omelette and I think it looks pretty good, it actually looks very delicious, so I'm very happy with the result. I can't wait until they are still very rich and moist. That's a good option, the vegetables with sharp, sharp cheddar cheese, they are so good together, the goat cheese has a little bit of a spicy flavor, a very nice toasted flavor, it's great.

I told you I could make an omelet. We saw three different chefs make three different ones. tortillas each with their own filling cooking method and toppings let's start with the filling emily used raw bell peppers in her tortilla lorenzo sautéed her vegetables and barb used roasted mushrooms what barb and lorenzo did was remove some of that moisture from the vegetables so that the filling is not too wet when we have a very wet filling in our omelette, we can see a process called cineresis or crying when the eggs drain liquid and create something a little more soggy instead of light and fluffy.

Lorenzo and Barb filled their tortillas with cheese. Lorenzo chose cheddar cheese, which is a low-moisture cheese. I list the spiciness of the cheddar cheese and Barb chose goat cheese, which is a high moisture cheese. The goat cheese helps bind our mushrooms together. Cheeses with high moisture, such as goat cheese, melt at the same time. temperature at which our eggs will coagulate, while our low-moisture cheeses, like our cheddar, melt at a higher temperature than we need to cook our eggs, so they may not melt completely when We are going to roll or fold our omelet and then our chefs mixed their eggs.

They are made up of two different parts: our egg white, which is primarily protein and water and which is cooked at a lower temperature, around 140 degrees Fahrenheit, into our egg yolk, which is primarily lipid with a little bit of protein and carbohydrates and begins to cook at a higher temperature. temperature around 149 degrees Fahrenheit mixing those two evenly will ensure that we have even cooking in our omelet emily and lorenzo used a fork to mix their eggs and pua used a whisk either of these are good options to create a homogeneous mixture, but when If a whisk is used, be sure not to over-aerate the eggs.

We can overbeat the eggs and produce a foamy mixture that won't cook at the same rate as the rest of our eggs. All of our chefs added salt to their egg mixture before transferring it to the egg mixture. Heating the salt will help dissolve all the proteins in the egg mixture, creating a fluffy final product. Emily added water to her egg mixture, that's what I was taught to do, so that's what I'm doing. Some people think it has to be done. Add liquid to egg mixture, but this is not necessary. Adding a liquid like water will increase the temperature we have to cook or coagulate our eggs.

If you choose to add a liquid to the egg mixture, choose heavy cream or whole milk. To add extra rich flavor to your eggs, Emily used moderate heat when she cooked her omelet. Lorenzo cooked her omelette at a low temperature and Barb chose a higher temperature to cook her omelette when he used a low or moderate temperature like Lorenzo and Emily did. Alright. to spread the omelet throughout the pan to ensure even cooking within the omelet by choosing a higher temperature, move the eggs like Barb did so we don't expose them too much to the heat and have even cooking without damaging or hardening them.

The protein in our eggs is like icing a cake, so it's nice and even when we heat the eggs, we seed two different protein reactions. The first protein reaction is called protein denaturation when we uncoil or uncoil the proteins from the egg, then the proteins coagulate or aggregate. something we call curd this is the main protein reaction we see when we cook an omelette today we saw our chefs make two styles of omelettes the french style omelet in the restaurant style omelette emily made a restaurant style omelette where the bottom was browned Of her omelette she created a light, fluffy texture and folded it in half created a French-style omelet without browning on the bottom.

She left it a pale yellow color with a tender interior. Lorenzo created something like between the two. he actually created a tender filling and browned the outside to create a crust and then folded it in half, which makes sense. The French-style omelet leaves moisture on the top of the eggs, giving them plasticity so we can roll them into a cigar shape. The restaurant-style omelet shape cooks longer, as evidenced by the browning on the bottom of Lorenzo and Emily's omelet. Cooking our eggs longer extracts more moisture and we don't have the plasticity we need to roll it into that cigar style shape, which is why it's best to fold our tortilla restaurant style, everyone has their favorite way to cover a tortilla.

Emily chose hot sauce that will help balance the salty flavor of the ham in her tortilla. Lorenzo chose bacon, which will give it a nice crunch and texture. to your omelette and at the same time provides a deep flavor to those who don't like bacon. I added herbs to his omelette, which will give an earthy touch and freshness to your final product. This is one of my favorite things to make for dinner. I hope you can incorporate it. Some of these elements and techniques in your own recipe.