The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

(Nandana) #1

For fluffy, diner-style omelets, the key is to start the eggs
in hot butter and move them as little as possible during
cooking. Rather than shaking the pan and breaking up the
large curds, the best course of action is a move called the
lift-and-tilt: use a silicone spatula to lift up the edges of the
omelet and push them toward the center of the pan while
tilting it, to allow the raw egg to run underneath. Repeating
this technique means nearly all of the eggs can be set with
minimal stirring. You’ll still end up with a slick of raw egg
across the top surface, which is easy to take care of: remove
the skillet from the heat, add whatever toppings you like
(ham and cheese are my favorite), cover it with a lid, and let
the residual heat from the eggs gently cook the top through,
then fold it in half and serve.
A tender, fancy-pants omelet—the kind I remember
watching Jacques Pépin make look so easy—can be made
by cooking the eggs fast, but it’s one of the most difficult
techniques in cooking (really). Luckily, though, it doesn’t
actually require fast cooking, and once you’ve learned the
cold-butter-cube trick you picked up with the creamy
scrambled eggs to help regulate the cooking temperature
(see here), you can actually make a tender French-style
omelet in much the same manner, with slow cooking and
constant stirring. The only difficult part about this style of
omelet is the rolling. The trick is to make sure that one side
of the egg disk is thicker than the other by rapping the pan
sharply against the stove as you finish cooking so that the
eggs collect on the end opposite the handle. Then let the
bottom set slightly, and the omelet can be rolled up, starting
at the thinner edge, before being turned out onto a plate.

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