Omelette Diaries

… a friend gave me an article about making a classic French omelette… it matched the procedure i have worked out over the past ten months to get consistent results which made me feel good…

… the one thing the author did differently was use a lid on the pan for a minute after it had been removed from the heat… this helps set the eggs on the top…

… i tried this in the omelette pictured above… results were good, though one minute, in my case, was a little too long… the eggs set too much and the interior creaminess was not as desired… i will try 30 seconds next time… i have found that interior creaminess is important to both a luxurious texture and to egg flavor intensity…

… it’s incredible to me that a dish made from such a simple set of ingredients and procedures is so nuanced and difficult to master… i will be coming up on one year of making omelettes almost every day at the end of October and i am pretty good at it, but not every day perfect… at this point, it is all about refinement… how long and high to preheat the pan, (3 min, 15 seconds on medium flame)… how long to stir and shake the omelette in the pan before letting it settle into a raft… how long to keep the heat on… how long to let it sit with the heat off to encourage consolidation of the liquid top into a creamy top… how to roll it up and get it out of the pan…

… all these questions have answers that are in the tens of seconds to a minute in a cooking process that takes a minute or two once the eggs hit the pan… the basic ingredients and procedures are simple… the development of nuanced judgement takes practice… and when you move to a different stove or pan, they have to be worked out all over again… the working out in that case is two or three omelettes to get it broadly right… then a few more to zero in on perfection…

06 The Classic French Omelette Learning Curve:

… i make classic French omelettes on an almost daily basis in an attempt to develop my skill to the near perfect level… i have been doing this since last October and am getting pretty good at it…

… i complicated my quest by refusing to use a non-stick skillet, which are generally bad for the environment…

… after a great deal of research and trial and error, I bought an Iwachu large iron omelette pan… it was factory seasoned and largely non-stick out of the box, though instructions recommended the application of an appropriate food oil before first use, which i did…

… frequently, my omelettes have been sticking in the middle of the pan which is not a big problem, but i was trying to figure out why…

… making omelettes in a cast iron pan is a matter of a well seasoned pan and knowing how hot to get the pan before adding butter then eggs… i have it down to the point that i time the heating up of the pan… 3.5 minutes at medium heat on the large burner has been the routine…

… it occurred to me that the pan might not be getting hot enough in the middle of the pan, so i increased the preheat time to 4 minutes…

… no sticking this morning…

… i will repeat for the next several days to make sure that was the problem…

… a photograph of this morning’s omelette…

📷 🍽

06 Pandemic Skill

… my wife chose sourdough bread, i chose the classic French omelette… it has taken about eight months but this morning i produced a near perfect omelette… i have complicated the mission by refusing to use a nonstick skillet, trying both carbon steel and cast iron, eventually ordering the specialized Japanese pan the omelette in the pic is presented in…