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 usually I just give in and make scrambled eggs with stuff in them the recipe comes from many many brunches that I've gotten to I'm going to be making a French omelet with a wild mushroom and goat cheese filling and fresh herbs the filling is going into my omelet are precooked ham stick and some green bell pepper when I'm figuring out the amount of filling I should use I just kind of eyeball it and that's kind of gonna be it so that's the first thing I'm gonna do is actually gonna start cooking the bacon the vegetables I'm using today are red bell pepper Spanish onion green scallions white button mushrooms and softened goat cheese with the mushrooms we're going to toss them with olive oil salt and pepper alright so these are going to be roasted I might as well do my det cord I'm not we going to use the green portion we're gonna use Italian parsley chives and chervil and there's our fresh herb mix let's start sauteing my vegetables I'm gonna add a little bit of red pepper flakes cuz I like it a little spicy I'm not cooking this all the way down I just wanted a little bit of the raw bite on the mushrooms have come out of the oven we're going to roughly chop them we're gonna add our mushrooms in just little bit of black pepper so as this is going I'll had a little bit of salt all right so we have saute the vegetables so I'm putting the filling into a piping bag so that it's gonna be easy to fill our omelet all right we're going to now make the egg mixture so what I'm going to do is I'm going to crack some eggs into this bowl two eggs and then I'm just gonna mix some other stuff into it so first number one egg number two didn't get any shot in there this time so pretty much a professional I actually cracked the eggs in a separate bowl just to make sure I don't have any shells at the bottom of the bowl from here I slowly pour it into my actual whisking bowl we're gonna start with three eggs for the omelet crack the eggs away from the bowl that we're going to be mixing them in so that we don't trip the shell and get it into our egg mixture and I always use two hands to separate the eggs I'm gonna be whisking these eggs but it needs salt the salt actually helps break down proteins in the eggs so you're gonna have a fluffier omelet what I'm gonna do next is mix in a little bit of water so what I'm doing here is I'm just whisking it with a fork I used to fork but you of course if you have a handy-dandy whisk go for it so I tend to whisk up and over in a circular motion so that I catch all of the eggs whisking side to side doesn't really do anything for you we want to whisk vigorously because we want to make sure that the whites and the yolks are completely homogenized so we don't end up with big white splotches in our omelet I like a little texture in there you know like some bits more yoki some more egg white I just want to get some air into the egg mixture and kind of incorporate all the stuff that I put in there so seasoning wise I pretty much just eyeball it yeah if it's a fine amount of pepper I'm just gonna put just a pinch of salt in we're gonna add in a generous pinch of our fresh herbs and just mix them in just before we start to cook all right now I'm actually going to start heating up my pan I'm gonna put this over medium heat we're gonna use two teaspoons of whole butter this is gonna add some flavor to our and help it omelette not stick it's a pretty fast process and swim as soon as the expo in the pan we start to stir and I'm making little circles around into a big circle I move it around a little bit you can see as I'm doing that it's starting to wrinkle a little bit that means it's cooking the reason I'm doing this is because I want the eggs to cook evenly if I let them sit the eggs that are touching the bottom of the pan we're gonna cook more than the ones on top even though this is thin I'm just gonna give it like one more second obviously this is an exact science I personally like it loose like that it's still a little runny so I'm gonna cook the eggs till they're about 85% done I'm gonna cut off my heat and then I'm gonna spread this back out I'm gonna toss some fillings in here now so I'm just gonna put my ham and my peppers on one side of it let's start with my cheese this is freshly grated cheddar cheese and I put it right smack in the middle and then do you take your veggies do the same thing in the middle oh my goodness that looks good already then what I'm gonna do is take my filling and add a nice generous amount in the center and then I'm just going to take this side and then just I'm gonna fold the omelet one-third of the way slide it towards the end of my pan now I'm just gonna roll it onto a plate lift up and roll kind of a plop so I like to put hot sauce on my omelet I still have a little topping to go with my fresh scallions because I love the bite of that oniony flavor of a scallion and then don't forget the bacon box I like tearing and placing the big in on top and then we're gonna take a nice generous pinch and just garnish her almost at the end all right so this is our omelet and I think it looks pretty good it looks actually really delicious so really happy with how this turned out [Music] I can't wait to the in still really nice and moist mmm that's a good offer the vegetables with the sharp sharp cheddar cheese it's so good together I'll get a little bit of Tang eNOS from the goat cheese a really nice roasted flavor it's great I told you I could make an omelet we saw three different chefs make three different omelets each with their own filling cooking method and toppings let's start with the filling Emily used rob bell peppers in her omelet Lorenzo sauteed his vegetables and Barb used roasted mushrooms what barb and Lorenzo did was remove some of that moisture from the vegetables so that the filling isn't too moist booyah when we have a really moist filling in our omelet we can see a process called sanera --ss or weeping when the eggs we liquid out and create something a little bit more soggy as opposed to light and fluffy Lorenzo and Barb both filled their omelets with cheese Lorenzo chose cheddar cheese which is a low moisture cheese are this like the sharpness of cheddar cheese and Barb chose goat cheese which is a high moisture cheese the goat cheese helps bind our mushrooms together high moisture cheese's like goat cheese melt at the same temperature our eggs will coagulate at whereas our low moisture cheeses like our cheddar cheese melt at a higher temperature than we need to cook our eggs so they might not completely be melted when we go to roll or fold our omelet next our chefs blended their eggs eggs are composed of two different parts our egg white which is mostly protein and water and that cooks at a lower temperature around 140 degrees Fahrenheit in our egg yolk which is mostly lipids with a little bit of protein and carbohydrates and that starts to cook at a higher temperature around 149 degrees Fahrenheit blending those two homogeneously will ensure that we have an even cook in our omelet Emily in Lorenzo used a fork to blend their eggs and barb used a whisk either of these are good options to create the homogeneous mixture but when using a whisk be sure not to over aerate your eggs we can over beat 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 that to the heat the salt will help to dissolve all of the proteins in the egg mixture which will create a fluffy final product Emily added water into her egg mixture that's what I was taught to do some people think that you have to add liquid into your egg mixture but this isn't necessary adding a liquid like water is going to increase the temperature that we have to cook or coagulate our eggs if you are choosing to add a liquid into your egg mixture choose heavy cream or whole milk to add an extra rich flavor to your eggs Emily used a moderate heat when cooking her omelette lorenzo cooked his omelette at a low temperature and Barb chose a higher temperature to cook her omelette when using a low or moderate temperature like lorenzo and emily did it's okay to spread your omelette throughout the whole pan to ensure even cooking within the omelette when choosing a higher temperature move your eggs around just like barb did so that we're not over exposing our eggs to heat and we have an even cooking without damaging or toughening the protein in our eggs like I'm frosting a cake so it's nice and even when we heat eggs we see two different protein reactions the first protein reaction is called protein denaturation when we uncoil or unravel the egg proteins next the proteins coagulate or aggregate into something we call occurred this is the main protein reaction we see when we're cooking an omelet today we saw our chefs make two styles of omelettes the French style omelette in the diner style omelette Emily made a diner style omelette where she browned the bottom of her omelette she created a light and fluffy texture and folded it in half barb created a French style omelette with no browning on the bottom she left it a pale yellow color with a tender inside Lorenzo created something kind of in between the two it really is he created a tender filling and brown the outside to create a crust and then fold it in half the French style omelette leaves moisture on the top of the eggs giving them plasticity so that we can roll it into a cigar style shape the diner style omelette is cooked longer as evidenced by the browning on the bottom of Lorenzo and Emily's omelette cooking our eggs longer draws out more moisture and we don't have the plasticity that we need to roll it into that cigar style shape that's why it's better to fold our diner style omelette everybody has their favorite way to top an omelette Emily chose hot sauce which is gonna help to balance the salty flavor from the ham in her omelette yeah lorenzo chose bacon which is gonna give a nice crunch and texture to his omelette while also providing a deep flavor who doesn't like bacon Barb added herbs to her omelette which is gonna give an earthiness and a freshness to her final product this is one of my favorite things to make for dinner hopefully you can incorporate some of these elements and techniques into your own recipe

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 4,775,757

Rating: 4.7946043 out of 5

Keywords: 4 levels, omelet, omelets, food scientist, amateur chef, omelet 4 levels, 4 levels epicurious, 4 levels of, professional chef, homemade omelet, omelet epicurious, how to make omelet, make omelet, making omelet, omelet recipe, best omelet, amateur omelet, professional omelet, easy omelet, 4 levels of omelet, 4 levels omelet, epicurious 4 levels, easy omelet recipe, toast, epicurious, omelette, omelette recipe, how to make omelette, omelettes

Id: rutcoSAy2ow

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2019