Really Good Scrambled Eggs

hey everyone it's kenji i am at home and i'm going to make some scrambled eggs so this technique i mean scrambled eggs simple right um but it's also very easy to mess them up you know it's like they they uh they tend to overcook very easily if you're not really paying careful attention um you know 15 30 seconds too long in the pan and they're going to be nice and they're going to be all dry um and if you know if you want them super tender and creamy you got to sit there stirring them all the time over relatively low heat so this technique is one that i was working on for my most recent new york times column and it incorporates a few things from various sources um all right well i'm gonna start with some toasting some bread um so i'm gonna put a little bit of water in a skillet okay just a little bit um and then i'm actually gonna take some of this water probably about a i don't know about a tablespoon of it and put it in that bowl over there and then i'm gonna start preheating the skillet so one of the problems issues i have with eggs is that um not just scrambled eggs but just cooking um uh eggs in in a skillet in general so whether it's an omelette or scrambled eggs because it's hard to gauge how hot the pan is when you're preheating it but you want to properly preheat it because you need the butter to immediately start melting and foaming but you don't want it to sit in the pan long enough that's going to start to brown and so to achieve that you kind of have to have it at just the right temperature so what that water does is that it um it regulates the pan temperature so water you know boils at 212 degrees fahrenheit 100 degrees celsius so as this pan is heating up as long as there's some water in it it's going to be drawing energy away from that pan and so you know that once the water is fully evaporated the pan is basically going to be a little bit above the boiling temperature of water which is kind of where you want that butter to be because that's going to be the temperature where it starts to foam because the foam is caused by um boiling water all right cornstarch this is this is sort of the trick one of the tricks here a little bit of cornstarch i'm gonna make a little cornstarch slurry um you can use potato starch or tapioca starch they will actually work a little bit better than corn starch because they activate at a lower temperature but i saw this trick on um a blog called lady and pups mandy lee um i actually spoke to her she lives in taiwan um she came up with this technique when she was making eggs for her for her sick dog thinking that oh maybe it'll eat some cornstarch and eggs if i mix them up together into this kind of goo because it wasn't eating and then she thought oh well if i apply that to human eggs how would it change the texture and what it does is that so as eggs cook you know they have proteins in them that kind of tighten up into a matrix and that matrix holds in you know the fat and the and the water and everything else in there and as you overcook your eggs that protein matrix gets tighter and tighter oh that banana peel stinks um get tighter gets tighter and tighter until eventually it starts to squeeze out uh liquid right which is not what you want you can that's what's going to make your eggs tough it's what's going to what's going to make them rubbery and dry and so what those cornstarch does is a couple of things first of all it will prevent the proteins from linking together as tightly because it sort of acts like you know if you imagine like here's a protein here's a protein they're trying to get together it kind of acts as a bouncer like blocking them you know it's from from coming together um and so that's one way in which it helps and then the other way which helps is that even if um those protein proteins do start to uh uh link up a little bit and over tighten any moisture that's pushed out will then sort of thicken up the starch oops i gotta turn on this broiler huh we'll thicken up the starch instead uh so instead of becoming watery um that starch becomes a sort of creamy sort of creamy sauce which is good because it means that even if you accidentally overcook your eggs a little bit um they're still going to end up nice and tender and moist instead of watery um you know sort of dry surrounded by watery liquid which is what can happen um all right so butter cold butter from the fridge this is a technique i learned from my buddy charles kelsey who has a sandwich shop in brookline massachusetts called cuddies what they do there actually he says he adapted this technique even further where they actually just take the butter and blend it together with the eggs in a blender and then cook that for their for their egg sandwiches um it's a sandwich shop they're great um but what what i do is i um take the butter cut into little cubes and then whisk it right into the eggs well in this case beat it with a fork but beat it right into the eggs and what happens is that as the eggs cook they create these sort of little localized pockets of cooler eggs so that you get a really nice sort of textural contrast so you get some sort of gently set curds but then you also get this egg that mixes stays a little bit cooler and mixes with the um the butter to form like almost like a creamy you know a creamy sauce so you get this really nice textural contrast in the eggs when you do it this way um technique originally charles actually got it from um daniel balud uh you know french chef in new york um who i also talked to on the phone who said he learned it as a as a young cook in lyon in france um all right let me check on my toast here starting to look good all right so our water is almost evaporated i'm just going to swirl it around like that and what you do want to do is have a oops i'll pick that up later have a plate ready to go because eggs they don't do well when they sit in the pan for any sort of extra length of time this is over sort of a medium preheating it over sort of a medium-high heat this is a very powerful burner sauna it's set at six on my stove but on a normal stove that would probably be you know higher at like an eight sort of a high to medium high heat and that's just a non-stick skillet you don't have to use non-stick but you can all right so in the eggs i have four eggs about a teaspoon a teaspoon and a half of cornstarch or so a tablespoon of water some salt uh and some cubed butter and now some more butter in the pan [Music] we can see it's immediately bubbling which is good that's what we want so swirl it around just a coat oh about salting the eggs by the way you might have heard that salting your eggs before they cook is going to make them toughen um this is not true you can i've tested it side by side numerous times i've done blind taste tests salt what it does is it'll actually break down some of those egg proteins so that as the eggs um cook they actually don't tighten as much they stay more tender and in fact retain more moisture because they don't squeeze out as much moisture so salt um if someone tells you that salt uh causes the eggs to tighten up or break down or whatever they're right it does cause them to break down but no it does not cause them to over tighten um or become tough or anything like that i'm quite the opposite so salting your eggs before you cook them is actually a good idea so you're going to see as these cook those little cubes of butter are going to stay relatively solid at the start even as the eggs start to set and that's sort of what i'm looking for you know in my new york times article the title of it was something about the best scrambled eggs um and of course you and i and everyone knows that there's no such thing as best it's all a matter of personal taste um and i i even wrote an entire children's book about that concept my book every night is pizza night is about the idea that not that different people have different meanings for the word best and that best is contextual so um i apologize if i offended anyone with the title that article i don't think i even made that title myself but anyhow when i say best what i mean is this is best for me at this particular point in time all right so there we are the eggs are pretty much done you want to take them out of the pan when they're slightly under done but as i said with this method um with all those sort of like safeguards built in even if you leave them in the pan for an extra 15 30 seconds it's not really gonna make much of a difference at all so don't worry about it too much and i like to put some pepperon right at the end if i had some like chives or something i would stick them in there but i don't herbs you know herbs would be good in here but you know herbs are kind of like they're kind of like the necktie you know it's like you can still look good and the eggs are the suit the herbs are the necktie you can still look good without the necktie but unless your suit is right you're going to be in trouble all right so here we have it let me stand i don't know my window over here what do you think of those eggs i think they look fantastic um i used about three tablespoons of butter in here i think in my actual recipe um it calls for four tablespoons of butter you could use less you could use two you could use one oh man yeah they're so good and they're tender creamy and you know what i like about this technique with the cornstarch and the cubes of butter is that you can cook them harder if you like you know if you like your eggs hard or scrambled that's totally fine you can do it like this and it'll still help them retain more moisture so they'll come out more moist no matter how hard you like them or if you like them really soft too that works too i can kind of medium like this this is enough eggs for two to three people because it's a lot of butter in there oh so good let me take a quick picture for let me take a quick picture for the thumbnail when i take my pictures for my thumbnail i leave a little space on the side so that i can write the name of the dish i think they look great i think they taste great guys gals nine but non-binary pals i will see you next time bye-bye hey everyone sorry i also forgot to mention that this technique with the cornstarch and the eggs you've probably also seen it over on chinese cooking demystified their channel they have a recipe for cantonese style scrambled eggs that uses a very similar in fact the cornstarch part is identical um and they sort of independently came up with that on their own separate from mandy from lady and pups um so anyhow it's a technique that works i want to make sure i gave the shout out to the people who've been doing it oh and uh find that information all in the description below um and this time i'll really see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 728,020

Rating: 4.9350686 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: CXTnq7srJRs

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/billionthtimesacharm]

good timing. decided to make these. i will agree that the texture is very moist creamy. not firm and spongy at all. i think it’s worth the extra effort for the texture. and once in the pan the eggs come together incredibly fast.

[u/blacbird]

Does anybody know what the two different types of salt are that he’s using for these eggs? He has one saltcellar in a rectangular box that he put into the raw eggs before whisking them with a fork. And then use the round saltcellar to add salt to the top of the eggs when they were done. I suspect that they are just different flakiness, and sizes of the granules, but I’m not sure how or why are you would use either one.

[u/Jeffrey903]

I made this recipe twice this weekend. The first time I thought it had too much butter (not something I ever thought I'd say), so the second time I used 1/2 the butter and found it much more pleasing.

I do use Kerrygold butter, which has a slightly higher butterfat than standard American butter (82% for Kerrygold vs 80% for American butter), but I doubt that alone is the reasoning for thinking the recipe used too much butter.

I do think the recipe has a useful set of techniques to know (starch slurry, mix in small cubes of cold butter, heat pan with a bit of water until boiling point), especially for people who tend to overcook their eggs.

[u/hankhillforprez]

Why do some people use a lighter to light their gas stove like he did? Any modern gas range, heck even not so modern ones, have a sparkler to light themselves.

Is there some benefit to doing this? I’ve seen Babish do this as well.

[u/qutius]

Made these for lunch today and they were indeed outstanding

[u/Chimp711]

Made these twice now. Once for myself and once again for myself and my wife to throw into breakfast tacos. Of course next time I'll have to overcook them for my wife...

[u/strangedesign9]

Any thoughts on adding starch to a strata that we leave overnight in the fridge (bread soaking in eggs mixture)?

[u/beardsallover]

Where’s the bacon grease??

[u/MissPlum66]

Kids approve! I thought they’d be way super rich and too buttery but fluffy and tasty.