Confidence Building and the Six Egg "Julia"

Trying to make an exceptional omelet is difficult enough.  Trying to make a true French Chef-type omelet is a fairly daunting task....trying to make it a la Julia Child is, well, humbling and exhilarating at the same time.

It all seems easy enough; whisk some eggs, throw 'em in the pan, let it rip.  Sure.  Ever had to dance with a skillet on a hot burner? That's kind of how it goes when  working with this dish. 

Beat eggs well

Once you've committed yourself to the deed, go at it full steam ahead....stick to it 'til the bitter end.  You'll be amazed with what can be accomplished with a little patience and a lot of elbow grease. 

First make sure your eggs are beaten well.  For this particular omelet, we don't want to capture a lot of air.  That would be essential for the "puffy" omelet, but for this one we just want to beat the eggs into a liquid state.

Surf's up!  See the curl forming?

After that, it's all in the pan action.  Get it hot, get the beaten eggs into it....wait a few moments, then start shaking the pan vigorously across the flame.  As the eggs solidify, you'll notice a "curl" developing along the far end of the pan. Kinda looks like you'd expect a surfer riding on the thing. That's good! Keep it up!

You'll notice the egg acting more like a crepe, moving as a unit around the rest of the pan. This is when I start adding ingredients...cheese first, then tomatoes and this time some pepperoni that had been heated earlier in a pan to cut down on the greasiness.  In fact I used a dab of the pepperoni grease to lubricate the omelet pan.

Omelet fold close-up

Once your omelet "innards" are added give the pan another shake, this time when you shove forward, lift the far side of the pan slightly toward you.  This will help develop the fold.  Sometimes you'll need to coax this folding with a spatula, sometimes you don't.

In some circles, using a spatula to help with the fold is considered a no-no, but I'll not go there.  It's breakfast, fer cryin' out loud!  I need more than one cup of coffee and a dry piece of toast before venturing that perfection!

Anyway, after the fold is completed I sometimes top the omelet with a little cheese before serving. The cheese's  tanginess especially nice with all that pepperoni!

Some people say you can't make anything less than a six egg omelet...that anything less will not turn out.  I disagree.  I've made "Julia" omelets with as many as 12 and as few as 2 eggs and they all turned out fine. They require the same steps and the same amount of attention to detail.

This dish is appropriate for not only breakfast but lunch and dinner too.  Once mastered, the omelet will become one of your "go to" dishes for quick, tasty, even a little impressive fare for family and company.
Enjoy!  And as always, you're invited to share ideas, recipes and thoughts anytime!

METHOD - The Sound of One Hand Egg Cracking

Egg legerdemain

If you've ever watched a cooking show or a chef guest spot on a talk or news you've seen it.  That trick of cracking eggs with one hand.
Have you tried it yet?  Well I have.  And after several miserable attempts I actually got the hang of it!

Then after a while I did it so often it became commonplace. I had to raise the bar. I had to keep it fresh so proceeded to teach myself how one hand crack an egg in each hand. Then how to do both at the same time.  That was during a time when there wasn't really a lot else going on for me, so I learned origami and honed some cooking skills. 

There are some tricks to it, at least my version of doing it at any rate. You need a fair amount of dexterity in your fingers, especially the two middle ones....you know, the ones Spock uses in his special greeting.  I'll try to explain, and let the pictures tell the tale as well.

But first a bit of a disclaimer.  I don't claim that my method is the "professional" or right way. Nor do I claim you'll never get egg shells in your eggs.  To the contrary!  Most likely for the first several attempts you'll have 'em all over your fingers, in the bowl and where ever else they want to go. Fear not!  This too shall pass.

While you're practicing, make sure you're not just wasting eggs....plan on making something with them, and the sooner the better!  Eggs can go bad quicker when they're no longer in their shells.

Okay....here goes. 

Lightly tap the egg against the bowl

Grasp your egg firmly between your thumb and forefinger.  Tap the egg lightly against the edge of the bowl.  You just want to crack the egg, not have its contents spill out prematurely.

Position egg over center of bowl

Next, lift the egg away from the side of the bowl so it is positioned over the middle of the bowl.  If you look at this next picture you can see how I'm pulling the egg apart primarily  with my ring finger, index (or bad) finger, pointer and thumb.

Guiding egg to split apart

Here's a much  closer shot of the process, showing the little finger and ring finger pulling the egg shell in one direction while the unseen index and pointing finger pull it in the other.  The thumb and palm act as holders. You want to maintain a steady grip. Just be careful!  Don't go using a death grip! Squeeze too hard and you'll end up with egg all over the place.

Egg coming out of shell

In this photo (using my right hand) you can see how I'm pulling the egg shell apart and allowing the innards to spill out.  Yes, my hand gets sticky.  The egg kind of slides past my two middle fingers sometimes, that's hard to avoid.  No matter.  Once you've gotten to this stage, you've done it!  Congratulations!The index and little fingers are doing their part, too; guiding their part of the shell to make the opening wider.

The birth of the egg....or is it re-birth?

Don't worry if you don't get the hang of it right away.  You will with a little practice, then you'll be wowing them in the aisles!  Or at least in the kitchen.  Good luck!