Cook the Best Eggs: Scrambled

1. The What & Who of Cook the Best Eggs: Scrambled: Welcome to the Cook Best Egg Series, Scrambled Edition, where we cover the foundations of scrambled eggs, then explore all the delicious things you can make with this technique. Written recipes are provided in a PDF in the project section. Hey, I'm Jenna, and I make food videos for the Internet. Here on skill share on my personal channels, and even for private clients. My goal is to encourage more people to cook at home and to use food as a tool for connection and exploration with the world around us. So let's go to the store and buy some eggs and get cooking. 2. Class Project: Add-ins & Cheese: Yes, obviously, we can add other ingredients into scrambled eggs, most popular being cheese, but we can also add liquids to the whisked eggs before cooking to influence the texture and the flavor. So here's a list of ingredients and suggested amounts. Now, some are predictable, but a couple of these like champagne and orange juice, make me quite curious. This list will also be in the recipe booklet attached to this lesson, so there's no need to copy it down right now. Now, let's talk about cheese. Another predictable add in, but it's really the ratio of cheese to eggs that can make or break the dish, and some cheeses work better than others. Like cata is quite good because of its mild flavor and fat content. It cooks right up with the eggs without competing in flavor, yet adding salt while the water content adds fluff. The fat content adds texture. A hearty ratio is one heaping tablespoon per egg, nearly four tablespoons or a quarter cup for three eggs. Whisk the eggs together first, then stir in the rocatta. Then cook them up. Now, other cheeses that work well with scrambled eggs are feta, crumbled goat, cheddar, pecorino, even Parmesan, American, gutta, grure. And with nearly all of these, you cook the eggs first, then stir in the cheese right before taking it off the heat, letting the residual carryover cooking melt the cheese into the eggs. It may be controversial to say, but I think there can be too much cheese and eggs. Imagine an overly oily cheddar or American cheese, making your pile of scrambled eggs heavy and sticky. And beyond that, this is up to you, and it's your assignment. Choose a cheese or a liquid add in and find something new for yourself. Share with the rest of us, and let us know why you chose that. And would you do it again? Oh. 3. How to Scramble Eggs: 5 Ways: You think scrambled eggs are too basic for an organized learning experience like this. I've got a surprise for you. Even though it's pretty straightforward, there are several details and nuances for you to decide on your signature style, like adding cream or milk, large or small curves, wet, dry, silky, and just how much effort you put into your own technique. For instance, when I scramble my eggs, I'm usually making a sandwich. So I crack the eggs directly into the pan over medium heat with a little butter for flavor, and I stir it all together until it can hold a shape just 60 seconds or so. So I'm scrambling them in the pan. I like my eggs a little creamy, but not so creamy that they ooze out of my sandwich, and I definitely don't want them dry. Now I turn the heat as low as it can go, and I cover it with a piece of American cheese, and then cover the pan to steam the cheese into something melty. Now, this goes on a toasted bun, like a burger bun with mayonnaise, and that's a typical breakfast for me. Classic scrambled eggs are whisked in a bowl until they are fully incorporated, meaning no more of that separation of the white and the yolk. To cook. Heat your pan over medium heat, add some fat, like oil, butter, or ge and pour in the eggs, and you can also salt them now. They'll develop a skin once the eggs hit the pan, and depending on how you like your curds, which is the wrinkles and the nuggets made by your stirring technique in the pan, you'll either gently or vigorously push them around. Now, here I'm demonstrating a spectrum of small, medium, and large curds by stirring constantly for small curds. String lightly from medium curds and basically making rosette by not stirring at all, but just pushing around the cooked eggs into a rosette pattern to demo large curds. This gives a general idea of various techniques to produce different textures. Also, these are all considered wet eggs because we remove them from the heat while there's still some liquid egg on the top layer. The residual heat from the pan and the eggs will continue cooking once we remove the pan from the heat. So we will always stop just before they reach our desired doneness. Now, that's the basics of a scrambled egg for extra fussy options. We can strain the wisp eggs and cook in a bound Marie, which uses indirect heat to create an ultra creamy silky experience. You'll need a pot filled with an inch of water. Brought to a simmer covered by a bowl that conducts heat like glass or stainless steel or a skillet. If you're using a bowl, use a towel to hold onto the bowl to keep it steady while you stir the eggs. Now, this technique takes a bit longer, like ten to 20 minutes even because of the indirect heat. It is not as hot. And because of that, the proteins in the egg don't tighten up near as much, and you end up with an ultra creamy consistency. You can achieve something very similar just by using ultra ultra low heat directly on a stovetop. Now, in this demo, I also added two tablespoons of crem fresh, which loosened up my eggs considerably, so I had to keep cooking for longer. I basically stirred nearly constantly until it could hold its own shape, and it didn't run. You still have carry over cooking here. And the real skill in this particular dish is figuring out exactly when to stop. So you have a texture that holds itself together without drying out. And that you learned by doing it regularly, taking nos for yourself and developing an eye for just the right texture. This is such a delicate experience that you can add delicate ingredients like truffle, botarga, uni, crab meat, caviar, It's incredibly creamy and custardy, and it's a perfect carrier for these really rich and briny, even salty, extra ingredients. So that's a brief overview of the range of scrambled eggs. There are other nuances of scrambled eggs, like cheese and other liquid addins. And that is your project for this class. I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Chinese Tomato & Egg: Chinese tomatoes and eggs is a sweet, tangy, savory gingery sauce with rice for a comforting and flavorful meal, and it's quick. We season the eggs with salt, sesame oil, rice wine, or dry sherry, and whisk together. We'll also mix up a slurry of cornstarch and water to thicken the sauce and season it with sugar and ketchup. Now, Ketchup adds a sweet and savory element to the sauce, but you can skip it or use seracha, even. We'll season some oil with fresh chopped scallions for a few seconds, then add the eggs and scramble them quickly over high heat. Because they will get added back in later, we will mostly, but not fully cook them. Clean out the pan and add a little more oil, then fry, grated ginger in the oil for a few seconds, and add the tomatoes. Season with salt or soy sauce, and cook until the flesh has softened, but still has some shape, and the juice begins to thicken. Canned tomatoes will cook longer than fresh tomatoes. In the meantime, loosen up your scrambled eggs before adding them back to the pan. After a few minutes, add the slurry and reduce the heat to medium, returning the sauce to a boil and continue thickening. Taste and adjust the seasoning as desired. Then add the eggs back to the pan and stir it all together until the eggs finish cooking, and everything is combined. We serve with steamed rice and the reserve scallions. It's that simple. This recipe is from the New York Times Cooking app with one of the most wholesome comment sections I've ever read. Looks like there's a tomatoes and eggs recipe for nearly every culture out there, and it's a fascinating read. And I'll see you in the next lesson. 5. Oyakodon: Japanese Chicken & Egg Bowl: Eggs and chicken go extremely well together. And in acadan, we make a umami sauce to braise the chicken and cook eggs on top of it all. We need a dashi powder or concentrate for the sauce. Now, this is fermented grilled flying fish dashi concentrate that I got in Tokyo, and it's extremely umami and salty. Whatever you use, dilute a teaspoon in water. Then cooking sake, in, soy sauce, and sugar. Stir together until the sugar dissolves. If you like creamy yolks, then we'll separate two yolks out of four eggs, so we can drizzle them in separately at the end of cooking for a Jami yolki topping. For Ocadon, when we go to whisk the eggs, we don't do a full incorporation. What we really want is to break up the whites. So using chopsticks, you'll grab at those concentrated blobs of egg white and pull them apart. Naturally, the yolks will also break up. But we're not looking to fully incorporate them. And you can see how the whites are being grabbed by the chopsticks and hanging on slightly before pulling apart. It's weird and also cool. And then fully whisk the yolks. We also need half an onion sliced into crescent moons, so lengthwise, root to top, and boneless chicken thighs can be skinless or with the skin, cut into 1 " chunks as evenly as possible, so they cook evenly. Now we cook. I researched several recipes, and while the technique is mostly the same, the ingredient ratios varied. Now, the sauce needs to cover the onions in the pan. So you can always add more water once everything is in the pan. Bring this to a boil and add the chicken pieces. And when the chicken is a little more than halfway cooked, and you can tell by looking at the sides where it's getting opaque, you'll flip the chicken pieces over. And this is all over medium high heat to reduce the sauce. We want some liquid, but not a soup. The chicken will cook about 5 minutes on the first side, and three ish minutes on the second side. If you brown it in the pan first, you won't need to flip the pieces since it's mostly cooked already. Now, pour in the mostly egg white mixture and mostly in the middle of the pan. It will find its way to the edge, and we will need to watch that because the edges cook more quickly than the middle. So as it cooks, we'll push any cooked egg edges to the middle of the pan. Now that the whites are cooked, we'll drizzle in that yolk mixture and let it lightly set. I'm shaking the pan and loosening the chicken from the pan because we want it to slide out easily. So I'm making sure it will release easily. Just a couple minutes later, it will slide onto a rice filled plate or bowl and add slivered green onions. Their astringency helps cut the richness of the dish, so don't skip that. And a healthy scatter of Tgarahi, which is a chili pepper blend, also not to be missed. Overall, it is a savory and rich dish that is a delight to cook and to eat with lots of flavor and texture. I mentioned earlier that you have options with ingredient ratios and other nuances with this recipe. Here's a list of the ingredients in the ranges, a quarter to half a cup of dashi or water with instant dashi. Zero to two tablespoons of dry sake, or you can marinade the chicken chunks in sake for 5 minutes, but don't include it in the sauce. Half to two teaspoons of sugar or up to three tablespoons of brown sugar. The soy sauce Samin steam to stay at two tablespoons in all the recipes I saw when you're using just two chicken thighs. Another nuance here is to not use a pan larger than 8 ". This is enough for two servings. They make actual yokedon pans that are smaller for single servings, but using a larger pan means the sauce may evaporate more quickly or the chicken may not cook evenly, and it's definitely more difficult to slide out of the pan and onto a bowl. So that is it for yacdon. I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. Turkish Menemen: Tomatoes & Peppers: Turkish tamin is soft scrambled eggs with tomatoes peppers and sometimes onions. Well, I couldn't find Turkish peppers, I did find these, which I think are Chinese long pepper. Shashio or Pedron, also work well. To prep them for this recipe, we need to desd them and dice them. Then they get cooked over medium high heat in olive oil until they soften. In the meantime, I'll grate a couple fresh tomatoes. You can use canned diced tomatoes, but they tend to have the skin still attached, and we maintain more of their shape. Once the peppers are softened about 10 minutes, they've slightly brown on the edges. Pour in the tomatoes, stir it all together. Bring to a boil or strong summer, at least, still on medium high heat to thicken. Keep an eye, so it doesn't burn or stick, but after just a couple of minutes, it should have some body and stand on its own when you run your spatula through it. And crack the eggs directly into the sauce. We'll lightly scramble them in the sauce. You do want some strands of separate whites, so we don't need to whisk or stir vigorously, just lightly for about 30 seconds. Give it another 30 seconds or so to cook together, keeping an eye on it because the bottom will easily stick now that the eggs are in. It doesn't even look like tomato is still in there because we grated it and it got absorbed by the eggs. So this is where I decided to stop. The eggs are cooked. It has thickened into a little body, but it is still soft and creamy. I'll serve in a bowl or a shallow dish and scoop it up with some bread like a baguette. Really, really delicious, and a good way to use up extra peppers. That's it for Turkish metamin, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Egg Drop Soup: Classic egg drop soup. Somehow, the silkiest soup I've ever had, and ridiculously quick to cook. I've got two cups of stock brought to a boil, and adding half a tablespoon of chopped chives, about half a clove of garlic sliced and ginger. I use fresh ginger slices, but powdered ginger is better here because the flavor integrates and doesn't mess with the texture of the soup. We use a cornstarch slurry to thicken the feel of the soup or give it a heavier mouth feel. So a two to one ratio of water to cornstarch, like one tablespoon of cornstarch to two tablespoons of water. Lower the heat to low and start pouring in two scrambled eggs or one egg per cup of stock you're using. Thing with a spelt will give thinner ribbons, and pouring from a larger mouth will give thicker ribbons. A lighter or heavier pore will also affect the size of your ribbons. Stir wil pouring, so the eggs cook in long strands. I finished mine with a drizzle of toasted sesame oil, and in the cooking process, you can also add a pinch or two of turmeric if you want it really yellow or a few drops of soy sauce, and even MSG, if you have that. That really is it for egg drop soup. It's ready in about 15 minutes, and so much flavor and texture. I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Avgolemono: Lemony Greek Chicken & Egg Soup: Eggs can be used to thicken soup, like in ago moono, Lemon, Greek chicken and rice soup. There are multiple ways to add in the whisked eggs to the soup without cooking them like in egg drop soup. I'm demonstrating the simplest method that tempers the egg and lemon mixture with a little of the hot broth, so the eggs don't cook into ribbons when added to the pot. But first, we season our broth with carrot and green onion. C chopped into pieces suitable to fit on your spoon with the chicken, whatever that looks like for you. Then cooked in a tablespoonul of oil until softened about 8 minutes. In the last minute or so, add chopped garlic and cook that until fragrant. Pour in chicken broth and season with a couple bay leaves, if you have them. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil and add the rice. Risotto rice will give the thickest texture because it has more starch to release, but you can use any long grain rice or even orzo. This cooks for 20 minutes until the rice is fully cooked. In the meantime, we need fresh lemon juice to mix in with egg yolk that's been separated from the whites and mix them together. Then whisk the egg white into soft peaks, which is a solid minute vigorously by hand. I have more notes on this method later. Once the rice is cooked, add the chicken, I have poached and shredded chicken breast, but you can use rotissery chicken too. It doesn't need to cook more, just heat it through. Now I take a few tablespoons of the hot soup broth and whisk it into the egg and lemon juice mixture slowly. This helps to bring up the temperature of the egg mixture, closer to the hot soup temperature, making it easier for the egg mixture to stir into the soup without cooking. This is called tempering, and then we can stir it into the soup. Give it a taste and add more lemon juice. If you want more of that tartness. Remember to be conservative with the lemon juice. You can always add more if you need, but there's no way to fix it if you add too much. Add fresh herbs like dill or parsley, and it's ready to go. Here's the notes on methods for making the egg and lemon mixture based on researching several recipes. Beating the egg white separately seems to give a thicker consistency than blending everything together. You can also blend the eggs, lemon juice, and some of the cooked rice together and stir that into the finished soup. You can also stir the yolks and lemon juice together, add it to the soup, and then stir in the beaten egg whites directly into the soup too. This one looks scary, and it's very much a trust the process method. I chose to beat the whites by hand and temper the mixture because it meant fewer dishes to clean, even though it may not have created the thickest texture. That is it for Ago lamono. I'll see you in the next lesson. 9. Sopa de Ajo: Garlic Soup: A garli soup with eggs and da old bread. Its sopa daho from the Basque region of Spain. Just a few humble ingredients like garlic, paprika, eggs, olive oil, and bread. Make an intensely flavorful meal. Using up sale bread, we tear it into pieces. I'm using old sour dough, so the crust is pretty tough, so I'm tearing really small pieces because it won't break down as much as a baguette or thinner crusted bread. And we slice an alarming amount of garlic. This is garlic soup after all. Fill the bottom of your pot with a high quality olive oil because we use a lot of oil. It should be something that tastes good. The oil should just coat the bottom of the pot over medium heat. Add the garlic cloves and cook them lightly until they are golden, we aren't looking too brown or crisp them, so the oil should lightly bubble when the garlic is added. This will only take a couple minutes over medium heat, nothing too high. When the garlic starts to get some color, add the bread and toss it around in the oil. Add a healthy amount of paprika, any kind. This adds some depth of flavor and some coloring. This gets cooked for about 5 minutes, just enough for some coloring on the bread and the flavors to cook together. Now add a broth, any kind, even water. Like French onion soup, this is a dish of scraps and stretching ingredients. Valuable bone broth probably would not have been used traditionally. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, then cover and cook for 10 minutes so that bread can disintegrate into the broth, making it a little thick. In the meantime, loosely whisk the eggs. Like with acidon, we just want to loosen the whites more so than combining the yolks and whites. Just pull apart the whites, and the yolks will naturally also break up. After 10 minutes of simmering. Turn off the heat and start stirring and pouring the eggs for cooked ribbons. You can also pour in whole eggs one at a time and let them poach or even do a combination of the two. Essentially, the residual heat of the liquid cooks the eggs, so we really don't need any heat from the cook top anymore. This is also a freezable soup and a fantastic way to use up dried bread. That's it for Sopa Daho. I'll see you in the next lesson. 10. Future Recipes & Next Steps: Seems like every culture has a version of tomatoes and eggs. So I look forward to hearing about your version, if you have one. I'll continue updating this class with more recipes as I find them and follow along with my other classes here on Skillshare for all the other ways to cook delicious eggs. If you enjoyed this class, please leave a review, letting other potential students know what they can expect if they also join the class. As a reminder, you can find me on YouTube, Tik Toke Instagram, too. Thanks for following along this journey with me, and I'll see you in the next class.