12 Chefs Make an Omelet (Michelin Star, French, Airline & More)

[upbeat music]

A month ago, I believe we sold 20,000 of omelets

just for one month.

The way to put this together

and to make food in two minutes,

you're gonna have everything ready to go.

So we're gonna prepare for the plate.

You're gonna need potatoes, hard cook.

These vegetables were already done.

At the diner we pre-cook the bacon.

This is the only way you're gonna be successful

because bacon normally takes

in the plate top seven to eight minutes,

which we don't have seven to eight minutes.

We have two minutes or less.

The key for a good omelet, you get the eggs,

you get some water and Tabasco and you whisk it.

At Brooklyn Diner, we normally pre-whisk the eggs,

so this is the only way you can survive

because when you get 25, 30 orders on once,

it's impossible to break eggs element.

All right, follow me. Here you go.

So we're gonna do oil, all right, olive oil.

Same bacon that we used, we just chop it out.

Now the bacon is getting hot, we're gonna put fresh herbs,

parley and tarrgon, all right.

Now tarrgon is a bitterer herb.

You might say, ah, it's too strong.

But once you mix it together, it really makes sense.

Salt.

Normally put salt in my eggs,

but I put salt in the eggs, not here.

So we go here. Salt. That's it. We're ready to go.

The omelet can be cooked in a second.

Like this is weird when you cooking it,

it doesn't happen, it doesn't cook,

but you just move to your left to do something.

Next thing you know, the omelets completely cooked.

And instead to be an omelet, it's an scramble

like, oh my god, let's do it again.

Yeah, you need to keep the eye on it. That's important.

All right, we get in there, you see it? it's like a gelatin.

That's what you're looking for.

And it's gonna get to the point that you can't move anymore.

You're just gonna let him sit, so he can make the omelet.

Cheddar cheese we normally use.

Now the more cheese the better, right?

All right, so once this is ready, you can see it.

You see how we moves it here?

All right, so now we're gonna make an omelet.

All right, look at that. Look at the beauty.

A French omelet is moist.

It should be non dry, non-color

and using only French ingredients.

And that's how we like it in France.

If you go to Paris,

every bistro has a fine herbs omelet on their menu.

And that's what I'm gonna make today.

So I'm gonna use parsley, chervil, and chives.

It's not like bay leaves where is big,

no these, those are fine.

They are very, very septal when you taste.

[speaks French]

We call it.

Tres sensible et gouteuse. Very sensible and tasty.

Delicate and fresh herbs.

The chives is a little bit bitter and peppery,

but it goes well with the omelet.

Chervil is the same family as the parsley,

but it is more fragile.

It gets bad very quickly.

So that's why it's difficult to find,

but if you go to France,

everybody in his garden has chervil.

Chervil, chives, and parsley.

So now I'm gonna shop curly parsley.

When you cook it, it stay green.

The flat has a tendency of losing its color.

So for presentation is not very ideal to use the flat.

So now gonna put some salt, paper.

The whisk is too brutal for the eggs.

The French, you know, we love taking care of the of the eggs

with the fork is much better.

It's gonna be so much more fluffy and moist.

And you're gonna have those white mixed with the yolks.

Mix it again one more time and then we're ready to cook.

The French omelet must be cooked gently with no heat.

Most of the people, they make their pan very hot,

the omelet gets dry.

In French cooking we use clarified butter

for almost everything because it doesn't burn.

It's a non-stick so we don't need too much.

And then I'm gonna add the eggs.

Well first it's gonna cook a little bit,

then I'm gonna mix it just like this.

You see it's already cooking.

I'm gonna fold it like I call it football, you know?

It's gonna be oval, you see.

When you see that it still liquid inside

you just wait a little bit and then depends how you like it,

you can cook it well done.

I love it medium rare,

but any one choice.

What I like to do after is to brush it

with a little bit of a clarified butter

to make it shiny and creamy.

There you go. Bon appetit.

It's especially important

to have your mise en place set for an omelet

because an omelet cooks very quickly

and if you spend an extra second looking for something,

your dish is gonna be ruined.

You're gonna have to make it again.

I cracked the egg on a flat surface

because I know none of the shell is gonna fall into the bowl

and it just creates a nice little pocket

on the side of the egg.

So the salt and pepper are just gonna add a little flavor.

The salt is gonna hold onto moisture

and it's also going to

gently make the proteins more tender too.

So you're gonna whisk your eggs until it looks homogenous.

So it might take a minute or so.

I can tell who's new in culinary school

'cause they'll get tired whisking very quickly.

So it's always okay to change arms.

So we're gonna heat our pan to medium high.

Usually with eggs, it's a lower temperature,

but we're gonna move very quickly

so we can work with a higher heat.

So I'm gonna add a little clarified butter,

but it's delicious

and it's also gonna be able to go a higher heat than butter.

Wait 10 seconds for it to get hot

and go ahead and add our eggs.

You can see it start to cook

along the outside almost immediately.

You're gonna work very quickly.

Push the outsides towards the inside

and you'll see it starts to fill in

the negative space you create.

And once it starts to slow down the filling in,

then you can lower your heat and spread it around.

When I'm about 90% cooked,

I'm gonna add my filling right along the center.

It's very common for people to be ambitious

and overfill their omelets,

but it's not gonna hold together.

A little bit of cheese. Lift my pan up.

With the handle facing me, start to roll the omelet

and I should get one more roll out of it.

Make sure it looks nice.

And that's our omelet with a little salad.

I give myself an A+.

Hayashi omurice is a Japanese omelet rice.

Eggs around four pieces

and heavy cream and little bit salt.

The mix together. Mix well.

Then after that strain it.

Yeah, just make sure there are no shell.

Heat fry pan.

Oh.

This is a very important, mix very well.

It is a very soft, smooth.

With the oil, like farmhouse oil.

The omelet base. The mix.

So first of all, mix like a stronger.

Make like a shaved lagui bowl.

The surface is done, but inside, half cooked very soft.

Inside, creamy, outside, cook.

Then my omelet is finish.

Next, the rice.

[upbeat music]

Hayashi sauce is demi-glace

with onion, mushroom, beef, rice,

then tomato, little ketchup.

The parsley fresh.

This is the perfect Hayashi omurice.

So for my omelet recipe today,

I'm gonna be doing what I do in the morning

when I have no time

and just want something big and something protein filled.

Okay, so my first step is gonna be to crack the eggs open.

So I'm putting in some pepper right now.

We're just gonna whisk.

I think it's so much easier to use the forks

just because you don't have to clean it.

I mean you don't have to clean the fork,

but like it's just so much easier to clean than a whisk.

This is a splatter screen that my grandma used to use

when she cooked.

Yeah, we replace the tin foil and then clean it sometimes.

I cover it because it cooks faster.

This is mozzarella,

it's fresh mozzarella and I just sliced it.

Love arugula 'cause it just tastes beautiful.

But I also like color and everything.

And then sometimes I just like to brown the sides of my egg

by letting butter go off the edges of a pan.

And if it's already like not cooked kind of on the top,

it sticks way better so it rolls

rather than just kind of flopping off.

I still need to let it cook, but I think it's chilling.

Oh yeah, the cheese is looking so good.

So this is a block of wood, it's my favorite thing.

I feel like it just makes everything so much like fancier.

Now just to make it look pretty

and to make you feel like you're at a restaurant,

you put things in random places.

We're also gonna put some parsley on.

Just adding color. I love the taste of smoked paprika.

And then this is just like a local hot sauce that I like.

All right, so then we're gonna just add a little bit of a,

there we go.

This is my omelet, olive joy.

The omelet I'm making today is a French omelet.

Very simple, very straightforward,

but must be executed correctly.

I like to do a three egg omelet.

I think it gives you enough eggs to work with

so that you can still have enough filling

to keep it custardy.

I wanna make sure everything's really scrambled nicely,

but don't wanna over incorporate too much air into them.

Salt.

So after I whisk the eggs, I like to strain it.

I just find that it does clear out any whites

and some foam in there,

which I think helps with the texture.

So when cooking an omelet, you wanna use a lower heat,

low to medium so that the proteins aren't over coagulating.

We cut all our butter into cubes at the restaurant.

It just makes it easier to add it in

when you're cooking a lot of omelets.

It also allows for consistency.

So you could say something takes two cubes or four cubes.

So as the butter starts to melt, I'm going to add my eggs in

and I'm just gonna immediately start stirring them.

With the soft scramble French omelet,

you really want to kind of cater to the eggs.

Can't let them sit on their own for too long.

Turn that off.

I'm also gonna now add a pinch of the herbs in.

I like to do it closer to the end

just so it kinda keeps some of that,

you know, fresh herb flavor in it.

so as the eggs start to kind of soft scramble,

I like to start letting it set on the bottom a little bit.

So this is when I would start rolling the omelet

to the edge of the pan.

Sometimes if you,

you know it's sticking a little more than you would like,

we do add another little piece of butter in.

We get to the end

and this is when we will flip it right out.

And then elevate it with a touch of roe.

Nothing too crazy, but it gives it a really nice salinity

and a little extra pop and texture.

Just to give it a touch of brightness

because it is so rich and velvety.

Put it a little lemon zest.

This is my go-to breakfast and this looks perfect to me.

This is gonna be a Spanish tortilla.

The Spanish tortilla is the Spanish omelet,

not necessarily kind of an American diner omelet,

but this is gonna be the Spanish omelet

taken to another level with added kimchi and Korean spices.

All right, so we're gonna heat up the pan real quick.

Get some olive oil in there.

What we've done is we've par cooked potatoes, onions,

roasted kimchi.

Right now I'm adding the kimchi.

It's gonna add some spiciness, some of that fermentation,

the sourness that we like.

And kind of just make the tortilla a little more complex.

I'm gonna crack some eggs

so that we can whisk them together.

And key to the a great Spanish tortilla

is gonna be making sure that you temper the eggs first,

just so that it doesn't get shocked by the heat.

If I were to add some of the egg directly to the heat

or this super hot mixture into the egg,

the eggs would start cooking.

Now, I want to let this sit for a little bit.

That's gonna drop the temperature,

it's gonna coagulate the mixture a little bit.

It's gonna develop the flavors

so that when I add it back into the pan,

we can start the omelet.

I have our pan warm with a little bit of olive oil.

We have our tempered mixture ready to go.

The key to great tortilla, Spanish tortilla

is making sure that the inside still say gooey.

A lot of people in Spain want it as runny as possible,

kind of like an over easy egg, but the idea is

we're kind of having it that medium rare texture.

So bottom part is cooked.

What we're gonna do now is we're gonna flip.

Speed is your friend here, if we do it too slow,

the tortilla is gonna collapse, it's gonna break apart.

And slide it back in and finish cooking on the inside.

It has kind of the fluffiness of an American omelet,

but it also has that custardiness

that we love on the inside of a French omelet.

And what you want to do

is to kind of help form the shape of the omelet,

of the tortillas,

you wanna take your spatula and kind of round out the edges.

So we have our tortilla here.

Add some aioli,

an emulsification of garlic, egg yolk, and some vinegar.

This is our Spanish tortilla with kimchi.

With me, you don't have to sacrifice flavor

with also nutrition.

I'm gonna make a classic omelet for a client.

This is like the perfect way to start their day

after a high intensity workout.

Loaded with nutrients, loaded with lots of flavors.

So as this butter is melting,

I'm gonna go ahead and just start whisking my eggs.

I like to make sure my eggs are nice and frothy,

nice and bubbly.

Same thing with my butter.

Once it's nice and bubbly, then I know it's ready to go.

So now what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna just do a soft scramble.

I wanna keep the integrity of the shape like a circle.

All right, this is starting to look good.

So for me, I like seafood.

A lot of my clients enjoy seafood.

So I'm gonna add some fresh lobster pieces

right in the middle.

I'm mess up.

Add some fresh crab.

I'm gonna top it with some salt and pepper.

And honestly, let's get fancy.

Let's add some freshly grated Asiago.

Okay, let's let this cook a little bit more.

This is an everyday meal for some of my clients.

I've spoiled them. Whatever they ask for, I just deliver.

I know chefs usually like their omelets

to be a little more blonde,

but I like a little crust on my eggs.

So now we're gonna add a Cajun cream sauce

that's loaded with fresh crab and fresh lobster.

I also incorporated some shallot,

some garlic, some fresh thyme,

and also a little bit of cilantro.

And now I'm adding some chives for garnish.

I'm gonna be making an Italian version

of Japanese rolled omelet

with all flavorings from anchovy pizza.

While the pan is heating, we will mix the eggs,

add in our seasonings, which are anchovies

and something we call slice spice,

which will also go on top of the omelet at the end.

It's essentially Italian for a furikake.

It's everything that goes on a regular slice

at a slice shop,

oregano, chili, black pepper,

and a few extra things that we add to make it our own.

Kambu dashi is really the beginning of the backbone stock

of Japanese cooking.

This is mixed with what we call tomato power.

That is part reduced tomato water

and part reduced tomato kombucha that we make.

We're not trying to mix a ton of air into the egg.

We're actually going to pop any air bubbles.

The air bubbles are really gonna prevent

the structure that we're looking for.

And we're ready to start cooking.

We're gonna put an even layer of oil on the pan.

I'm cooking the omelet layer by layer,

those two little eggs making four layers,

rolling them on each other.

And now we're gonna turn it out onto a sushi mat

to adjust the shape and make sure they're really together.

This compresses the layers

and make sure that they're not gonna fall apart

when we slice it.

I'm gonna finish this with olive oil,

a bit of lemon zest for freshness

and more of the sliced spice

to really drive that pizza flavor.

At The Plaza we take a breakfast very seriously

because that's the first meal of the day.

So it's gonna be a French omelet

with lobster and some caviar.

This is what's make The Plaza really luxury.

The key to have a great omelet

is always to have a cage free eggs

freshly delivered every day.

We always absolutely use the best ingredient

at The Plaza Hotel.

You can see how it's really fresh,

the egg yolk, you can see it's a very darkened color.

Take some kosher salt and some nice black pepper,

specially grounded.

So to have the best taste of omelet,

you always use clarified butter.

Small spoon inside here.

Keep mixing the eggs ensure like it's not always in the pan.

Make sure like, you know, not to keep it always in the heat.

You will just take it back and back and forth

to make sure like you have a perfect cooked omelet.

Once the omelet almost set, we can put or mix up lobster.

So this is the lobster, we have it like plunge

and just mix with basil and lemon dressing as well.

There's big difference

between a like a guest ordering omelet in the restaurant

or ordering in the room.

In the restaurant, we cook it al almost like 95%,

but when it's in the room we cook it almost 80%.

We don't cook it fully cooked

because if, I guest like on 10th floor or 15th floor,

in the hot boxes that's gonna continue cooking.

So we have a sour dough toast with a avocado inside.

Like we have a mix of avocado, scallions and lime.

And then we have the omelet.

We use the claw on the and the top

because just to presentation

and just like very soft part of the lobster.

Take a nice sour cream spoon, spoon.

Add the caviar just for more luxury.

I'm a hundred percent sure

that's the best breakfast you can have in New York City.

And making meals for the world's longest flights.

There's a lot to take in.

And when we design the dish,

we want to design around good nutrition and wellness,

digestibility, flavor is the most important,

but obviously, it has to be enjoyable

and enjoyable nine hours later.

So first we're gonna start off

by putting a little extra virgin olive oil into the pan.

We're trying to keep fats minimal here.

One of the worst things to have on an airplane

is an uncomfortable passenger.

Imagine if you had this gigantic big burger

with bacon and cheese.

Sounds great until you're nine hours into the flight

and you still have another eight hours to go.

Now we're gonna add into this our shiitake mushrooms first.

Having a veggie filling in the omelet

has a lot to do with helping you digest that.

All right, we're gonna add in our fresh zucchini now,

and we're gonna add in our bell pepper.

Salt is important, it helps us taste,

but at the same time, too much salt is not good,

especially in an aircraft.

It's gonna cause swelling

and that's really something we're trying to avoid.

Cracker a fresh pepper.

And now to make up for that missing salt,

we're gonna add in some sumac,

which is a wonderful zesty spice

and a little crushed red chili flake.

Let's start with the omelet.

So we're gonna put the pan on cold, ready to go.

We're starting to set up.

And I kind of like to just keep mixing this

like it almost looks like scrambled eggs.

Now this is our cue to add in our vegetables.

And we're gonna put a little sprinkle

of Monterey Jack cheese.

This is adding some good fats and some good protein.

So we're gonna roll this omelet up now in thirds

and then pull it out onto our foil kit.

This is what is gonna be used

to reheat the egg onboard the aircraft.

So we have our vinaigrette

and we're gonna add some arugula into our foil.

So this is what they would end up getting on board.

The flight crew will see this,

and then we're gonna now plate.

The seam is up

so that the crew can roll the omelet now onto the plate.

We're going to top it with our arugula.

And now the last but not least

is we're going to add our vinaigrette.

Most people would be like,

and they're not gonna put vinaigrette in an omelet,

but again, go back to onboard

I don't have a lot of salt here, I don't have a lot of fat.

I want to have a nice light, bright flavor profile

for the passenger.

And we're just going to drizzle this around.

And the amazing thing is

here I am a professional chef doing this for you

and the flight crew onboard the aircraft,

do this exact same plate up.

It's really amazing.

This looks exactly what I hope to see

onboard my next flight.

So today we're making a spinach and cheese omelet wrap

with a little bit of roasted tomato salsa.

Our omelets do come pre-prepared

because it is very difficult

to feed over 1 million kids every single day.

So this is why we have

most of our proteins precooked already

to ensure nutritional standards.

But all of the proteins that we receive

are a hundred percent natural, antibiotic free,

and they're humanely raised.

So the first thing that we have to do

is heat up the omelet to 160 degrees.

We're gonna make our roasted tomato salsa.

Even though the tomatoes do come in a can,

our job is to introduce a little more

elaborate recipe making

by having a variety of spices.

I am adding some cumin and chili powder, chili flakes,

but I'll be adding just a tiny bit.

We are serving children, so we have to be careful

with some of the flavor profiles that we are introducing.

There's going to be some garlic as well.

A small pinch of salt,

and we're gonna spread this on a sheet,

pop it in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Next is a pico de gallo, but with a twist.

This pico de gallo will consist of pears and apples,

peppers, cilantro, lemon juice, and garlic.

This is a fun way to show the kids

that the apples don't have to be boring.

Acid helps compensate for the lack of sodium and sugar.

It helps marry all of the flavors

into a cohesive, delicious dish.

So now that we have our omelet right out of the warmer,

even though our proteins come precooked,

we have to ensure that they come up to temp.

Just to ensure safety.

I'm gonna temp my tomatoes as well. Excellent.

We're gonna take the tortilla wrap.

All of our wraps and breads are at least 51% whole wheat.

Then we're gonna add some fresh spinach

because we want some fresh greens in there.

We're gonna place the eggs on top of the spinach,

two slices of American cheese,

and a nice scoop full of our beautiful tomato salsa.

So all of these ingredients here fulfill the requirement

for a healthy breakfast.

Excellent. That's a good [beep] omelet.

Oishi this. It's perfect.

Okay, can I say that? That's delicious.