- 4 Levels
- Season 1
- Episode 7
4 Levels of Omelets: Amateur to Food Scientist
Released on 05/21/2019
[bacon sizzling]
[lighthearted music]
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.
[lighthearted music]
It's been a while since I've made an omelet
'cause usually I just give in and make scrambled eggs
with stuff in them.
The recipe comes from many many brunches
that I've gone to.
I'm going to be making a french omelet
with a wild mushroom and goat cheese filling
and fresh herbs.
[lighthearted music]
The fillings 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 kinda 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.
All right, so these are going to be roasted.
I might as well do my decor, I'm only gonna use
the green portion.
[Barb] 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
'cause 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 off.
The mushrooms have come out of the oven.
We're going to roughly chop them,
we're going to add our mushrooms in,
just a little bit of black pepper.
So as this is going, I'll add a little bit of salt.
All right, so we have sauteed 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 gonna do is I'm gonna crack some eggs
into this bowl, two eggs.
And then I'm just gonna mix some other stuff into it.
So first I've got egg number one, woo!
Egg number two.
Didn't get any shell in there this time,
so pretty much professional.
I actually crack the eggs in a separate bowl
just to make sure that 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 chip 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. Salt.
The salt actually helps break down proteins
in the eggs, so you're gonna have 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 use a fork, but 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 wanna whisk vigorously because we wanna 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 of it's more yolk-y, some more egg white-y.
I just wanna get some air into the egg mixture,
and kinda incorporate all the salt that I put in there.
So seasoning wise I pretty much just eyeball it.
Yeah, that's a fine amount of pepper.
I'm 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
[All] Butter.
This is gonna add some flavor to our omelet,
and help the omelet not stick.
It's a pretty fast process.
And
swim.
Ah, don't burn.
Soon as the eggs go 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
are 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 'til 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 you take your veggies,
you 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 flip it like that.
I'm gonna fold omelet one third of the way,
slide it towards the end of my pan.
Now I'm just gonna roll it onto a plate.
Life up and roll.
[Barb] And then roll.
Kind if a plop. [laughs]
So I like to put hot sauce on my omelet.
I still have a little topping to go with.
My fresh scallions 'cause I love the bite
of that onion-y flavor of a scallion.
And then don't forget the bacon folks.
I like tearing and placing the bacon on top,
And then we're gonna take
a nice generous pinch, and just garnish
our omelets at the end.
All right, so this is our omelet,
and I think it looks pretty good.
It looks actually really delicious.
So I'm really happy with how this turned out.
[lighthearted music]
I can't wait to dig in.
Still really nice and moist.
Mm. Mm!
That's a good omelet.
Mm, the vegetables with the sharp sharp cheddar cheese,
it's so good together.
I get a little bit of tanginess from the goat cheese,
a really nice roast-y 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.
[pan sizzling] [dramatic drum music]
Let's start with the filling.
Emily used raw 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.
Boo ya!
When we have a really moist filling in our omelet,
we can see a process called syneresis or weeping.
When the eggs weep liquid out,
and create something a little bit more soggy
as oppose to light and fluffy.
Lorenzo and Barb both filled their omelets with cheese.
Lorenzo chose cheddar cheese
which is a low moisture cheese.
I just 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 cheeses 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.
[dramatic drum music]
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,
and 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 and Lorenzo used a fork to blend their eggs,
and Barb used a whisk.
Either of these are good options
to create a homogenous 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 right.
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,
so that's what I'm doing.
Some people think that you have to add liquid
into your egg mixture, but this isn't necessary.
Eh.
Adding a liquid like water is gonna 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.
[dramatic drum music]
Emily used a moderate heat when cooking her omelet.
Lorenzo cooked his omelet at a low temperature,
and Barb chose a higher temperature to cook her omelet.
When using a low or moderate temperature like Lorenzo
and Emily did, it's okay to spread your omelet
throughout the whole pan to ensure even cooking
within the omelet.
When choosing a higher temperature,
move your eggs around just like Barb did
so that we're not overexposing 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 a curd.
This is the main protein reaction
we see when we're cooking an omelet.
[dramatic drum music]
Today we saw our chefs make two styles of omelets.
The french style omelet,
and the diner style omelet.
Emily made a diner style omelet where she browned
the bottom of her omelet.
She created a light and fluffy texture,
and folded it in half.
Barb created a french style omelet
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 is though, it really is.
[Food Scientist] He created a tender filling,
and browned the outside
to create a crust, and then folded it in half.
That makes sense?
The french style omelet 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 omelet is cooked longer
as evidence by the browning on the bottom
of Lorenzo and Emily's omelet.
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 omelet.
[dramatic drum music]
Everybody has their favorite way
to top an omelet.
Emily chose hot sauce which is gonna help
to balance the salty flavor from the ham
in her omelet.
Ha. [laughs]
Lorenzo chose bacon
which is gonna give a nice crunch and texture
to his omelet while also providing a deep flavor.
Who doesn't like bacon?
Barb added herbs to her omelet
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.
[lighthearted music]
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