4 Levels of Frittata: Amateur to Food Scientist

[eggs whisking] [mushroom scraping]

[upbeat music]

I am Bianca, and I'm a level one chef.

I'm Daniel, and I'm a level two chef.

Hey, I'm Saul.

I've been a professional chef for 23 years.

I am making a vegan veggie frittata.

Now stick with me here 'cause I got a surprise for you guys.

I'm making a frittata that is inspired

by the Spanish tortilla de papas.

A little bit of potato, a little bit of caramelized onion,

whole lotta good.

I'm making a fried oyster frittata

with capers and lemon mascarpone,

and I'm using fried oysters

just to make a little more special.

[board thumping]

Let's get to it.

We can't have a frittata without eggs,

and I opt for an entire carton of them.

Not very wasteful.

Egg number one, we're gonna try to do this one-handed.

[egg clinking]

Oh, you wanna see a grown man cry?

Watch me mess up on camera.

I'm only using four eggs

because I'm only making one frittata.

Always use the best eggs in the market,

and these are farm raised eggs.

They're heirloom eggs.

They're full of flavor.

Even the color is a little bit different.

Bam, my mom did it this way growing up.

If you're just making this for yourself,

you can obviously save it for later.

You know, you can meal prep this.

Whisk this first.

I consider myself an intentional eater,

and what that means is that I eat what feels good to me.

And what feels good today is plant-based egg.

It doesn't taste exactly the same, but it's close enough.

Level one is using vegan egg?

Where does that come from, Jupiter?

I'm gonna dice some chives, slider, then regular onion

'cause onion is a big part of breakfast,

and this parsley is gonna add freshness, color.

Parmesan cheese because I want to add

that beautiful, cheesy, salty element.

It's gonna kind of make it look like a cheesecake

kind of texture cream.

I'm not sure exactly what the skimmed milk

does in this equation, but my mom did it all the time

so that is how I'm choosing to do it today.

A little bit of cream because I want my eggs

to be on the creamy, soft, smooth side.

It's better than adding skimmed milk.

And all I'm looking for really

is for the eggs to look a little lighter.

Add a little bit of olive oil.

Eggs are whisked, and this would be perfect

if I was just making an omelet,

but we got a frittata to make

so I gotta prep the rest of the fillings.

I have a few extra things

that I'm gonna add to my frittata.

I wanna do a beautiful creamy briny mascarpone cream

to put it on top.

It's better than the cream cheese

because it's a little bit lighter, fluffier,

and with better flavor too.

Since no eggs will be harmed,

I'm gonna get right to my veggies.

For my vegan veggie frittata, don't hate me guys,

seasoning is the most important part of the meal.

The holy trinity is onion, powder, garlic, and pepper.

Hold on. Oh, wrong way.

They should have a sign on this.

Smoked paprika, put some salt.

My spice mix is done so I'm going to put it aside

while I chop up my veggies.

My frittata is modeled after a Spanish tortilla de papas.

Very simple, it just have caramelized onions

and some potatoes.

Potatoes, caramelized onions, you can't go wrong.

[Daniel] I'm gonna start by peeling these potatoes.

I've only got a couple.

A orange bell pepper.

One vegetable down, couple more to go.

I want my onions in tiny, small cubes similar to my peppers.

Little slivers, so the goal is to have

really thin slices of potato.

You can kinda almost see through it a little bit.

So that as they soften with like cooking and browning,

kinda all feels like one homogenous mixture.

This is crazy, like, somebody should teach me

at least how to cut.

I think that I deserve that much

to learn how to properly cut.

Chopping.

I'm using lemon zest

because it's gonna add a beautiful color and taste of lemon

without over powering the cream

'cause I don't want this to be too lemony.

And now I'm gonna dice some capers.

A more flavorful salt.

Hmm, this is so good I can put this all over my face,

but I have to put it on the frittata.

Now for the jalapeno, I'm going to chop the jalapenos

as fine as I can get them because I want the heat

to be evenly distributed throughout.

Just don't tease me.

I'm gonna put this aside,

and then I'm gonna open some oysters.

I dunno if I can do fried oysters for breakfast,

but if Saul got his hands on it, I'm sure it's banging.

Beautiful Kumamoto oysters.

They're meaty, they're full of flavor,

and the reason why I decided to do the oysters

because I'm a professional,

and I like to complicate my life,

and I like to make fancy things.

Cherry tomatoes here, I'm gonna add a couple of them,

and now for the star of the show, the Portobello mushroom.

So I'm gonna scrape this dark part out

so it doesn't turn my eggs brown.

Give it a rough little chop.

Got a couple sweet Spanish onions

'cause I'm just cutting them however is convenient to me.

I think the thinner the slice, the quicker it caramelizes,

and you know we're already hungry.

I don't wanna make this take any longer than it has to.

Just make sure that oyster doesn't move.

You're looking for the little hole.

Just twist it a little bit,

and then you kinda scratch it from the top

without messing up the oysters.

Flip it around and look.

It looks so nice.

I'm gonna dress my vegetables

with a little bit of olive oil,

and a lot of bit of seasoning.

Wanna make sure everything gets coated.

Bit of salt all over all the potatoes.

Next, the rosemary, oregano,

and a little bit of thyme.

But I feel like rosemary, oregano, and thyme

are like the quintessential potato seasonings.

[Bianca] We wanna see the seasoning.

Lastly, freshly cracked black pepper.

I'm going to saute it just a little bit,

and then I'm gonna add my egg.

Potatoes, onions, donezos.

My oysters are shucked.

I'm going to toast my oysters on AP flour and cornstarch.

50% all-purpose flour and 50% cornstarch.

That's gonna make these oysters nice, golden, and crispy.

So I'm going to saute my veggies,

cook them down a little bit so they're nice and soft.

That's a nice sound.

Shout out to Epicurious.

I actually like cooking so I'm gonna saute my vegetable mix

until my onions are translucent.

I'm gonna start with the onions

'cause they take a little bit longer to caramelize.

So I kinda start like medium, medium high,

and I'm just gonna get all these bad boys in here.

The salt actually helps the onion sweat more

and release that moisture,

so they caramelize a little bit quicker.

Oil 375, medium rare.

I just want the outside to be nice and crispy,

So I'm only gonna add just a little bit of spinach

because spinach creates its own moisture.

I'm gonna allow this to sit for a little bit

and allow the spinach to cook down

so it can absorb all of the flavors

for about two to three minutes.

It's been about 15, 20,

and you'll see that huge pile of onions

is already much, much smaller.

They look a lot more translucent.

My little hack for getting

really nice sweet caramelized onions

is actually to add a little bit of brown sugar to the pan.

Helps the process along.

I'm looking for sort of like a dark golden brown.

[Bianca] It looks soft, it looks flavorful.

So this has to sit for probably another 15, 20 minutes.

It's ready to go.

It's perfect.

And I'm not adding any salt

'cause oysters are a little bit salty.

I'm gonna add my Just Egg.

About three tablespoons of this equates to like one egg,

but I'm shooting for about like three eggs.

I'm gonna add a little bit more seasoning to my egg mix.

Onion powder, garlic, pepper, a little salt,

and a little thyme, and lastly,

I'm gonna add a little paprika for color.

Now I am going to add my veggie mix.

The last thing I have to add is arugula.

Gorgeous.

This is exactly what I'm looking for.

And it cooked down to what looks like

maybe a cup and a half.

So definitely happy that I went with four onions.

I'm gonna add a little bit of olive oil here

and a little bit of butter.

Potatoes now are going into the same pan.

So I want these to get nice and soft.

A little bit more translucent as the onions.

Look at this, it's nice and crispy.

These are pretty much done.

I want that soft floppy kinda consistency here.

It's ready to be inside my frittata.

We are cooking eggs,

and we're gonna cook this baby in the microwave.

Yes, we are.

The microwave?

Bianca, you microwave your frittata?

Anything is possible.

We're trying something new today, right?

We're in this together.

I am going to pop this into the microwave

in about six minutes.

I'm gonna start by warming the pan up.

A medium, medium low heat here.

[Saul] Medium heat, because we don't wanna

overcook the egg

[Daniel] First into the pan are my potatoes,

next I'm going to add my caramelized onions,

now I'm going to add in my egg mixture.

So I have my eggs mixture here,

I have chives, parsley, and Parmesan cheese.

What I like to do is constantly move the eggs around

on this medium low heat.

I'm only gonna cook my frittata halfway in

'cause I don't want my oysters to sink into the bottom.

Now I'm only at the oysters here.

Oysters everywhere.

Voila, for the non-believers, my vegan frittata is cooked.

I'm gonna let it cool, and then I'm ready to plate.

This kinda like mushy consistency

where it's holding up together,

but there's still a little bit more it could cook

is my green light to get this off the heat,

and into the oven.

So I'm gonna cut the heat off of this.

Still cooking, I'm gonna get this into the oven

and finish it there.

See you in a second.

Now I'm gonna bake this for eight to 10 minutes,

and you have a beautiful frittata.

Fresh out the oven.

[Saul] The frittata looks the way I want this to look.

There's no runny eggs, everything is together.

[Bianca] And now I'm going to cut a slice.

I wanna cut this into six.

It's just like having a birthday cake.

Look how beautiful that looks.

I'm shaking of happiness.

La creme de la creme.

Everything is on point.

I wanna put a little bit of beauty.

I'm doing a beautiful dollop of mascarpone cheese.

Last and not least, I'm gonna do a little bit of chives.

Now it has some edible flowers right here.

She loves me, she loves me more.

It's gonna add the vegetable taste to it,

and also it's gonna make it look prettier.

And this is my frittata.

[camera shutter clicks]

This is my frittata.

[camera shutter clicks]

And this is my fried oyster frittata.

[camera shutter clicks]

Can't wait to try this.

Do I put this in the menu?

Do I not put this in the menu?

To be honest, this has to be the best microwave frittata

I have ever seen.

Do you see inside the oyster?

It looks nice and meaty.

Let's hope for the best. Let's see.

Okay.

Okay.

You wanna hate it, but you gotta love it.

Okay, because actually this is really good.

My favorite part is that you can taste all the ingredients

without overpowering all of them.

There's no onion chunks, there's no potato chunks.

It's all together.

It tastes like I'm just biting into one cohesive cake.

There is enough salt from the oysters, from the capers,

from the Parmesan cheese.

I don't know what to say.

I'm just happy.

And I didn't touch the eggs at all, didn't season them.

Everything came from the vegetables that are inside.

Would my granny from the deep south eat this frittata?

I think she would give me a A for effort,

and a job well done.

I think my mom would approve.

Shout out, mom.

Not a failure after all.

Just kidding.

[board thumps]

Frittata is a cooked egg dish

enriched with delicious fillings and finished in the oven.

Let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs.

Bianca made a frittata without eggs.

Instead, she used Just Egg.

A plant-forward product that includes

mung bean protein isolate, flavors,

and thickeners to mimic the texture

and functional properties of an egg,

then she microwaved her frittata.

Microwaves cause polar molecules like water to move so fast

that the friction between them produces heat.

Water in food like eggs is not uniformly distributed

throughout the eggs.

So you may end up with some spots cooked more than others.

Daniel added olive oil and milk to his eggs.

Helpful because his frittata is cooked on top of the stove

and finished in the oven.

Adding fats to eggs raises the coagulation temperature,

helping to prevent tough and rubbery overcooked eggs.

Saul added heavy cream and fat-rich Parmesan cheese

to his cracked eggs,

raising the coagulation temperature much higher.

Parmesan cheese adds concentrated salinity

to his egg mixture.

It's a hard cheese, low in moisture, so it'll take some time

to melt and blend together with his eggs.

[drums beating]

Bianca sauteed mushrooms, spicy peppers,

tomatoes, and onions finished with arugula,

which is a pungent, peppery, and slightly tangy green.

While it looks like lettuce,

it's actually in the brassica family

like cabbage, broccoli, and mustard greens.

Daniel made a Spanish tortilla style frittata,

adding Yukon gold potatoes for a nice texture,

and slowly caramelized thin sliced onions.

Fat soluble flavor compounds are developed

when onions are cut and exposed to hot olive oil,

while natural sugars and onions,

along with the small amount of brown sugar that he added,

produced a sweetness.

Saul fried oysters to his frittata.

Oysters are bivalve mollusks with a savory umami taste.

Oysters contain glycogen which break down

into smaller glucose units as the oysters are cooked,

imparting a savory sweetness

that compliments his frittata nicely.

Frittatas are so adaptable.

In fact, you don't even have to use eggs.

We hope you'll take some of these tips

from our three extraordinary chefs

to make your frittata original.