Omelettes are satisfying meals in the morning, afternoon or for the evening meal, they are generally inexpensive to make at home, and they are easy for even a novice cook to assemble.
Basic Dinner Omelette
For each person coming to dinner, you need three (3) large or jumbo eggs. Use all of the yolks or just some of the yolks this is your choice.
Break your eggs for one serving into a bowl or a two (2) cup measuring cup.
Add a tablespoon of water, and beat your eggs with a whisk or with a fork. Water works better than milk with eggs because eggs are composed of water. Of course you have the choice of not adding any water to the egg mixture if your eggs are very fresh. As eggs sit in the carton the water content evaporates through the porous shells. Adding a little water back adds a fluffy texture back to the finished cooked product.
Melt a pat of your favorite butter in your fry pan. I use a ten (10) inch fry pan for my 3 egg omelettes. You may want to use a smaller pan if you use only two eggs.
Heat the pan to melt the butter on a medium heat be careful because butter will brown if the heat is too high, and you don’t want the butter to brown before you add your beaten eggs.
Add the beaten egg mixture to the pan and move the mixture around by tipping the pan so the egg run all around the pan. Here is where I do things a bit different from some other people when I make an omelette.
I put the omelette filling into the pan on top of the egg mixture before it is completely congealed.
I cover my omelette pan with a lid and remove the lid when the eggs are congealed.
When you want to remove the omelette from the pan just tip the pan towards your plate, and gently help the omelette to fold and slid onto your plate. Or you can just turn the finished product over with a good fry spatula.
My favorite omelette topping is chopped, fresh red tomato with shredded cheddar cheese.
I also like to use my favorite taco sauce on top of my filled omelette, and my husband likes to use tomato ketchup or his favorite BBQ sauce on top of his omelette. You can top your omelette with whatever you want.
Here are some of my favorite omelette fillings.
FILLINGS
Finely chopped RAW bell pepper, red, green, yellow or even orange.
Chopped, raw green onions sometimes called ‘’scallions’ on the East Coast.
Cooked, sauted white mushroom slices or whatever mushrooms you like to eat.
I recommend that you both wash and cook mushrooms, because mushrooms are grown in a loam composed of animal manure mixed with vegetable matter. This is why I will never purchase already sliced mushrooms. I prefer the whole ones so I can wash them myself, and I know that they are clean before I add them to my food.
My favorite frozen potatoes to use in an omelette are sold under the name ‘Alexa’. Alexa frozen potato products are prepared with extra virgin olive oil, sunflower and or canola oil and or safflower oil.
There is NO cotton oil in Alexa products, which sets this brand apart from most other brands in the regular grocery store. Read my blog on cotton seed and cotton seed oil, and you will understand WHY I am so against cotton oil in our food chain.
I precook the frozen ‘Alexa’ potatoes in a 350 degrees oven as I am assembling the rest of the omelette ingredients.
Alexa frozen onion rings, precooked in a 350 degree oven, and broken into pieces before adding to the omelette are also delicious as a filling with the potatoes and vegetables. Alexa onion rings contain canola and or sunflower and or soybean oil, plus the onion rings are coated with Panko Breading, which is a delicious breading!
Cut up hunks of cooked ham are especially nice in an omelette.
Cut up pieces of fresh, raw avocado also go well in an omelette..
My favorite omelette filling is my Homemade Corn Beef Hash.
My Corned Beef Hash recipe will follow on this web page.
When you use Corned Beef Hash from the recipe I have provided in this Blog as a filling in an omelette the hash already contains vegetables including potatoes and tender corned beef all cooked to perfection!
Bottom line is cooked potatoes, cooked or raw red and green vegetables, and cooked meats of many varieties all go well as filling in an omelette.
MOM's Perfect Scrambled Eggs W/ MOM's Homemade Corned Beef Hash
PERFECT SCRAMBLED EGGS
You will need:
Two (2) or Three (3) large or jumbo fresh eggs for each person coming to breakfast, lunch or dinner.
One (1) tablespoon of water for each three (3) eggs
A fry pan any size
A pat of fresh dairy butter
To the perfect scrambled eggs you can become 'creative', and add small chunks of cooked ham and a handful of shredded cheddar cheese. Scrambled eggs cook very fast, so fast that cheese mixed into the egg mixture doesn't have time to congeal on the bottom of the pan, and burn. The heat should always be medium to medium low for cooking scrambled eggs. High heat will ruin this dish.
METHOD
Crack the eggs, add the tablespoon of water to them, and beat with a fork to get ‘air’ into the mixture. Beating air into the eggs will help to make the finished product ‘fluffy’.
Drop this mixture into the fry pan where you have already melted the butter over a low, medium heat. Be careful to not brown the butter because this will discolor your finished scrambled eggs.
With a fork or other utensil, preferable something that will not scrape your pan, move the egg mixture around the pan. The heat will congeal the egg mixture, and because you used water instead of milk in this recipe, your eggs will be lovely to look at on your plate.
Enjoy, because these eggs are ‘pure energy food’, and ‘perfect’ because you are making them in MOM in Hollister style!
A word of CAUTION about RAW eggs and RAW egg WHITES.
RAW egg white contains a substance we call Avidin.
Avidin is a glycoprotein that binds to the Biotin in the egg yolk, and prevents the needed B vitamin Biotin in the egg yolk from being absorbed by the body. You need Biotin in your diet for neuromuscular function.
Most of the Avidin in RAW egg white is destroyed when eggs are cooked.
Bottom line is it is always much better to consume cooked eggs.
The other ‘nasty’ about eating RAW egg is the bacteria salmonella that can be transferred to an egg where the shell has been cracked or sometimes feed that is fed to chickens can be contaminated with salmonella.
When chicken feed is contaminated the one way to be sure you will NOT be infected with this deadly bacteria is to COOK your EGGS THOROUGHLY.
Cooking destroys salmonella as well as other destructive bacteria.
Remember that bacteria is 'living'; it is composed of living creatures, composed of a form of living protein. Cooking your food thoroughly will always destroy bacteria in your food.
Egg Facts
Eggs are the ‘king’ of protein upon which all other complete protein is compared to and measured by. Egg white contains eight (8) amino acids that constitute the most perfect complete protein. Three of these amino acids in egg white are, Arginine, Glycine and Methionine, and these three amino acids constitute a compound in egg white that is called Creatine. Bodybuilders are aware of Creatine because during workouts Creatine creates more energy within muscles for workout endurance, and Creatine draws water into developing muscles thus increasing muscle size.
Eggs contain the yellow egg yolk, which constitutes the fat in the egg plus the yolk contains a substance called Lecithin. Lecithin contains the B vitamins, Choline and Biotin.
Lecithin is an ‘emulsifier’ meaning that Lecithin breaks fat up, and disperses this fat. This is why Lecithin, either from egg yolk or from soybean, is an ingredient in recipes for making chocolate bars and chocolate chips. Most of the time, candy manufacturers use Lecithin derived from soybean, in their recipes.
The Lecithin that is present in egg yolks works in a similar way as soybean Lecithin works. Egg Lecithin disperses the fat in recipes. An example is when you beat a cake batter, the Lecithin from egg yolk(s) in the batter disperses the fat in the recipe, and Lecithin then keeps the fat broken up and distributed throughout the cake batter.
Choline, one of the B vitamin that is found in all forms of Lecithin has been known for some time now to be important in the human body for the transmission of nerve messages between cells. This includes the cells within our brains. Choline is a key component of Acetylcholine, which is a chemical Neurotransmitter. A Neurotransmitter is simply a messenger that sends messages between our nerves and our muscles.
Basically, Choline’s job is to carry fat within our water based blood system.
Because of what it does, Choline is presently being investigated as an important vitamin for treatment to improve Neuromuscular Function in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Remember Choline is in egg yolk and it is in soybean.
Egg yolk also contain Biotin, which is another of the essential B vitamins we all need to maintain good health. Biotin synthesizes some Essential Fatty Acids (E.F.A.’s) and Biotin converts Amino Acids to Glucose within the body. Amino acids are the building blocks that constitute Protein. All Protein must be converted into Glucose (simple sugar) within the body so we can use the Glucose as fuel.
Everything we humans consume must be converted in our bodies into a form of 'simple' sugar so we can use the 'simple' sugar as fuel.
The other form of sugar we humans consume is called 'complex' sugar. Biotin from egg yolks and other foods is necessary to convert our food we eat into simple sugar.
Carotenoids are always found in ‘colorful’ fruits and vegetables like carrots and blueberries. The deeper the yellow color of the egg yolk the higher the content of Carotenoids in that particular yolk.
Within egg yolk the Carotenoids present are Lutein and Zeaxanthin.
These two Carotenoids accumulate in the back of our eyes, and researchers believe that they protect us against age-related macular degeneration.
Macular degeneration is destruction of the macula in the eye, that causes blindness in older people.
So when you mix up your eggs for your omelette or scrambled eggs recipe, I hope you remember how important the egg yolk is for your health, and include one or two egg yolks in your egg recipe.
Carol Garnier Dutra
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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