Thursday, November 19, 2009

Egging It On

As far as quick meals go, eggs are the shit. I eat them all the time for breakfast and midnight snacks. Yummy breakfasts are a quick way to put me in a good mood and start my day off on a good leg. Plus eggs are fast & easy and make me feel good about eating something other than carbs and getting some protein in my nearly-meatless diet. So here are my 3 favorite ways to make eggs. All of them take less than 15 minutes:

Scrambled
I know this seems like it should be really self-explanatory, but there's actually a right way to make scrambled eggs, and when done like that, they hit a whole new level of delicious. If done right, they should be one super fluffy mass, not little eggy clumps like regular scrambled eggs, and all a consistent pastel yellow color.

1. Crack a couple eggs in a bowl, add a teaspoon or so of mayonnaise (this makes them creamy), and whip them up into a frenzy.
2. Melt a little bit of butter in a skillet over LOW heat.
3. Pour in the eggs. Stir them pretty much constantly with a wooden spoon until they start to hold their shape but before they get dry and lose all their shininess.
4. Season as you wish. With these, I usually keep it pretty simple with cracked sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Total time: Under 10 minutes

To make it extra fancy, do this first (I made this concoction while stoned one night and fell in love):

1. Slice up some red pepper and onions and garlic and whatever else you want to put in. I love adding tomatoes.
2. Turn the heat on med-high and add some butter (I swear by cooking with butter instead of olive oil. It makes everything taste soooo much better).
3. Toss in the sliced up veggies and sauté them until they get darker, the onions are brown, and all the veggies are tender.
4. Turn down the heat, let the pan cool down, and then add the eggs and some grated cheese (I usually do sharp cheddar), then continue as above.
5. When it's all done and in your plate, add a bit of crumbled feta. If you have feta, don't skip this step. It really makes it all like 5 times better.

Total time: About 15 minutes


Note: these scrambled eggs weren't made totally right. But cut me some slack, please--I was in another state of mind.


Over Easy
This is my typical breakfast egg dish. Filling and delicious.

1. Take a slice of good bread, or half a bagel (I usually use fresh dumpstered bagels. Soooo good.) and toast it.
2. Melt some butter in a skillet over med-high heat. Don't let the skillet sit on the flame too long before you go to the next step--the egg shouldn't sizzle when you put it in the pan.
3. Crack an egg in the pan. Fry it until the bottom sets--it should slide around freely when you wiggle the pan. You don't need a spatula or anything for this.
4. Once the egg can slide around, gently flip it upside-down by sliding it up the side of the skillet with a flick of the wrist. You can see this guy do it here.
If you're worried about making a mess when you flip it, it's actually pretty easy. The first time I tried, I had to mop egg yolk off the floor, but the second time, I got it :-P
5. Fry it on the second side for like 30 sec or so, or until the egg can once again slide around freely.
6. Slide it over your freshly toasted piece of bread/bagel. I usually season mine with salt, pepper & chili powder. This morning, I added some sautéed tomato slices and some baby swiss before I put on the egg. It was totally delicious.
This is pretty messy to eat, but who cares. It tastes good.

Total time: About 7 minutes

Souffle-type thing

1. Get the smallest pan you own (unless you're making a lot of eggs).
2. Put some butter in it and melt it over low heat.
3. Whisk some eggs and add them to the pan.
4. Let it sit until it starts to set a little. Then grate some cheese in there. Then let it sit some more, until it's cooked through to the top. Don't stir. You can cook it covered if you want, but I haven't.
5. Take a spatula and slide it around the edges to loosen the egg from the pan. Then slide your souffle thing onto a plate. I like to put mine on a slice of bread. Maybe with some pesto. Seasoned, as per usual, with salt & pepper. Yummy, and somehow makes me feel very sophisticated.

Total time: About 10 minutes

And there we go. Anyone have any of their own favorite ways to cook eggs?

6 comments:

  1. I love eggs. I have some right now. I might even be able to find some mayonnaise packets.

    When I was growing up, my mom always told me people weren't supposed to eat more than three eggs a week, because they're high in cholesterol. My great uncle, who ate like a bird, and made a point of saying he never wanted a fat wife, adhered strictly to this family rule. He would scramble three eggs on Sunday and eat little bites throughout the week.

    Do you think there is any truth to the three eggs/ week law? Or does it just depend on the rest of your diet?

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  2. I've never heard of that rule, or even that eggs have anything to do with making people fat.

    But to make sure, I looked it up online and found this:
    http://lowfatcooking.about.com/od/faqs/f/eggs.htm

    According to that webpage, eggs really aren't fattening. They have a lot of cholesterol, but even with that, we can eat 1/day without going over the suggested daily limit. What often makes egg dishes fattening is what they're made with: cheese, bacon, etc. But if you're scrambling an egg with some veggies on a little bit of butter, I don't see how that's much of a problem :-)

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  3. The yolk of one egg contains 70% of your daily cholersterol. So I typically stick to egg whites. Also, if I make scrambled eggs I use milk instead of mayo. I've never actually heard of using mayo, but milk will make the eggs fluffy.

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  4. I like eggs, probably too much. I also like the recipes that were shared above. I have heard the 3 per week limit due to cholesterol. It has also been documented that mayonaise is high and fat and does not help with high cholesterol (LDL - Bad cholesterol) problems. When trying to make the eggs go farther, I too use milk and not mayonaise. I love adding green peppers, and onions to my scrambled eggs and as much as I LOVE cheese, am trying to go without it...Just for the HEALTH of it.

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  5. Ever had Eggy in a Basket? That is amazing; besides being the dish that V served Evie in V for Vendetta during her first morning in the Shadow Gallery, it is delicious.

    All you do is butter a slice of bread on both sides and throw it in a skillet. As the butter soaks into the bread take a shotglass and cut a hole in the center of the bread (or you can use a spoon, but a shotglass is so much easier. Toast the bread on both sides, then crack an egg and dump it into the hole you made. Cook the egg as you would an over-easy egg. It's absolutely divine, and you don't need forks at all to eat it. Just eat the bread like toast. The egg yolk often breaks while you are biting into it, but just use the bread to mop it up.

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  6. Lauren, I'm totally going to try the Eggy in a Basket. It sounds delicious. I'll try to take a pic and let you guys know how it comes out.

    Yeah, I've heard most people use milk. I think I tried it once, and it probably wasn't any worse than it is with mayonnaise. But the first place I learned to make scrambled eggs told me to use mayonnaise, and thus a habit was formed.

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