I’ve been taking more care when scrambling eggs these days. I don’t like them runny, but I do like them soft. I definitely try to avoid overcooking them even by a few seconds. It’s a delicate thing, scrambling eggs, if you want to get it right.
First I thoroughly heat a nonstick pan with a bit of butter. While that’s happening, I crack the eggs into a bowl, add a pinch of Kosher salt, a grind of black pepper and a splash of the fattiest milk I have in the fridge. Then I beat them with a fork–but only enough to make them uniform. The more you beat them, the tougher they become when cooked.
Then the eggs go into the hot pan. Extra ingredients go in at this point–Chihuahua cheese last time. With a spatula, begin bringing the eggs in from the sides, scraping them up from the bottom, keeping everything in the pan moving and letting the heat do its thing.
Before the eggs are completely set, while there is still some wetness showing, I shut off the burner. The residual heat in the pan will finish up any undercooked areas. I gently flip the eggs once in large clumps with the spatula to finish them evenly.
Plate and eat. I added a few generous shakes of Cholula hot sauce and ate it all with warm corn tortillas from Panos, the local Mexican grocery.
Scrambled eggs is a simple thing, but it really can be sublime.
I’m moderately fussy about my kitchen things. At least as fussy as my modest budget allows. Which is why I’d like to sing the praises of one of my kitchen’s most frugal and most useful items: my cast-iron skillet.
I really enjoy cooking, even if I don’t do it as much as I’d like. One of the things that really helps me is the TV show America’s Test Kitchen. America’s Test Kitchen is also the name of the parent company which owns, among other things, Cook’s Illustrated magazine. I tried subscribing to Cook’s Illustrated, but I find having a paid membership to their web site more useful than the magazine itself.
