Author Topic: How do you make scrambled eggs?  (Read 20395 times)

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #50 on: 06 October, 2020, 12:13:24 pm »
Edited to add: I recall reading a Heston Blumenthal method where he scrambled the eggs in a bowl over a pan of water for 40 minutes... life is way too short for that.

That's the 'French' method as per the Jamie Oliver video mentioned earlier.

It does give amazing results but really isn't worth the effort.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #51 on: 06 October, 2020, 12:32:23 pm »
I think mine are closest to the 'American' method. Seems I'm a leftponder without even knowing it!

Quibble: he says eggs are the cheapest and best form of protein on the planet. Eggs are great but they aren't necessarily the cheapest all over the planet. I've been told that in some parts of Africa for certain eggs are a luxury because they mean you're forgoing the chance of a chicken later.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #52 on: 06 October, 2020, 12:45:11 pm »
I don't ever recall eating eggs in Africa. Fish heads. Burial mounds of starch. Sauce primarily made out of concentrated fire. Yes. Yes. Yes. Eggs. No.

There's some satisfaction to the American style, I used to like sitting at the counter and watch them cook everything on the huge hotplate. At the end of whatever they were cooking, they'd crack the eggs, give them a couple of turns with a spatula and plate them. That used to be my Sunday morning ritual (mostly afternoon for me) – go the local diner restaurant and eat a massive breakfast. I, of course, returned to the UK with some considerable excess baggage.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #53 on: 06 October, 2020, 12:47:26 pm »
Quibble: he says eggs are the cheapest and best form of protein on the planet.

Whenever watching Jamie Oliver, you always have to remember that he does talk a lot of shite.

He can cook though, got to give him credit for that.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #54 on: 06 October, 2020, 01:09:33 pm »
I confess I like Jamie, he always seems like a good bloke and his enthusiasm for cooking is infectious. I dunno why some people are so down on him.

I watched the Gordon Ramsey one afterwards, he always presents like there is someone just off-screen that has a gun pointed at him and has given him 30 seconds or else. Generally, his is a bit like mine, but my hob has a pathetic burner option, so I don't have to take it off the heat so often. I don't agree with the creme fraiche though.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #55 on: 06 October, 2020, 01:49:42 pm »
I watched the Gordon Ramsey one afterwards, he always presents like there is someone just off-screen that has a gun pointed at him and has given him 30 seconds or else. Generally, his is a bit like mine, but my hob has a pathetic burner option, so I don't have to take it off the heat so often. I don't agree with the creme fraiche though.

Just watched that myself... I'm with him on the thick slice of sourdough toast being the perfect vehicle for scrambled eggs.

Interesting what he said about adding salt - is this scientifically sound? I'm a little dubious. I only add salt at the end of cooking anyway, but not for any good reason.

Love his measurements as well - his "half a tablespoon" of creme fraiche looked like at least two full tablespoons to me, and that was a very cheffy interpretation of a "pinch" of salt.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #56 on: 06 October, 2020, 02:06:26 pm »
Proper cheffyness is doubling everything. More butter, more cream, more salt. That's one of the reasons why restaurant meals taste better than home. I'd probably baulk at putting in half a packet of butter. In a restaurant kitchen they just care that it tastes good.

Salt will affect proteins, but mostly I'd think the solubility rather than the structure. Not sure how that would affect eggs – it might pull some of the water out of the albumin. How that affects the finished product is an experiment. I usually season at the end as my wife doesn't like salt (if only she knew how much MSG I am feeding her).

Yes on the sourdough. Soggy toast is never good.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #57 on: 06 October, 2020, 02:17:38 pm »
Salt will affect proteins, but mostly I'd think the solubility rather than the structure. Not sure how that would affect eggs – it might pull some of the water out of the albumin. How that affects the finished product is an experiment.

I was thinking more about the quantities involved and the cooking time. Would the effect of adding a pinch of salt be that extensive that quickly?
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #58 on: 06 October, 2020, 02:33:57 pm »
Adding a modest amount of salt will make proteins more soluble (adding a lot of salt will do the opposite) in water (it interferes with the hydrogen bonds, these are important for protein structure). In this situation, as there's no water being added, I imagine it might cause some of the water to come out of the albumin and yolk. I doubt it would make a huge difference.

If you're adding milk, of course, then there might be more benefit to adding salt at the beginning to help the everything mix evenly.

Other than for cooking veg or my MSG fetish (I have a 10kg bag to use), I tend to be a season-to-taste cook.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #59 on: 06 October, 2020, 08:08:31 pm »
iIMarg is coagulated demon love gravy. It's sensibly avoided. Butter makes everything better isn't theory, it's fact.

I've not bought marge for years; why would I?

I can think of no use for this stuff; a liquid oil, no fat, or butter are always better.

ian

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #60 on: 06 October, 2020, 08:28:34 pm »
I think it's down to decades butter-fear, a scrape of the stuff would stop your heart dead. Doctors would stand around your corpse, shaking their heads. Butter, they'd mutter.

I'm pretty sure we ate Stork margerine as students, which was rendered fish bits, hydrogenated into a mess of trans-saturated fats that sailed somewhere between sarin and plutonium in the toxicology stakes. You really should have had to cross the street to avoid a tub of that. But then we used to live off a diet of microwaved kebabs from the Diamond Frozen Food store around the corner. Oh the smell of microwaving doner kebab meat. A friend of mine had a skunk die in his car's a/c system, that's the only similar smell I recall. He had to write off that car.

Nowadays margarine seams the province of 'healthy' olive oil spreads and the like. Who needs olive oil spread? Get a baguette, tear a chunk off, soak it in olive oil. Eat that and drink the rest of the bottle. Job done.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #61 on: 06 October, 2020, 08:33:14 pm »
Stork was veritable ambrosia compared with the stuff they used to serve at st custards, which was made in a plant to Teeside from boiled cows.  It's no wonder ICI went down the tubes.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #62 on: 06 October, 2020, 09:18:36 pm »
Nowadays margarine seams the province of 'healthy' olive oil spreads and the like.
These things are unaccountably popular in Poland, where you pick up what you think is butter and almost always find it's actually "Masmix. "Mas" is the first syllable of the Polish for butter, so the English equivalent is "Buttmix".
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #63 on: 06 October, 2020, 09:26:03 pm »
I make my own garlic butter by throwing double cream, salt and garlic in the food processor. It's like magic, I tell you.

Slice a baguette in half, slap that liberally over each half, and put in the oven for 10 minutes. Ambrosial. But use plenty, there's nothing worse than garlic bread that has a thin slithering apology of garlic butter. It should ooze out when you bite into a piece.

Feanor

  • It's mostly downhill from here.
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #64 on: 06 October, 2020, 09:53:15 pm »
I make my own garlic butter by throwing double cream, salt and garlic in the food processor. It's like magic, I tell you.

Slice a baguette in half, slap that liberally over each half, and put in the oven for 10 minutes. Ambrosial. But use plenty, there's nothing worse than garlic bread that has a thin slithering apology of garlic butter. It should ooze out when you bite into a piece.

<Lady Bracknell>
A baguette?
<\Lady Bracknell>

You seem to have mis-spelled "home-made sourdough, which I've been coddling for 20 years..."


Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
  • Mrs Pingu's domestique
    • the Igloo
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #65 on: 06 October, 2020, 10:22:40 pm »

Mrs Pingu

  • Who ate all the pies? Me
    • Twitter
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #66 on: 06 October, 2020, 10:32:03 pm »
...I always fuck up poached eggs. They are my kitchen nemesis.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Silicone-Poachers-Poaching-Baking-Cooker/dp/B07PRJ26J8

Point of order, the ones we have are the Kitchen Essentials brand ones linked further down the page which appear to have a higher review score, in case that msakes any difference.
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

ElyDave

  • Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society member 263583
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #67 on: 07 October, 2020, 06:10:46 am »
I've only ever poached eggs directly in the water, no vinegar. The trick is in the swirl.

On scrambled eggs, there is a recipe at the end of one of the Bond books, which I'll dig out, but I think is either 3 or 4 eggs per person, and enough butter to soak up all those martinis
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

ian

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #68 on: 07 October, 2020, 09:43:51 am »
Poached eggs. I try the swirl, and it sometimes works. Sometimes. Other times I end up with a pan that looks like it's filled with the results of someone jetskiing through a jellyfish swarm. There's no logic to this. It depends, I think, on whether the eggs like me.

I got some of those silicone bra cup poachers. They kind of work, but it's hard to get the yolk runny and the top set at the same time.

The other method is to drop them into clingfilm and make a little package. This does actually work, but the results come out all crinkly, like a preserved animal brain. Plus it's a bit of a palaver so I most just boil the bloody things.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #69 on: 07 October, 2020, 09:54:38 am »
There's no logic to this.

The simple rule for poaching is use eggs that are as fresh as possible.

I add a bit of white vinegar to the water - it can make the whites slightly rubbery, but so do poaching cups. Even better, poach the eggs in red wine for oeufs en meurette.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #70 on: 07 October, 2020, 09:56:20 am »
Success of the swirl is to do with the freshness of the eggs.
Fresher eggs have a more cohesive white and stay together better.


citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #71 on: 07 October, 2020, 09:59:57 am »
Success of the swirl is to do with the freshness of the eggs.
Fresher eggs have a more cohesive white and stay together better.

Exactly. Poached eggs are a strong argument for keeping your own chickens.

Boiled eggs, conversely, are better when the eggs are a bit older - it makes them much easier to peel.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #72 on: 07 October, 2020, 10:07:12 am »
Argh, picky picky egg shells. Another kitchen nemesis. Sometimes the older egg theory worked, but other times, it didn't.

I found the solution was a different sort of egg (the mildly posher white or blue ones as opposed to the generic free-range brown ones), they seem to come out of their shells with minimal persuasion regardless of their age.

I've not tried poaching one of these yet, but I probably should.

Tbh, my general solution to poaching dilemmas was to go out for breakfast and make someone else do my eggs benedict.

Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #73 on: 07 October, 2020, 10:09:00 am »
Tbh, my general solution to poaching dilemmas was to go out for breakfast and make someone else do my eggs benedict.

Same.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: How do you make scrambled eggs?
« Reply #74 on: 07 October, 2020, 10:14:50 am »
Tbh, my general solution to poaching dilemmas was to go out for breakfast and make someone else do my eggs benedict.

Sound move - if you have trouble with poached eggs, I don't fancy your chances with hollandaise.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."