How to Learn to Cook Eggs Taught Me How to Cook

When I decided to learn how to cook, I had no hope of creating complex, amazing dishes. I just wanted to be able to look at what was in the fridge and be able to glue things together like a functional adult. But since I had no experience in the kitchen at all, making a delicious roast seemed like a bit of magic.

Like many would-be chefs, I first took a top-down approach to solving the problem. I figured I could follow the step-by-step directions in the recipe, get some delicious dinners, and learn basic cooking skills. But I quickly discovered that basic culinary concepts were beyond my reach: what is continuous boiling or fierce boiling? Which spatula should I use? What does it mean to “chop” an onion versus “chopping” an onion?

My “I Will Follow the Recipe ” attempt at Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon ended with a ruined kitchen, $ 40 ingredients and a pot of inedible mud boiling on my stove. It also hurt my self-esteem. The simple task of cooking — a skill that hundreds of millions of people practice multiple times a day — seemed beyond my reach even with step-by-step written instructions.

But then I stumbled upon my own personal path to becoming a professional chef: eggs. I vowed to cook two eggs every morning until I figured out how to cook, or until I decided to order takeout for the rest of my life.

Why learn to cook by solely cooking eggs?

Eggs are nature’s in-shell cooking school, a way to learn everything you need to know to become a passable home cook. They are inexpensive, readily available, quick to prepare, reheated and turned into an endless variety of dishes. Making truly great scrambled eggs, fried scrambled eggs, or poached eggs is surprisingly difficult, but eggs are forgiving and failures are both rewarding and delicious.

Scrambled eggs

There are a million, often conflicting, ideas about scrambled eggs, so you should probably ignore them all. Read the very basics if necessary , but don’t learn how to makeGordon Ramsey’s fussy (and rough) soft scrambled eggs . Just take an idea – beat eggs and maybe some milk in a skillet – and get started. Try different things. Maybe you like the different textures you get when you knead them right in the pan. Maybe you like them slightly watery. Or maybe you are one of those who cannot digest egg liquid at all. Everything is in place and everything is under your control.

As you prepare the perfect breakfast, you will find out which of your pans is best for scrambled eggs; how warmer and colder temperatures affect your food; how not to burn the oil; the difference between slow and low, creamy egg and fast and high temperature option; how much salt is too much; and a million other lessons to be learned from practice.

With each subsequent breakfast, you will get a little closer to your ideal scrambled eggs, and once you have achieved it, you can move on to frying eggs. (Actually, you can move on to frying eggs whenever you want; I’m not the Egg Police.)

Omelette

A fried egg is a little more difficult to make than a scrambled egg because you usually try to keep the yolk semi-liquid so the bottom doesn’t get too hard. But, like scrambled eggs, there is no real way to “properly” fry an egg. Maybe you like them too light? Or is it too hard? The sunny side requires the use of a skillet lid to reflect the heat back to the top of the egg, which will come in handy later when frying other dishes.

Boiled eggs

Cooking poached eggs requires technique and involves drama and risk: if you break the yolk of a fried egg, you can simply stir it in the pan, but if you spoil the poached eggs, you end up with egg soup and you have to start over. … To learn about the basics of poaching , watch a couple of YouTube videos. But even if you try tofollow Jamie Oliver , you will screw up the first few times; it’s part of the process. There are many different poached egg tools that will make the task easier too. But this is cheating. You are trying to find out when the water is almost boiling here and also developing a little dexterity with a slotted spoon.

Hard boiled eggs

Egg boiling is more a science than an art. While exact boil times vary based on egg size, altitude, egg age, and other details, you can start with the basic formula posted on the America Egg Board and work from there. The most important thing that I learned from the boiling egg came from the ice water bath: learning what was sometimes necessary to stop food from cooking was a new concept.

Final Egg Boss: French Omelet Roll

There’s a reason trendy French restaurants have used omelette as a dough for up-and-coming chefs: making an omelet in rolls immediately reveals the chef’s skill level. Unlike an American diner-style omelet, making an omelet in rolls requires a mastery of technique, temperature and timing, and any mistakes are easily visible on the plate. Besides, there is no cheese to hide behind.

To get started, watch this video of ChefAndre Saltner making an omelet like it’s nothing. Looks simple enough, right? But try it; You will see.

You probably won’t have an arrogant Michelin chef taunting you at breakfast, and your career doesn’t depend on screwing up, so making French omelettes is a fun challenge that will put all your new discoveries to the test. eggs. … I rarely get them right, but even the ugly monsters that come out of my pan are delicious and when I approach them sometimes it feels like a mini Christmas.

Once you’ve made your French omelette, it’s time to release and you can move on to your next culinary challenge: the tuna sandwich.