Add Pancake Batter to Eggs for a Delicious Omelette
I feel like I’m the last to know that IHOP is adding pancake dough to their omelets . (Do you know? Why didn’t you tell me?) I’m usually pretty good at this sort of thing, but somehow this restaurant chain trick slipped past me. Fortunately, this oversight is easy to fix. I just needed to eat an omelet.
In fact, I also ate the scramble, but it wasn’t very good as the eggs cooked faster than the pancake mix, giving the scramble a thick, undercooked dough feel. Actually, I got a stomach ache.
An omelet makes more sense as a pancake batter. It has the shape of a pancake (round and flat) and cooks very much like a pancake (it remains motionless in the pan for a while). I’m talking about the pancake omelet being a lot better than the pancake scramble.
If you google “pancake omelette” you will find several articles and recipes claiming that IHOP is doing this to make its omelettes “fluffier.” I haven’t been to IHOP for a while, and I don’t remember their omelets being surprisingly fluffy, but I suppose one would assume that adding baking powder and flour could add some air-trapping texture to the eggs.
Most copycat recipes recommend half a cup of this mixture for two eggs, but when I tried even a quarter of that (one tablespoon per egg), I found myself in a valley of confusion as my brain switched between “weird pancake” and “sweet eggs.” … “In the end I settled on one tablespoon of the mixture for three eggs, and I loved it.
However, he was not fluffy. There were some structural and textural differences between the pancake omelet and the traditional omelet, but it was bouncy and (a little) spongy rather than fluffy. But it normal. Culinary semantics aside, the omelet is enjoyable. It is pleasant to the touch, it is a little sweet, and a little color that it takes on the outside, it tastes toasted rather than burnt. Plus, it was slightly more sturdy during cooking, easier to flip and fold than any other omelet I’ve ever made.
To make a pancake omelet, you will need:
- 3 eggs
- 1 tablespoon pancake mix (I use Crustease)
- 1 tablespoon butter
- Fillings such as cheese
Beat eggs and beat until smooth yellow. A couple of small pieces of pancake mix are fine, they will really give the omelet a lot of firmness. Set the mixture aside. (Just like when you make pancakes, it helps to allow the dough in the eggs to rest a little before cooking, or they will end up flat and dense.) Melt the butter in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Once the butter has melted and froth, pour the egg mixture into the skillet and let the eggs cook for a minute or so, then gently tilt the skillet so that the raw egg comes over the edge of the boiled egg. Once the omelet has set (it will slide over the pan) and become a little damp, add the cheese, then wrap the omelet around the cheese and cook for another 30 seconds or so. Serve and enjoy immediately.