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Special

Jacques Pépin makes classic scrambled eggs

Premiere: 9/3/2020 | 00:04:55 |

"The way I scramble eggs is to put them into a heavier saucepan over moderate heat, and to use a whisk to constantly move the eggs, ensuring that they get the creamiest texture without large curds. This is usually finished with a little bit of cream. It’s a sophisticated way of enjoying eggs, one I often serve as a first course for an elegant dinner."

About the Episode

Serves 2-3

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons butter
2 mushrooms, coarsely chopped
½ cup diced tomato
salt and pepper
6 eggs
2 tablespoons chopped chives
1 – 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Method:

Heat 1 tablespoon of the butter in a skillet; add the mushrooms and sauté for 1 minute. Add the tomato and season with salt and pepper; cook an additional 30 seconds. Set aside.

Beat the eggs and add salt, pepper, and chives, set aside 2-3 tablespoons of the raw egg mixture. Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan. Add the egg mixture to the skillet and cook on medium heat, stirring constantly to create the smallest possible curds, a whisk works well for this. When the mixture is setting and you can see the bottom of the saucepan as you stir it, remove the pan from heat; add the reserved egg mixture and 1 or 2 tablespoons of cream, and mix well to stop the egg from continuing to cook.

Serve with mushroom-tomato garnish on top.

QUOTE

"I feel that if Jacques Pépin shows you how to make an omelet, the matter is pretty much settled. That’s God talking. "

— Anthony Bourdain

TRANSCRIPT

TRANSCRIPT

- Hi, I'm Chef Jacques Pépin and this is "American Masters At Home".

I want to show you how to make scrambled eggs.

Scrambled eggs my way or the classic way.

I'm doing a little bit of a garnish here.

You don't have to, or you can have all kinds of other things.

You know, I have a couple of mushroom and a third of a cup of diced tomato that I had around, so.

I could saute that other garnish to fill on top and eggs, I have five eggs, six eggs here.

Make sure you break your egg on something flat like this, rather than on something pointed like this, because it bring the shell inside and produce bacteria very often and often break the yolk.

So here I have salt, pepper.

I think I'm gonna put some, a bit of chive in there, tap them to be here, and with a fork.

Now you don't want to turn this gently in the middle because it's like a wet mop.

You gotta go from one side to the other side to really break the white.

To really break the white like that.

So that I don't have any long string.

Okay.

Here is my tomato in there.

Dash of salt.

I sautee for a minute, 30 seconds.

And that basically it all the garnish.

Now your egg, you cook, you would do that at the last moment, not ahead.

And I like to have a sturdy pan like that to do my eggs.

A good tablespoon of butter.

The idea here is that you want to keep the creamiest possible eggs.

So what I do, I'm going to keep a little bit of, like two tablespoon, a couple of tablespoons of this to add to it at the end to stop the cooking.

I also may add a tablespoon of cream to do that.

So this is the classic way of doing the scrambled eggs.

I have a nice pan here because that pan doesn't really have any corner like that.

Otherwise you really have to go in the corner here.

With this one being this way, like a ball.

And now I will start with this.

Sometimes people do it classic way in a double boiler to go slowly in the double boiler.

And it fine too.

But I prefer to do it directly on the heat like that.

If I feel that the heat goes too far, I pull it out.

Clearly a classic French omelet.

We try to have the curl of the egg, very, very smooth also.

As I say, if I feel that it's going a bit fast like that, I remove it from the heat, continue mixing it.

It's going to be ready soon.

As soon that I see the bottom of the pan like this, because there is a lot of heat in that plan which will continue cooking.

So I will stop it here.

And that's one.

I add a little bit of the egg leftover, which will cook in there and cool off my mixture and maybe a tablespoon of cream too.

Remember that.

Yeah, that part will keep the heat quite a lot.

And that basically it.

So you serve that sometime in that bread casing, but usually.

It's a nice portion of egg that my wife would love egg like this.

Little of this.

Little bit of my garnish in the center of it here.

"oeufs brouillés a la tomate" I hope you enjoyed it.

Happy cooking.