Want Perfect French Omelettes? Start With Water

I've been writing about French omelettes for many years now. In fact, the last time I wrote about French omelettes, I wrote about how much I've written about French omelettes. But the last time I covered the subject, it was with a quick and dirty video which introduced what I think is actually the most useful and simple omelette-making trick I've ever developed.

One of the most difficult parts about making a French omelette is getting the pan temperature exactly right. It's a difficulty I've been trying to tackle for years. Even now, after decades of experience making them, every once in a while I throw a knob of butter in a pan that's hot enough to brown it before I can get the eggs in, or cool enough that it won't foam properly, causing my eggs to stick.

But this technique will guarantee that the pan is at the exact right temperature, regardless of the material, thickness, heat source, or even elevation, and it relies on one of the fundamental qualities of water: its boiling point.

First, let's review some French omelette basics and exactly what makes them so difficult to properly execute.

What is a French Omelette

At its simplest, an omelette of any kind is a pancake of eggs cooked in a skillet in hot fat. It can be browned or pale yellow. It can be rolled or folded. It can be completely flat or souffléd, it can be stuffed with ingredients like cheese and vegetables, or it can be pure eggs seasoned with nothing but salt. Even in France, this wide variation exists, so to insist that a French omelette must  bear certain qualities is like telling someone that a hamburger is not a hamburger if the pickles are placed under the patty.

That said, at least in the English discourse, there's a general consensus among fancy-pants chefs and internet pedants alike that a French omelette should be a torpedo-shaped roll of eggs with a tender, just-set surface that envelops a center of tender curds that are what the French describe as baveuse (which translates literally to "drooly")

So how do you achieve this? There are a few tricks I've picked up along the way.

• Mix your eggs thoroughly. Getting the eggs to be very smooth and homogenous before you tip them into the pan allows your omelette to form fine, tender curds.
• Add butter to the eggs. This is a technique I learned from my friend Charles Kelsey (who now operates Cutty Foods with his wife Rachel in Brookline, MA): You cut up butter into tiny cubes and beat them into the eggs to enrich them, slow down their cooking, and keep them more tender (Charles actually blends butter directly into his eggs with a blender these days).
• Salt before mixing. Salting eggs before beating and cooking them helps dissolve some of their tighter proteins, which in turn keeps those proteins from over-tightening during cooking. The resulting omelet is more tender and moist (not to mention more thoroughly seasoned).
• Until you get the hang of it, use non-stick. No matter what the Carbon Steel Crea or the Cast Iron Brigade tell you, no seasoned metal surface is ever going to be as truly non-stick as an engineered non-stick surface (modern ones are made with silicone or ceramic), and there's nothing more frustrating or discouraging to potential future omelette-makers than eggs that stick.
• Use medium-high to high heat. The goal is to have a set "shell" around a very tender and moist interior. High heat allows for this contrast between inside and exterior.
• Beat the eggs constantly while cooking. Constant agitation is key to forming small, custardy curds (as opposed to larger fluffy curds). I use a fork in one hand to agitate the eggs as I shake the pan with the other. (If you are worried about scratching your pan, you can use a silicone forks like these.)

With these tips in mind, some good technique (which you can learn from any of the videos) and practice, you're 90% of the way there. The only real difficulty left lies in gauging the temperature of the pan.

Ideally, the butter should foam as soon as it hits the pan and you start swirling it. This foaminess and the layer of vapor it creates helps keep the egg away from direct contact with the surface of the pan, thus preventing it from sticking and slowing its cooking a bit, allowing it to stay more tender. If the pan is too cool and the butter melts slowly, it doesn't create much foam, which can lead to sticking. If, on the other hand, the pan is too hot, the butter can start to brown before it has even finished melting, which leads to an omelette with a browned surface and browned flavors.

But here's the thing: Butter consists of around 81-83% butter fat, 2-3% milk sugars and proteins, and 14-17% water. It's the evaporation of this water–its conversion from liquid to vapor–that causes the foaming you see in butter when it hits the pan at just the right temperature.

What is that right temperature? Just above the boiling point of water.

Moreover, evaporating liquids have an interesting property. Once they hit their boiling point, they will cease increasing in temperature no matter how much heat energy you pump into them. Instead, they use that energy to convert into gas and fly off into the air. This means that if you've got a volume of water in a pan at a boil, no matter how fast you add heat to that pan, the water, and thus the inner surface of the pan, will remain at its boiling temperature (212°F or 100°C) until all of the water has evaporated away.

You see where I'm going with this?

By adding a little water to the empty omelette skillet and preheating it to a boil, you can heat the pan and hold its temperature at exactly the boiling point of water indefinitely (and this is true whether your water is boiling at sea level or in Denver). When you are ready to cook, just dump out the water, put the pan back on the stovetop, and add your butter.

Voila. Perfectly foam-y, never-burnt butter every time.

Classic French Omelette

Yield: Makes 1 omelette, serving 1 to 2

Active time: 5 minutes

Total time: 5 minutes

Every recipe I publish here is personally tested, tasted, and approved.

What I like about this recipe:

• Adding butter to the omelette keeps it extra moist.
• Using water to gauge the temperature of the pan is a foolproof method to ensure that the butter foams as soon as it hits the pan.

Ingredients:

3 large eggs (150g total)

A big pinch of salt (about 1.5g)

A tablespoon or so of minced fresh herbs such as chives, parsley, or tarragon (optional)

1 1/2 tablespoons (20g) unsalted butter, cut into tiny cubes

A few tablespoons of water

Procedure:

1. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs, the salt, and herbs (if using; reserve a pinch for garnish) thoroughly. The eggs should have a homogenous texture. Beat in half the butter.

2. Add a few tablespoons of water to a 8-inch nonstick skillet and heat it over high heat. When the water begins to simmer, swirl the pan and continue to heat until the water is at a rapid boil. Dump out the water and return the pan to heat. Immediately add the remaining butter. It should foam right away. Swirl the pan until it is coated with butter on every surface.

3. Immediately add the eggs to the pan. Still over high heat, shake the pan vigorously back and forth while using the bottom of a fork to vigorously beat and stir the eggs as they cook. Continue stirring, shaking, and cooking until the eggs form a loose, custard-y curd, about 45 seconds.

4. Shut off the heat. Til the skillet up and away from you so that the eggs pool in the bottom lip of the skillet. Using a fork or spatula, carefully lift the top edges of the eggs off the skillet and roll then down, letting gravity do most of the work.

5. Lift the skillet up. Using your free hand, sharply rap the skillet where the handle meets the body to loosen the back edge of the omelette. Use your fork to flip it forward and over.

6.  Flip the hand holding the handle around so that it is now holding the handle the opposite way. Invert a plate over the pan, then carefully invert the pan and plate so that the omelette ends up folded and on top of the plate. Use a fork and your fingers to adjust the omelette into a nice torpedo shape. Rub with butter if desired. Sprinkle with reserved herbs. Serve.