Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- In my household, when someone says, "What's for dinner?

", the answer most often is eggs.

So here are some egg recipes and techniques you may not know.

When I was in Turkey a few years ago, I came across a recipe for scrambled eggs with Greek yogurt, absolutely delicious and creamy.

Then we come up with a method for peeling hard-cooked eggs in a recipe for soy sauce eggs.

We do an omelet not in the French style, but the way they do it in Hong Kong, made by street vendors.

And finally, we talk a little bit about mayonnaise with egg yolks and we experiment with egg whites.

So please stay tuned to Milk Street as we take a fresh look at cooking eggs at home.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- So, what's new in the world of scrambled eggs?

Well, years ago, I discovered a Basque recipe, and instead of using butter, it uses olive oil.

Well, olive oil doesn't have water in it, like butter does, so it gets hotter faster, that heat gets transferred to the eggs, and you get nice and fluffy eggs, because the water in the eggs starts to steam.

Now, years later, I was in Southern Turkey, in Antakya, and I had a breakfast one morning-- beautiful courtyard, exquisite, big table.

And in the little kitchen, which was right next to that courtyard, they also made scrambled eggs, but this time with Greek yogurt.

So this was really interesting.

So we thought we'd bring that back here.

We start with oil and we start with butter both.

And we're going to get that over medium-high heat until the butter melts.

Now, you can do this... This is obviously a nonstick skillet.

You can do this in a carbon steel skillet.

That's what I do at home.

You have to keep it seasoned, which is not hard to do.

And when you use enough oil or butter in the pan, it's absolutely not gonna stick.

So we have half a cup of Greek yogurt.

Now, I like this not just because of the texture of the eggs.

I like it 'cause it really adds a lot of flavor.

So I have eight eggs, half a cup of yogurt.

A little salt and pepper, too, would help matters, I think.

And you really want to get the yogurt mixed in, right?

So one of the questions people often ask is, how do you know when the skillet's ready?

I generally put my hand two or three inches above the skillet, and if I can hold it there for five seconds, but no more, then I know it's ready to go.

So you want the pan to get hot enough so when those eggs hit, all the liquid in the eggs is gonna start to steam and you get some nice folding-up of the eggs.

You get a nice texture.

So now you can see that nice steaming of the eggs.

So the olive oil heats up faster than butter, 'cause it doesn't contain any water, which has to boil off before the butter gets over 212.

And what I do also is, once I put the eggs in, I start to reduce the heat under the pan, 'cause you want to start off with a blast of heat and then, as you cook, you want it to be gentle.

Now we can have an argument-- I love arguments in the kitchen-- about how much you should cook your eggs.

I like them on the less cooked side.

That completely horrifies some people.

So anytime I cook eggs, they always yell at me and say, "I like mine fully cooked."

The French have a really horrible term for loosely cooked or soft-cooked scrambled eggs, called "snotty."

I'm not quite sure how to say that in French.

So I'm probably more on that side.

But if you want to take it a little further, that's fine.

Again, if, if the heat is a little bit low at this point, it's great, 'cause you're not going to have a window of five seconds before you overcook them.

Now, they look like really slow-cooked French eggs you do in a double boiler.

They have nice curds, it's nice and creamy.

One of the things they do add in Turkey is their equivalent, it's called Turkish silk chili.

It's really Aleppo pepper, it's the same thing.

So it looks a little bit like that French double-boiler method that takes 20 minutes-- nice rich curds, very soft.

Mm.

(chuckles): And really good.

Yogurt gives it that little bit of acidity, a little bit of bite to it, which I really like.

So the other thing about these, which I've probably already said, is, they're super-creamy.

So if you like a really creamy scrambled eggs, got that little hint of yogurt there... By the way, use Greek yogurt, don't use regular yogurt.

Regular yogurt could break, Greek yogurt will not.

So if you love nice, rich curds, creamy scrambled eggs, you want to do it in two minutes, try Turkish scrambled eggs with yogurt.

Great flavor, great texture.

Two minutes, you're done.

- In an episode all about eggs, to be fully egg-literate in the kitchen, you need to know what to do with your egg whites versus your egg yolks.

And I'm gonna tell you what to do with leftover egg yolks if you have a recipe that only calls for the egg whites, which happens all the time.

You might make meringue, you might make pavlova, which, one of my favorite desserts.

But then you have all these egg yolks, and maybe you don't want to make egg pasta right away, or you don't feel like making mayonnaise that very minute.

You can freeze your egg yolks.

They work beautifully when they're defrosted.

I'm gonna show you how to do the whole thing.

So let's pretend I'm about to make that pavlova I love.

For my pavlova, I need six egg whites.

That's six egg yolks.

I do not want to waste all of those egg yolks.

So, instead, I pop one into my freezer tray.

I add a little pinch of salt.

You don't even have to mix it up, but you can give it a little mix.

Once you have as many egg yolks as you need, make sure they're covered so they don't pick up any off smells, and pop these in the freezer.

Then, whenever it's time for you to make pasta or mayonnaise, you take your eggs out of the freezer... ...pop out as many as you need, put the rest in the freezer until it's time to make mayonnaise again.

Whatever recipe you're going to use your egg yolks for, do make sure they come up to room temperature.

Today, I'm going to show you how to make mayonnaise.

So, that's one of my favorite uses for egg yolks.

Homemade mayonnaise is so much better than the store-bought stuff.

So I have two egg yolks in here, and I'm gonna add some mustard and a little bit of salt.

And then one trick, if you do make your own mayonnaise, is to have a moistened towel underneath the bowl.

That way, it doesn't wobble all over the place and you end up with oil and egg everywhere in the kitchen.

Instead, you end up with mayonnaise, which is what you want.

When you're making mayonnaise from frozen or fresh egg yolks, the only important thing is to start extremely, excruciatingly slowly as you add the oil.

And then it's really just a drop at a time.

This is only for a little while.

Don't worry, you don't have to do the whole amount of oil this way.

But until you have a stable emulsification, you can't add a lot of oil.

It will either break or the oil will never incorporate.

The best thing to do, actually, when you're making mayonnaise, is to fail.

Break it on purpose the first time so you stop being scared.

So once it starts getting nice and creamy like this, instead of drop at a time, you can start adding it in a slow stream.

So what else could you use your egg yolks for?

Pasta, cookie recipes, crme anglaise, lemon curd.

Mm, I love lemon curd.

Lots of reasons not to throw away your egg yolks.

Okay, so you can see this has got a quite thick, but a beautiful texture.

It's an even emulsification.

So now I can add in about a tablespoon of water.

It will thin it and make it a little easier to incorporate everything else.

And then what do you do with mayonnaise?

Of course, you put it on sandwiches.

Homemade mayonnaise with mustard, I just make a big platter of crudits and you dip it in.

It's so delicious.

And this is coming from someone who does not love store-bought mayonnaise.

One of our favorite things, a classic French dish, is to actually put mayonnaise on hard-boiled eggs.

It's a beautiful bistro classic that Chris has had in Paris a couple of times.

We love it.

Another tablespoon of water.

Whisk it together-- beautiful.

You get quite a bit of mayonnaise for the amount of work you put into it.

And yes, of course, you can use an immersion blender.

There are all sorts of little hacks out there, but there is something rewarding about making your own.

I like mayonnaise that is sort of the consistency of pudding.

That's why I'm adding the water.

If you like a firmer mayonnaise, or you need it firmer, for sandwiches or something, or you're gonna pipe it, then you just add less water.

So you can play with the water proportion, but the egg yolk and oil you want to keep the same.

All right, last, I do like a little acidity, so I'm gonna go ahead and add some lemon juice now that I have a stable emulsification.

And it's really gonna perk everything up, because this much oil plus two egg yolks is pretty rich, and so having both the mustard and the lemon is gonna make it like a complete dip, and not just a side condiment.

This will last for three to five days in your fridge.

But I dare you to make this and not have it all gone by the end of the night.

If it's asparagus season and you have fresh mayonnaise, or artichoke season... (exhales, whispers): ...it's so good.

Don't throw away your egg yolks, just freeze them.

Then you have the ability to make beautiful mayonnaise or pasta or lemon curd or crme anglaise, instead of creating waste.

- When I'm cooking eggs for breakfast, I love scrambled eggs, I love fried eggs with a barely set yolk.

But when I'm using eggs for topping things like fried rice or noodles, I take a really different angle.

If I have the wok out, after I've made fried rice or fried noodles, I love doing a wok-fried egg.

It's an amazing way to cook eggs, and it's really simple.

We're gonna heat a quarter-cup of oil until it's just starting to smoke.

While this is heating, I'm gonna crack my eggs.

So when you're cracking eggs, to avoid eggshells getting mixed into your eggs, those little bits that are hard to fish out, it's best to crack eggs on a flat surface.

So this oil is just about smoking.

We can see the wafts of smoke coming off.

What we want to do is swirl that oil a little bit to make sure all the surface where the egg might touch is gonna be really covered in that oil.

That's gonna prevent the egg white from sticking Gently, we're gonna add it to the center here.

As you can see... (sizzling) ...really fluffs up and cooks very quickly.

We're gonna turn the heat down to medium, and we're gonna use our wok shovel here to ladle oil over the top.

So we're basting it, and it's about a minute or less for a just-set yolk.

So I'm actually gonna slide that right out.

It's that quick.

And we have a wok-fried egg with a just runny yolk, which is gonna be perfect for fried rice.

We're gonna add just a little bit of salt.

A little bit of pepper.

Remember, this is a garnish, so it's gonna go on top of an already fully flavored dish.

They're gonna provide a lot of contrast to this gorgeous bowl of fried rice that I made in my wok before I cooked the eggs.

So I'm gonna go ahead.

You know what?

One seems a little lonely in this bowl.

Let's go ahead and go for two.

Yeah, now, that looks like dinner to me.

Or breakfast or lunch.

You don't really need meat when you have an egg that has that much flavor and that much textural contrast.

Really nice way to have a vegetarian dinner.

Now let's go ahead and make my other favorite egg garnish, soy sauce eggs.

These soy-cured eggs are something I make all the time, because they're very easy and they have a lot of make-ahead potential.

What the soy curing does is, it sort of firms them up and they have this really rich, savory flavor with a hint of spice from star anise.

So let's go ahead and make our cure, and then we will cook our eggs.

We're gonna add a third-cup of warm water.

It doesn't have to be boiling, but it needs to be warm enough to melt a third-cup of honey.

You want a fairly neutral honey.

Don't use really strong buckwheat honey or that sort of thing.

We're gonna whisk that together with one of my favorite spices, star anise.

We're gonna add half a star anise pod to our honey and water and really stir it well to make sure that honey is dissolved.

To this mix, we're gonna add half a cup of soy sauce and a third-cup of sake.

Now, I really recommend against using cooking sake, the stuff you buy at the grocery store, because that has a lot of salt added.

We're gonna add that in, and this is gonna be the basis for our cure.

Now we've got our cure.

Let's go ahead and focus on our eggs now.

The method here really guarantees a very tender white and a very creamy yolk.

That's important because the eggs are gonna firm up in the cure.

So we want to ensure that these are perfectly soft-cooked eggs.

And that comes down to paying really close attention to temperature and time.

We're gonna start with boiling water and we're gonna start with very cold eggs.

I'm gonna use a slotted spoon and I'm gonna ladle them down into the boiling water.

Don't drop them, because then they could crack, and they're gonna sort of explode and get messy in that water.

So lower them down very carefully.

And we're setting a timer for seven minutes.

Now, seven minutes of steady boiling will produce a very tender white and creamy yellow yolk.

My timer went off.

Now I'm gonna get these eggs out as quickly as I can straight into ice water.

Now, ice water shocks the eggs, prevents them from cooking any further, and also helps the whites release from the shells so they're easier to peel.

We're gonna leave those eggs in the ice water for about three minutes, and then we'll drain them and peel them.

It feels like everybody's got a theory how to make an easy-peel egg.

Let's see how these go.

So we're going to fish that out.

Give it a... And I tend to start at the big end, 'cause that's where the air pocket of the egg is.

So that shell's coming right off and it's going to go straight into the cure.

So let's go ahead and peel the rest of our eggs.

Now we have all six eggs in our cure and they're floating.

So let's make a little lid that's going to keep them submerged.

I'm going to take a piece of paper towel, fold it in quarters, and then just sort of push it down.

And now we're going to put a lid on it and put it in the refrigerator.

Now, these need to sit at least four hours in the fridge before they're really flavorful.

And I'll be honest, they get better the next day and the day after and the day after.

You can hold them up to about seven days.

Then they start getting too firm and they lose flavor at that point.

Let's go ahead and put them in the fridge.

So we have a bit of an experiment here now.

I have eggs I've cured for 24 hours and eggs I've cured for five days.

So let's go ahead and cut some open and see how they look.

So let's go ahead and take out our 24-hour egg.

And it's this really, really gorgeous coffee color.

And let's grab our five-day egg and see if there's much difference here.

So we'll cut that 24-hour egg first.

That is beautiful.

You just see how jammy that yolk is.

That to me is just about a perfect egg.

And you can see how far the soy penetrated in.

You can see that the five-day, the soy has penetrated farther.

Yolk's a little firmer.

I'm gonna go ahead, let me take a bite here.

Start with the 24-hour egg.

It's really good.

Then the five-day egg.

I personally love the five-day egg.

Really, really delicious.

Now, I'm gonna go ahead and add some to this bowl of udon I have here, which just looks delicious.

So I'm gonna go ahead.

I'm gonna add our 24-hour egg and our five-day egg.

And I'm gonna add a little sesame and a whole bunch of chili crisp.

'Cause that is the way I like my noodles.

That five day-egg dipped in the chili crisp, with the flavor from the broth, is just completely amazing.

So with our soy-cured eggs and our wok-fried eggs, we have two very simple ways to make really delicious eggs for topping dishes.

They make a meal feel really satisfying in a very easy way.

- Eggs are a precious commodity, and under no circumstances should you throw away any part of them, whites or yolks, if you're not using them all in a recipe.

Rosie showed us earlier that you can successfully freeze yolks.

Well, it turns out whites are very much the same thing.

You can freeze them solid, thaw them out, and use them in your recipes.

I took four egg whites and froze them solid.

I took them out of the freezer and let them thaw, I put them in a mixer next to four freshly cracked egg whites, added a little sugar, and whipped them at the same speed for the same amount of time.

It turns out that the thawed frozen whites worked almost 95% as well as the fresh whites did.

They whipped up beautifully, they held their foam, and they will work perfectly fine in any cake or mousse that you need beaten egg whites in.

So let's talk further about how to get the most out of your egg whites when you're using them for baking.

Most recipes, when you're baking a cake and you separate the eggs, you're whipping the yolks with sugar or other ingredients, and then you're whipping the whites until they're frothy and foamy and folding them into a batter.

Well, there are certain things that you can do to stabilize that foam so that while you're folding, it doesn't break down.

Now, there's a couple of ways that we can accomplish this.

Lemon juice is one.

Egg whites, when you whip them, the protein strands begin to pull apart and open up.

While you whip them, the air is being incorporated into those protein strands, which gives them the lift and creates the foam.

The acid of lemon juice stabilizes this and it helps make a more stable foam.

Second, cream of tartar.

Cream of tartar also acts the same way as acid in lemon juice.

It makes a more stable foam.

In fact, it may be the most stable of the two acidic treatments of egg whites.

Finally, if you're making meringues or you're making a lemon meringue pie, you might introduce sugar to egg whites while you whip them.

Sugar adds moisture, so while you're whipping egg whites with sugar, you want to sprinkle it in slowly to help build that stable foam and introduce that new moisture into the whites so it holds well when you go to top that lemon meringue pie or to pipe your meringues.

So let's take a look at how these different treatments affect the whites while they're whipping.

So to each mixer bowl of egg whites, I'm going to add cream of tartar to one, lemon juice to another, quarter-teaspoon of each of those, and then sugar.

I'll start with about a teaspoon as the whites are whipping, and then I'll gradually add a couple of tablespoons to make a nice, smooth foam.

So let's have a look-- this is about one or two minutes of whipping-- and see what we've got.

We've got a soft peak going on all of the whites.

Now, cream of tartar gives you a, a nice stable foam.

This is about the perfect consistency if you want to fold this into a cake.

Lemon juice, very much the same.

What's interesting about this, as I stir this and fold it, it feels less soft than the tartar.

But this will also work perfectly if you need to fold egg whites into cake.

Now, finally, our egg whites whipped with sugar.

These are not quite as far along as the cream of tartar and the lemon juice versions, and they probably need to whip a little longer because that sugar is dissolving and creating a nice, stable foam.

And you want to do this slowly when you're adding sugar.

The slower you add the sugar to it as it whips, the stronger the emulsion is going to be between the egg whites, the air, and the sugar you've introduced.

So all three of these ingredients will help produce a more stable foam, make your cakes higher, make your meringues chewier and more crunchy.

If you whip egg whites without a stabilizer, the minute you take that bowl off the mixer, you will see it start to deflate.

You'll see liquid form in the bottom.

You definitely want to use one of these stabilizing agents to keep your egg whites aloft.

- While traveling in Hong Kong, our editorial director, J.M.

Hirsch, came upon a restaurant run by two brothers who kind of accidentally created the egg dish that has become the mainstay of their restaurant.

At Restaurant Shun Hing, the cook Ming Chen describes this dish as "slippery eggs."

Now, that is an apt description, but it's also very understated for a dish that's about much more than just the eggs.

This dish is not quite a stir-fry, not quite a scramble, not quite an omelet, and yet it's sort of all three of those things at once.

You just have to see it.

The main base of this dish is eggs.

So we'll start with the eggs.

And when you cook fully blended eggs, it's really easy for those eggs to get rubbery and chewy.

These eggs are going to be cooked quickly over high heat.

So the secret ingredient to prevent the rubberiness is the simple pantry ingredient of cornstarch.

Cornstarch has some really cool science behind it.

The molecules of the cornstarch expand-- those are the starch molecules-- and that helps prevent the protein in the eggs from binding and getting tough and chewy and rubbery.

Now, any time you're using cornstarch with a liquid matter like eggs, or making a sauce out of it, you need to hydrate the cornstarch first with a little bit of water so it doesn't clump up.

That's about a teaspoon of cornstarch.

And we're going to add two teaspoons of water.

So what we made here is a slurry.

We'll add the eggs to that.

Now, at this point, you want to blend the eggs just until they're homogenized so that the yolks and the whites are fully blended.

But you don't want to whip them to the point that they become aerated.

Okay, the yolks and the whites are blended.

Set that aside, and then we'll make our quick sauce.

We have a little bit of soy sauce, some Shaoxing wine, little sesame oil, which lends incredible flavor.

Some rice vinegar, little bit of sugar, and then we use white pepper here.

Now, most of these are basic pantry ingredients.

And if you do a lot of Asian cooking, then you'll have all of them in your pantry.

This is really going to be a finishing sauce that we'll drizzle over at the very end, but we're going to take about a tablespoon of it right now and add it to the eggs as just a little bit of extra seasoning.

This dish goes very fast.

There are some stir-fry elements to it.

So you want to have all your ingredients prepped and ready to go.

'Cause once you start, it's kind of gung ho ahead, no stopping.

This is a shrimp dish.

So we have our fresh shrimp.

The shrimp has been deveined and cut into pieces.

We also have a dried Chinese sausage called lap chong in this.

It's delicious.

And if you don't have this, or you can't find it anywhere, you can substitute with a little bit of ham.

And the fat we're using to cook the eggs and everything else in is lard.

(chuckling): Delicious, delicious lard.

This adds a lot of flavor to the dish.

But of course, you can use any neutral oil as well in the pan.

This dish is traditionally served over a mound of rice.

So we have our hot steamed rice ready to go right here.

Before we start cooking the eggs, I'm gonna go ahead and plate the rice and cover it to keep it warm, 'cause you don't want to stop and plate the rice while the eggs are overcooking in the pan.

Gonna leave the rice in a little bit of a mound, because the eggs then drape over it like a blanket.

It's really beautiful.

All right, we'll just cover this loosely with a little plastic and let that sit.

We want a medium-high heat here.

We'll go ahead and add the lard to the skillet and let that get nice and melty.

Lard is a great choice for this dish.

It's a great choice for cooking anything over high heat, really, because it has a very high smoke point.

So we're gonna brown-- just a quick browning on the shrimp and the sausage.

(pan sizzling) Spread them out and let them sit undisturbed for a minute to get a little browning on the underside, and then we'll do a quick stir.

Now, this is the almost stir-fry part of the dish.

We're gonna give these a little quick stir-fry before we add the eggs.

(sizzling) All right, it's been a couple of minutes.

I'm gonna give this a nice stir.

You can see the shrimp has started to cook underneath.

All right, this is good.

You want the shrimp about, you know, three-quarters cooked or so.

They're not fully cooked before you add the eggs.

The eggs need to be whisked again really quickly, 'cause the cornstarch does tend to settle at the bottom.

Pour it in.

Do a little stirring in the beginning, then we'll let them sit.

Now, as the eggs start getting set on the bottom, we're just going to pull them aside so the runny part of the egg can flow onto the bottom of the skillet, and that's how it gets cooked.

The goal is to have a nice flat omelet that has a little bit of runny egg on top.

And because of the cornstarch in there and the high heat-- which is important for the cornstarch, by the way.

In order for the cornstarch to work in this capacity with the eggs, as a thickener and a tenderizer, you need a fair amount of heat on this, which is why the low-and-slow method isn't going to work here.

Shake it, make sure it's loose.

All right, let's get our rice.

What you can do is slide the spatula under the front end, urge it down, and then it covers the whole thing.

There we go.

That is gorgeous.

It's like a blanket over there.

And of course, we're garnished with a little bit of green scallions.

This adds a little pop of color and some really nice, fresh vegetal flavor.

And if you have it and like it, a little bit of chili oil drizzled on top, as well.

Now, the rest of that sauce we made we're gonna serve on the side.

And everyone who serves themself this omelet can just drizzle a little sauce over their plate or you can drizzle it on for everybody.

But it's really nice served on top.

This really is an omelet like you've never had an omelet before.

Or, as J.M.

likes to say, it's the omelet of your dreams.

And as quick as you make this omelet, you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

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