Friday, March 9, 2018

Omurice in Kyoto

Eeeew, all the other examples are gross. An omelet made with rice and coated with catsup. Every time I make an omelet stuffed with something I feel the spirits of French chefs looking upon me with distain. Like a burrito with egg as the tortilla. But on the other hand, shut up, and quit haunting my kitchen. And Japanese do the same thing as I do, stuff the heck out of them.

This woman has some mad skills.



Japanese omelet is made with a rectangular pan. The pans are all rated poorly on Amazon except for the heavy copper one with tin lining. Also, people rate them down for the stupidest reasons, like, "I had an allergic reaction to something in the plastic bag when I opened it." 



I made this a couple of times last week using a round pan and it worked fine. And with the sauce, oh boy, did they ever taste good. I wrapped them in nori and scarfed them right up. Mine were too delicate and tended to fall apart. I don't know why I avoided this for so long.

You mix mirin or sugar and standard dashi with the egg. French chefs do not beat eggs with a whisk for scrambled eggs. It's too severe. The whisk breaks the proteins and makes the cooked eggs noticeably tougher in side-by-side comparison.

There are videos of Japanese cooks using half a dozen of these pans.

For sushi, the omelet is pressed in sushi rolling mat to make it more squared. Then cut into segments.

Being Japanese, they must take this idea to an extreme and automate the whole enterprise for volume. 

Tamogoyaki machine.

3 comments:

Dad Bones said...

I can eat with chopsticks but I'll never be able to cook with them.

ricpic said...

Those eggs would taste better if they were browned. Why is there so little caramelization in oriental cooking?

Chip Ahoy said...

I just now realized that's probably not a woman.

The other videos they do brown the eggs in the square pan. That made me realize why mine fell apart.

In a video I saw a long time ago, Gordon Ramsey, I think, so a British guy showing French technique, said the longer you cook the scrambled eggs the more water evaporates and the tougher the eggs become. You have to decide how dry you want them. He stops when the eggs are still sauce-level wet. He cooks scrambled eggs as a failed sauce. And that's the way I've done them ever since.

I used to cook omelets until they browned. Then I realized that is too long. The eggs are no longer tender. And that's what those other guys are doing. And also why they hold together better.