The famous chef and TV presenter James Martin explains how to make the perfect scrambled eggs – and the one ingredient that can elevate your eggs to a ‘Michelin style’ of deliciousness
Scrambled eggs require few ingredients, but nonetheless it can be tricky to get the texture – and flavour – just right. You want them creamy, but not runny. Fluffy, but not dry. The classic rule is ‘low and slow’ – but there’s one easy ingredient that will elevate your scrambled eggs to “Michelin style”.
James Martin’s Saturday Morning show offered advice as to how viewers could take their scrambled eggs to the next level. He explained that in order to make perfect scrambled eggs, you need butter, cream and green chilli. But the “key” ingredient to make your eggs taste amazing is pepper. Black pepper is a staple ingredient you likely already have at home, and it only costs 90p in Asda.
Explaining his process, the TV chef took a glass bowl and cracked two eggs into it. “The first thing you want to do is crack your eggs into your bowl. When I learned the best scrambled eggs – and I actually learnt this from the late great Michel Roux Sr.” He whisked the eggs using a hand-held metal whisk, then seasoned the eggs with black pepper. He advised “put plenty of seasoning in.” The chef then added salt into the bowl too, before putting a little butter in a pan on the hob.
“It’s like cooking an omelette – the way you cook an omelette is not cook it until it’s brown,” James explained. “So the eggs must not brown whatsoever.” When the butter had “foamed up” a little, James popped the eggs into the pan and he whisked. “Whatever you do you don’t stop whisking”, he explained. While continuing to whisk, James added a little cream to the eggs to enrich them.
Taking the pan off the heat, he added the scrambled egg to a slice of toast on a plate. Finally, James chopped a green chilli finely and put the pieces on top of the scrambled egg on toast, leaving the chilli seeds in.
James had another top tip for cooking anything egg-based. During an appearance on This Morning, he advised people not to refrigerate their eggs, settling a long debate. Martin explained that “all eggs are porous”, meaning you should “never put eggs in the fridge. They absorb all the flavours from the fridge”.
“So if you have truffle for instance, in the restaurant we use fresh truffle, you put that in a bowl with rice and put eggs on the top, cling film over the top and put in in the fridge overnight. When you break the eggs in the morning for breakfast for customers, truffle and scrambled eggs, there’s no truffle in it. The flavours have gone into the egg itself”.
What’s your tip for perfect eggs? Let us know in the comments.
