Beating eggs the day before for fluffier omelettes?

[rustwood]

The owner/cook at a popular breakfast/lunch place told me the secret to his excellent omelettes is that he beats his eggs for the next day before he closes (~2 pm) and stores them in the refrigerator overnight (covered/sealed) because they then yield fluffier omelettes.  Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?  I haven't and I haven't been able to find anything along those lines via google. 

 

[Anna N]

1 minute ago, rustwood said:

The owner/cook at a popular breakfast/lunch place told me the secret to his excellent omelettes is that he beats his eggs for the next day before he closes (~2 pm) and stores them in the refrigerator overnight (covered/sealed) because they then yield fluffier omelettes.  Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?  I haven't and I haven't been able to find anything along those lines via google. 

 

I have never heard of this before. It would be interesting to know if he is adding anything to the eggs.

[rustwood]

Good thought.  If he is adding anything, he hasn't shared those details.  I suppose pre-seasoning with salt might have an impact overnight though.

 

[gfweb]

a short fermentation?

[weinoo]

What is a fluffy omelet?

 

I don't believe that to be a classic French omelet (a la Jacques), but more like a fritatta.

[Duvel]

Maybe an aging effect on the egg whites - same idea as using day old egg whites in Macarons ? Aging w/ air contact weakens the proteins and makes for a “fluffier” beaten egg white …

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, rustwood said:

I suppose pre-seasoning with salt might have an impact overnight though.

 

I'm sure it would have an impact, but not the desired one. Salt would be more likely to toughen up the eggs.

Edited December 26, 2022 by liuzhou (log)

[AAQuesada]

I don't think that really makes a difference. I've run high end scratch restaurants that do a lot of eggs and have never noticed a difference between cracking the eggs that morning or the day before. If you are doing 30 or 40 quarts of eggs it makes sense to have some done in advance so you don't get behind but at home I wouldn't bother. 

 

One thing you could do that we do in restaurants that is rarely done at home is pass your eggs through a strainer after you beat them. 

[Alex]

4 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

I'm sure it would have an impact, but not the desired one. Salt would be more likely to toughen up the eggs.

 

Salting up to an hour in advance doesn't toughen the eggs at all, but I wonder about eight or twelve hours. Does anyone know if that's been tested?

[Margaret Pilgrim]

6 hours ago, weinoo said:

What is a fluffy omelet?

 

I don't believe that to be a classic French omelet (a la Jacques), but more like a fritatta.

La Mere Poulard on Mont St. Michel is quite famous for puffy omelet, but theirs is beat to order in front of you.

[FeChef]

9 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

I'm sure it would have an impact, but not the desired one. Salt would be more likely to toughen up the eggs.

This. Adding salt produces  more dense scrambled eggs and omlettes. 

[liuzhou]

58 minutes ago, FeChef said:

This. Adding salt produces  more dense scrambled eggs and omlettes. 

 

That was my point. Denser omelettes are, to me, the opposite of fluffier.

[FeChef]

16 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

That was my point. Denser omelettes are, to me, the opposite of fluffier.

I know this because i grew up eating scrambled eggs like that. My dad never added milk, only salted butterm salt, and pepper. To this day i still prefer dense scrambled eggs. Omlettes i do like fluffy.

[Tropicalsenior]

19 hours ago, rustwood said:

secret to his excellent omelettes is that he beats his eggs for the next day before he closes (~2 pm) and stores them in the refrigerator overnight

When I worked the breakfast line in a large restaurant, on weekends we always beat the eggs the day before and stored them just as part of our setup for the busiest days of the week. Not because it made fluffier eggs. And we never salted eggs before they went out to the customer.

 

14 hours ago, AAQuesada said:

pass your eggs through a strainer after you beat them. 

We always strained the eggs but it was to catch any bits of eggshell not because it made them fluffier.

 

11 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Mont St. Michel is quite famous for puffy omelet, but theirs is beat to order in front of you.

One small restaurant that I worked in specialized in fluffy omelets. We beat the living daylights out of them and then finished them on the griddle under a lid. They then had to be served to the customer within one minute or they completely collapsed. They were impressive but a real PIA.

 

12 hours ago, Alex said:

Salting up to an hour in advance doesn't toughen the eggs at all

As I said before, we never salted eggs before they went out to the customer. In those days we didn't have Teflon egg pans and any salt in the eggs could have damaged the tempering.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Tropicalsenior (log)

[rustwood]

I thought that it didn't sound right.  Thanks all for sharing your thoughts.  Next time I am going to try straining the eggs though.

 

Nothing to do with fluffy omelettes, but similar to FeChef, I grew up eating egg sandwiches that tended to be a bit scorched and I still make them that way - on purpose.

 

[weinoo]

13 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

La Mere Poulard on Mont St. Michel is quite famous for puffy omelet, but theirs is beat to order in front of you.

 

Probably where Alice stole her "idea" of cooking an egg over fire in a ladle!

 

But really, that's not an omelet as we have come to recognize it, is it? If one is cooking an egg dish, placing it into an oven, or covering it...then it's not an omelette any more, in my opinion.  

[Tropicalsenior]

9 minutes ago, weinoo said:

it...then it's not an omelette any more, in my opinion.  

I agree completely. Those that we made were like some sort of a bastard souffle. I want an omelette to look like an omelet.

[weinoo]

2 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

I agree completely. Those that we made were like some sort of a bastard souffle. I want an omelette to look like an omelet.

 

Almost like the one I put together (hastily) this morning in order to test the theory...

 

[Tropicalsenior]

40 minutes ago, weinoo said:

 

Almost like the one I put together (hastily) this morning in order to test the theory...

 

Perfect! Not one touch of brown.

[Anna N]

5 hours ago, weinoo said:

But really, that's not an omelet as we have come to recognize it, is it? If one is cooking an egg dish, placing it into an oven, or covering it...then it's not an omelette any more, in my opinion.  

And yet Jacques Pépin recognizes a country omelette, made such as I would make a frittata and a French country omelette, which is well browned. There are so many variations. Personally, I consider them all quite delicious.  

[weinoo]

Jacques's French country omelet is basically a frittata in my book. The difference being that his country omelette is not folded, which is how I define an omelette.

 

And if you were to have gone for a job interview in Jacques's kitchen, and he asked you to make an omelette, my guess is he wanted to see something similar to what I posted above. Although I doubt I would have gotten the job!

[Margaret Pilgrim]

17 minutes ago, weinoo said:

 

 

And if you were to have gone for a job interview in Jacques's kitchen, and he asked you to make an omelette, my guess is he wanted to see something similar to what I posted above. Although I doubt I would have gotten the job!

His loss.

[Tropicalsenior]

If one were to go to a hundred different restaurants and order an omelette, one would get a hundred different types of omelets all dependent on who was cooking that day. That's why I never order an omelette in a restaurant.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Tropicalsenior (log)

[Anna N]

2 hours ago, weinoo said:

The difference being that his country omelette is not folded, which is how I define an omelette.

But he has 2 country omelettes. The one that you and I would definitely call a frittata and then something he calls a French country omelette, which is browned and neatly folded.

Here. 

[Tropicalsenior]

10 minutes ago, Anna N said:

French country omelette

I don't care who makes it, I just do not like the taste of eggs that are browned. To me they are overcooked. But, to each his own.

Thank you for the video. It was interesting.