Scrambled eggs on toast is one of the quickest and easiest meals to whip up at home if you’re short of time and don’t want to spend ages standing over a stove.
Perfect for breakfast, dinner or a light evening meal, you can whip up this dish in as little as five minutes, but there are a few things that can go wrong in that short time frame if you’re not careful. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay says timing is key when it comes to making scrambled eggs and the trick is to take your pan on and off the heat throughout the cooking process to avoid overcooking.
But there is another important thing to get right before you even get to the cooking. Ramsay says you should never whisk your eggs before cooking them as this will turn them grainy and ruin the texture of the dish.
Instead, he says you should add your eggs straight to the pan and gently stir them with a spatula over the heat. As you stir the eggs will gradually start to break up, blending the yolk and whites together without a grainy or gritty texture.
Explaining the process in a video on YouTube, Ramsay says: “Scrambled egg. Start off with a cold pan and the secret here is the working when you go on and off the heat. Eggs overcook instantly.
“Now, crack the eggs. The secret of any good scrambled egg is in stopping the eggs from overcooking. We never whisk our eggs before we cook them – it turns the whole thing grainy.
“Now, two, four, six beautiful eggs. We go onto the stove and from there I take a couple of knobs of butter. On with the heat, spatula and we start stirring. And the most important part here now is breaking up those eggs.
“As you can see I’m using the plastic scraper. Bring the eggs back down into the mixture. I’m on the heat now and I’ve got no seasoning in there. Okay, I’m starting to generate the heat and you can see the eggs starting to cook. Sixty seconds on and then I come off now.”
Ramsay then removes the pan from the heat and using the spatula, cleans down the sides of the pan and stirs the egg back into the mixture, folding everything in.
After 30 seconds, return the pan to the heat but turn the gas down. As the eggs begin to scramble, take them back off the heat again to stop them from overcooking and then add in your extra ingredients and seasoning.
Ramsay says adding a “little touch” of creme fraiche will give the eggs a wonderfully “light and fluffy” texture as this cools the eggs down, while a sprinkling of salt and chopped chives will add a kick of flavour.
He adds: “Now to stop them from overcooking, a little touch of creme fraiche. Fold that in and now is the moment I start to season my eggs. The creme fraiche cools my scrambled eggs down. The gas is off, I’ve still got that heat inside my pan, but the eggs are light and fluffy and seasoned.”
