Laminated Brown Butter Omelet (the Secret Ingredient is Flour)

Today we are making my favorite kind of omelette. It's soft as a cloud and flavored with browned butter. The recipe time stamps are in the description below, but first I want to talk about omelette styles and strategies. It always comes as a surprise to people that I don't like classic French omelettes. You know those tapered, pale cylinders that are considered the Mount Everest of omelettes. Just to be clear, there are many different omelette styles in France, but this is the only one that made it big in the US. The egg mixture for this omelette has minimal additions. Some salt and pepper of course. Maybe a few teaspoons of water or milk or tiny cubes of butter, but the ratio of egg to other ingredients is really high. In my opinion, this kind of omelette can only be good if it's slightly runny inside. And I don't like runny scrambled eggs that taste like snot to me. Weirdly, I love runny yolks and I even love a runny tortilla de patatas, but the starch in the potatoes completely changes the texture of the runny egg in a tortilla, so it's not the same thing as a runny French omelette. A classic American omelette is not my cup of tea either. The egg mixture for it is not very different from the French omelette. The difference is that it's slightly browned and cooked through, which makes it dry. My omelette takes a completely different approach. It adds a substantial amount of milk and a little flour to the eggs to provide tenderness and stability. This allows you to cook the omelette through and even brown it while keeping it super soft and moist. Just a word of caution, this mixture needs to be cooked completely. Don't use it for a runny omelette because it will taste like raw flour. Milk and flour in omelettes is pretty common in Eastern European cooking, but in the US it's considered unusual. But the idea of starch in scrambled egg mixtures had its day in the sun when Kenji and Alex tried to use cornstarch to slow down egg coagulation and liked the results. This allowed them to raise the heat on scrambled eggs and make them cook faster without drying out. If you can't have gluten, you can substitute cornstarch in my recipe, but flour produces a lighter and fluffier texture. My favorite pan to use for omelettes is this 9 inch carbon steel pan from Madfur, but any 8 to 9 inch well seasoned carbon steel or nonstick pan will work. My method requires finishing the omelette under the broiler for about 30 seconds. If the handle of your pan is not metal, wrap it in a wet paper towel and then aluminum foil before putting the pan under the broiler. You will also need a lid since this omelette starts in a covered pan. Put 1 third cup whole milk into a bowl. Add 2 teaspoons of all purpose flour. Either bleached or unbleached will work. Mix very thoroughly with a whisk or a fork. There should be no lumps of flour remaining. Once you add the eggs, the lumps won't dissolve, so now is your chance. It's normal for this mixture to get foamy. Add 2 large eggs and slightly more than a quarter teaspoon of diamond crystal kosher salt. Cut that in half for other salt types. I like to add a little pepper, but that's optional. Mix very thoroughly until no lumps of white remain. You can't overmix this, so be thorough. This mixture should be completely homogeneous. I like to taste it and adjust it for salt, but if you aren't comfortable tasting raw eggs, just keep notes on how much salt you are using and adjust the next time. Turn on the broiler. Set your pan over moderately high heat and add 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter. It will produce some splatter since butter is only 80% fat and 20% water. When the water converts to steam, it will make little explosions. You can greatly reduce the mess if you periodically swirl the pan to release the cooped up steam. Once the butter melts completely, it will be very foamy. Wait for this foam to recede slightly. That's the point at which the butter just starts to brown. Pour in the egg mixture and cover the pan immediately. Set a timer for 45 seconds. Check to see if your omelette is golden on the bottom. If not, give it another 15 to 20 seconds. Lift up the cooked egg from the bottom and let the liquid egg fill in that space. You aren't scrambling anything here. You are layering. Try to get as much of the liquid egg to the bottom of the pan as possible. The top will still look wet, but it shouldn't be a deep puddle. Put the pan under the broiler just until the top is puffy and dry to the touch. This will only take 30 to 60 seconds. See how the top is completely dry now? If you want, you can add some fillings onto the top of the omelette that is away from the handle. Today I'll add diced tomatoes sprinkled with salt and cheddar. Just make sure that whatever you are using is well seasoned and remember that less is more. This is not a burrito. Slide the omelette onto a plate, but pause when about 2 thirds of the omelette is out. Use the lip of the pan to fold your omelette in half. Glide a teaspoon of butter on top of the omelette until it melts and let it rest for 5 minutes before serving. Ah, now I feel like Remy in Ratatouille. Here is a slightly more advanced option that marries the French flavor of butter with the Japanese idea of egg layering. The omelette we just made is lovely and it has some layering, but the one we'll make now takes it to the next level. We'll keep the same ratio of ingredients, but now we'll use 3 eggs for the same pan size, so our omelette will be thicker. The basic technique is the same. When you tilt the pan, be very thorough in getting as much of the loose egg under the cooked layer as possible. Since we have a deeper layer of egg mixture, more of it will stay wet on top giving us more material to laminate. Put the omelette under the broiler just until set. We'll skip the filling because this one is all about the egg texture. To create more layers, we'll roll this one up instead of folding it in half. Sorry about my lack of focus. I am using a spatula to help me roll. Top with a little butter, let it rest for about 7 minutes, and enjoy. Here is the cross section. I am sorry I took a few bites already. I forgot to hit record. See all the layers? It has the feel of the Japanese omelette called tamago yaki with the flavor of butter. This is one of my favorite weekday lunches. It tastes so luxurious, but only takes 5 minutes of work. Here are more very detailed culinary tutorials for you to check out and if you are ever in the Boston area, maybe I'll see you in one of my classes.