Western Omelet Easy Step By Step Chef

Hi, I'm Larry Richardson, your step-by-step chef. In this episode, we're going to make a Western Omelette. Now Western Omelettes are delicious and they're loaded with just about every ingredient you can imagine. They're also very hearty, so they're great for days when you have a lot of work to do outdoors, or planning to do outdoors too. So come on, let's cook. The essential ingredients for our Western Omelette are a quarter cup of onion, I like to use sweet onion, a quarter cup of green bell pepper, a quarter cup of sweet red pepper. Now if you can't get your hands on the red pepper, then just use half a cup of the bell pepper. We use four eggs, we use a tablespoon of butter, we use a half a cup of ham steak. Now try to get ham steak if you can, because a lot of the hams that are in cans kind of fall apart when you cook with them. Now some of the things that I'm going to use that are not so traditional are a half a cup of cheese. Now surprisingly, cheese is a little bit controversial. Some people say that Western Omelettes should not have any cheese in them. I think the cheese makes it delicious. So all I'm asking is give cheese a chance. And the other thing I like to do is take a jalapeno, and I'm going to use half of this. And it adds some heat to the dish. Now if you don't like heat, do not add it to your Western Omelette. So now let me show you how to prepare this dish. The first thing I'm going to do is chop our vegetables. Again, we're going to use a quarter cup of them. So let's start with the green pepper. We'll clean the core out and get rid of the seeds. There we go. And we'll cut it small, cut it into small pieces. And as usual, if you want more of any of these ingredients, certainly add it. Now the thing with the making of an omelette, though, is that if you make too much ingredient for the inside of the omelette, too much filler, then you might not have room. The egg might not be able to wrap around it. So the first time through, kind of follow the count that I'm giving you. And then the next time you make it, you can make it your way. Now I'm putting the vegetables right into my sautéing pan, because these will be sautéed for about, I'd say about five minutes, once we get everything cut. There we go. There's our nice sweet red pepper. I love these red peppers. They add a nice texture and a nice sweetness to just about any dish. In some cases, I'm actually substituting completely this red pepper for the green pepper, because the green bell pepper has a little bitterness to it. And I find the sweeter version of the pepper just doesn't have that slightly off taste. So if you can find these, use them. Give them a chance. And next we're going to cut our jalapeno. And first I'm cutting it in half. I'm only going to use half of it. Again, if you don't like heat in your dishes, don't use this. You don't have to. And Western omelet purists will probably tell you not to altogether. But when I think of the West, I think of kind of that Tex-Mex taste, that Southwestern taste. And I like just a little hint of heat in my omelet. But if you really like heat, you can use the entire jalapeno in your Western omelet. There we go. And the last thing I'm going to slice is our half a cup of ham. There we go. And we're just going to dice it. And we're going to throw it in with those vegetables. Again, if you can do it, cut the pieces kind of small, because they will just fit in the omelet a lot better. So here we go. You don't want huge slabs of ham just hanging around. There we go. Put that right in with the veggies. Mmm, I am already drooling. And the final item that we will dice is the onion. So we're going to use a quarter cup of onion. There we go. And I'm just scoring the top. And again, you know, some people like big chunks of these vegetables and things in their omelets. I like it sliced kind of small. And onion, I really like to dice it tiny, because it just spreads out nicely in the omelet and spreads out that nice sweet onion taste. Here we go. So I scored the top. And now I'm just cutting down. There we go. There's our quarter cup of onion. So let's put this on the stove and start the sautéing process while we prepare the egg mixture. Oh man, I could just sit on the couch and eat this straight out of the pan. So what I'm doing is I'm adding some butter so that none of this sticks, and it just sautés. So I took a tablespoon, or rather half a tablespoon of our butter, and I'm using it to coat the bottom of the pan. So this will melt as the pan heats up. Now while that's going on, and I will be stirring this from time to time, while that's going on, let's prepare our egg mixture. Okay, to prepare the egg mixture for our omelet, we're going to crack our four eggs into a bowl. And then we're going to add half a tablespoon of water. Now what the water does is it fluffs up the egg as it cooks. And if you add too much water, you will end up with the fluffiest omelet you've ever seen. It will have pillows on the top and bottom. So try it with just the half tablespoon of water the first time, and you'll get it just fluffy enough. And then if you decide you want yours fluffier, then add maybe a tablespoon of water. And if you don't want it fluffy at all, skip the water altogether. But I find that the half tablespoon works perfectly. So I'm getting these nice and mixed up. If you have a whisk, it's a lot quicker. And don't worry about getting it super, super smooth. It's okay if it has a little bit of clear clump to it. And there we go. There's our egg mixture. Meanwhile, back at the stove, isn't that how they'd say it in Westerns? This pan has been preheated just below medium heat for about four minutes. And now what I'm doing is I'm taking our other teaspoon of oil, I mean butter, and I'm adding it to the pan. And I just want to coat the bottom of the pan with butter. Make sure that it's nice and uniform, and this will keep the omelet from sticking. There we go. And I'm going to pour our egg mixture into it. And now what we do is we watch the omelet mix, and we look in these little windows. And right now I can see the bottom of the pan because through that window it's black. What I want to do is get that to be a white or a yellow through that window. And that lets me know that there's a base of cooked egg on which to put the other ingredients so they don't scorch on the pan. So I can see that this one is already turning dark or solid down on the bottom, which means that it's cooking just fine. Now back to our sautéing vegetables and ham. And these are sautéing quite nicely. The onions are starting to turn translucent, which means this is just about ready to be put in the omelet. And, oh man, does it smell good. I love a good Western omelet. So they look like they're ready to go in the omelet. And here we go. So what I'm going to do is take the ham and vegetable mix and put it on half of the omelet. And I'll show you why in a second. You can see this is hardy. It's going to be a filling dish. And this actually is good for two people. I mean, if you're a big eater, you can probably down one of these yourself. I'm not quite that kind of eater. But there we go. And then we'll sprinkle our cheese on the other half. I want to get that cheese to get nice and melty. So by putting it on this half, it's a little bit closer to the heat source. And then what we do is we cover it. Now, what I would do is lift this lid in about three minutes. What you want to make sure is that the cheese is fully melted and that there's no wet egg. Because if there's a lot of wet egg, when you go to fold the cheese over onto the other half, it's going to run all over the place. So give this three minutes and then check on it. And three minutes later, let's take a look. I like what I'm seeing. You can see that the cheese has melted fully. We've got some real heat under there. So I don't see any runny egg. So I can take this, this half, and fold it over. Now, if you have a lot of liquid run out from the vegetables, then you can leave this in for about another minute. And let the liquid dry from the front. Let it be on the pan. Let it drain and dry. Now, again, my Western Omelette is for two. Although, my goodness, it looks like three people could eat this. So I'm cutting it in half. There we go. There's your Western Omelette. So there you have it. You just made a Western Omelette. Congratulations. Now, if you want to see the printable recipe for this delicious omelette, several other omelettes, and dozens of other dishes, please go to stepbystepchef.com. That's my website. That's where I have dozens of dishes that you can make using my videos and my recipes. And it's all free. So go to stepbystepchef.com. Make this dish and enjoy it. And also, heck, why not make it for a bunch of your friends, too? Because once they get a whiff of your house, they're going to want to eat. They're going to want to really eat one of these. So I'm Larry Richardson, your step-by-step chef. See you next time.