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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Entertainment
Zahna Eklund

Jamie Oliver's omelette trick guarantees 'silky' texture - and timing is key

Cooking an omelette should be easy in theory - you bung some beaten eggs into a frying pan and let them cook, chucking your favourite fillings in just before the end and folding it over to finish it off.

But the tasty meal isn't always as simple as it looks, as it's easy to end up with spongey eggs or burnt bits on the bottom where you've left it cooking for too long.

Thankfully though, TV chef Jamie Oliver has shared his secret to nailing the perfect "delicate and gorgeous" folded omelette, which will leave you with a "silky" texture that's hard to beat - and the key is in the cooking time.

Jamie started by beating three eggs (Jamie Oliver/Facebook)
He 'undercooked' it to get the perfect texture (Jamie Oliver/Facebook)

In a video shared to his Facebook page, Jamie said: "The folded omelette is kind of a classic. It's the omelette where we fold it in half, or fold the two sides into the middle, you can choose whichever one you want to do. We don't want to overcook the egg, we want it to be silky and golden yellow and delicate and gorgeous and oozy in the middle."

Jamie made his omelette with a mushroom filling, which he prepared first by chucking some assorted mushrooms into his frying pan along with some oil. He then added chopped garlic, thyme, and parsley, before finishing off with some butter and a small squeeze of lemon juice.

When the mushrooms were cooked, he tipped them onto a plate and wiped the excess oil out of his pan with a piece of kitchen paper, before turning the hob down to a low heat and temporarily moving the pan off the heat completely.

He then set about cooking the eggs and explained: "I'm going to have three eggs for this, a little pinch of salt, and then I'll give it a nice little beat with a fork. Notice I've taken that pan off the heat. A little drizzle of oil and in we go with the eggs.

"Use a spoon to just lightly move the egg around, I don't want to have to overcook the base of the omelette. Move it around delicately, and then where you make a hole, feel free to let [the runny egg] fall back in. As you move little gaps and fill them with egg, there's a point where you start moving it and there's not so much left to fill it. At that point is when we go in with some gorgeous cheese."

Next, Jamie tipped his mushrooms back into the pan on top of the egg, making sure to keep them on one side of the omelette so there was room to fold it over.

And that's when he revealed his secret to perfect omelettes - never fully cook them in the pan.

Jamie explained that eggs cook at such a low temperature that they'll continue cooking once you've taken them off the heat, so if you cook them to perfection in the pan, they'll be overcooked when you dish them up. Therefore, you should undercook them slightly instead.

"I'm going to take it off the heat now," he continued, "The thing is guys, eggs cook at such a low temperature that if it's cooked in the pan, it's going to be overcooked on the plate. You need to scale back your aim on cooking and just slightly undercook it, and by the time you get it on the plate, it'll be perfect.

"So I'm just going to pour it out onto a plate, and as it gets over the lip, it'll fold in half, and there you go. The humble and very simple omelette. The key for me is not overcooking the egg - you don't want colour."

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