Basic Omelet

Everyone has their own way of making an omelet, but watching Julia Child turned me on to this method that elevates an omelet from a sheet of scrambled eggs to a 5-star dining experience. I have this broken into a lot of steps, but once the pan is heated it only takes about 4-5 minutes, and most of that is cooking the onion.

Ingredients:
3 eggs
1T butter (not margarine)
1/4 medium onion (or a whole shallot)

Steps:
1. Heat a 10" pan with sloped (not vertical) sides over medium heat.
2. While pan heats, dice the onion into 1/4" pieces. Make sure you separate the pieces from each other, you don't want them sticking together.
3. When the pan is hot, add the butter and swirl it around the pan until it is completely melted.
4. Add the onion and stir or toss so that the onion is coated in butter.
5. Cook until the onion is softened and the butter is foaming, stirring or tossing occasionally. If you let it go too long after the butter foams you will start burning the butter. If the butter is turning brown, start step 6 right away. While the onions are cooking break the eggs into a bowl, season with salt and pepper, and beat vigorously with a fork until they just start to foam.
6. Read step 7 completely, you have to work fast and the whole step only takes 60-90 seconds. Shake the pan to evenly distribute the onion in the bottom, then pour the egg into the pan evenly, don't just dump it in the middle.
7. Immediately start shaking the pan front to back as hard as you can without splashing the egg out. Use a spatula to constantly scrape the cooked egg up from the bottom so the liquid egg can get to the pan surface. Don't break up the cooked egg while doing this, just move it around. Once there is no more liquid on the top surface of the egg, but it is still soft and uncooked, shake the pan to get an even layer of egg then cover for about 30 seconds. Fold the omelet (into thirds looks much classier than in half) and slide onto a plate. Let sit for a couple minutes before serving.

My rating: 9/10
Potential rating: 10/10

Notes:  Try this at least once without anything else added so you can really taste what a difference the butter and shaking of the pan make in the taste and texture. Then you can easily jazz it up by adding different things to the omelet. Mushrooms and green peppers work great, just dice up a similar amount to the amount of onion you use and add to the butter along with the onion. Breakfast meats should be precooked, broken into small pieces, and sprinkled on top of the egg before covering the pan in step 7. Herbs and cheese can also be added before covering in step 7.