Have you ever taken a bite of scrambled eggs and ended up with an unpleasant rubbery mouthful instead? Perhaps it wasn’t rubbery but it was watery? Cooking scrambled eggs should be an easy cooking task.
However, despite it being a seemingly easy dish to cook, there are times when you do something that makes it either rubbery or watery. There is one major mistake you make that makes your eggs watery and rubbery at the same time:
You added salt or milk but didn’t cook the eggs immediately.
Here’s one of the main reasons why your egg may be watery as well as rubbery. You probably prepared your beaten eggs then either forgot to cook it immediately because you were distracted by something else or you had to turn away to do something else.
When you finally did cook it, you probably saw that your eggs wept and ended up a little tough. That’s because salt extracts water from whatever it comes to contact with. Think of meat when it’s been salted or when you try to extract the bitterness from ampalaya or talong. In as little as a few minutes, the salt draws out the moisture from the meat and the vegetables which you can easily blot off. That’s fine when cooking steak or ampalaya and eggplant dish.
When you salt your eggs in this way, that’s exactly what you’re doing to the eggs. You’re “extracting” the moisture from the eggs or in this case, separating the water from the rest of the egg. This “extraction” is what results in the watery quality of the eggs when cooked and the eggs without the moisture in it have a mouthfeel that’s rubbery.
If you don’t salt it but add milk, cream, or some other liquid to your beaten eggs, this will also result in watery scrambled eggs. Why? The extra liquid you add, while delicious, doesn’t combine well with the eggs when it’s cooked, resulting in the eggs weeping once on your plate. It doesn’t combine because it doesn’t evaporate fast enough while the egg cooks since it cooks pretty quickly. What you end up with is the liquid still separate from the egg itself, resulting in watery scrambled eggs.
What can you do to prevent that pile of eggs from being less than perfect from happening again? Here’s what you can do:
1 Add butter instead.
If you want your eggs to be more delicious and tender without adding milk, cream, or water, add butter. You already know butter is delicious with its salty, milky, and umami-packed flavor. What makes it great with eggs is that it’s a fat, not a liquid, and it actually does combine with the eggs when it’s cooked.
2 Stir continually.
Once you have beaten your eggs, add it to your preheated nonstick pan. (Yes, it’s still the best pan for eggs.) Then as soon as it hits the pan, start stirring. You will want to keep stirring, casually, because eggs cook fast, and you really won’t have time to do anything else. The second you do want to stop is when the eggs start to firm up. As soon as this happens, what you want to do is turn off the heat, bring the eggs together into a mound, and then transfer it to a plate. As soon as it’s on the plate is when you will want to season with salt and pepper.
3 Serve immediately.
Cold eggs just are not delicious! Serve that plate of perfectly scrambled eggs right away so you can enjoy it while it’s still hot.
