Egg successes, egg failures

I’ve been making scrambled eggs for myself for years with varying levels of quality. None of the tips I’ve read or seen really did the trick for ensuring consistent success in the perfection department. Until I watched the Scotland episode of Jamie’s Great Britain on 4od. I’ve been watching Jamie Oliver on TV pretty much since he was on TV to start with, so at this point, I never really expect to learn something new and practical from him, but I always do. It’s crazy.

Anyway, he was doing potato scones then using the same pan for the eggs, and he was like, the pan’s already well hot enough, just take it off the heat and make your eggs in it that way. And goddammit, it WORKS. I’ve always just turned the heat way down, but never thought to take the pan off altogether. So the next morning, I heated up my pan, took it off the heat, melted the butter, and proceeded to make the most perfect scrambled eggs I’ve ever made. And I’ve repeated the process 2 more times since then with the same results. Not too dry, not too mushy, perfectly cooked all the way through. Try it. It seems to be foolproof.

So that was my egg success. The failure was simply a lesson in ‘always have more eggs than you need for a recipe involving separating them’. Luckily, I did, because earlier in the day,  I made the decision to buy extra eggs since that would mean more scrambled egg breakfasts if I didn’t need them for my cookies.

So I was having to separate a bunch of eggs for making cinnamon star cookies. And as usual when trying to separate eggs, I was trying to get clean, straight cracks by doing it on the counter. And on what was supposed to be the last one, I cracked it with normal force and the whole thing just opened up all over the counter.

In all my years of cracking eggs, this has NEVER happened. And I have been cracking eggs for at least 15 years. It was just straight up full egg on the counter. How on earth do you go about cleaning that up in a logical way? You can’t pick it up, and you can’t really sweep it off the edge of the counter without egg dripping in all sorts of weird places. Luckily I was sort of next to the sink, so I tried to squeegie it in there with my hand as best I could.

But seriously, how are you meant to pick up a full raw egg off a flat surface? Anyone? Jamie?