Eggs | Gotta Eat, Can't Cook

Archive for the ‘Eggs’ Category

July 27th, 2024

Blog, Breakfast, Cycling Food, Eggs, Fitness Food, Hiking Food, One Bowl Meals, Running Food

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Microwave Cooked Scrambled Eggs Picture Book Recipe

Last post showed how to make stove cooked scrambled eggs all very easily and with 2 quick tips:

Add just a little salt before cooking the eggs to help break down proteins in the eggs so that they turn out soft & fluffy, not fork-bouncing hard and rubbery. You should do the same thing here when cooking scrambled eggs in the microwave oven.
Make sure the pan is warmed to the right cooking temperature before starting to cook the eggs. No need to do that when cooking with a microwave oven.

I will say that the first time I heard of microwave cooked scrambled eggs, I laughed, “No way!”

But then just for humor’s sake, I tried ’em – nose close to the microwave as shown here – and couldn’t believe my eyes.

Even better, I couldn’t believe how flavorfully they turned out, how easy it was to put them together, and how little there was to cleanup as I could mix, cook, and eat the eggs from the same bowl. Great!

Here’s all you need for ingredients and…

…equipment.

Click any picture on this page for a complete, freshly revised step-by-step picture recipe.

Microwave Oven Cooked Scrambled Eggs Recipe First Page

July 24th, 2024

Blog, Breakfast, Eggs

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Stove Cooked Scrambled Eggs Picture Book Recipe

When I was about 7 years old, the first meal I tried to cook was scrambled eggs. I’d seen my mom cook them many times. How hard could it be?

I felt fully confident putting a pan on the stove, firing up a burner, putting butter in the pan, giving an egg a good crack – and then, horrifically, watching the egg white and yolk splat next to me feet while I reflexively tossed the broken egg shells in the hot pan. Stove off, clean up the mess before anyone saw me. That cured me of cooking for the next 10 years.

If you’ve had similar experiences, I get it, and that’s what this site is all about: helping you empower yourself with the kitchen skills you need to make easy fully flavorful meals on your own.

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, Freeing Eggs From a Bad Rap, which came on the heels of a piece about how dietary fat does not cause heart disease, this post is about how to make scrambled eggs, which is the most popular way to cook and eat eggs. Before downloading that picture book recipe, which you can do by clicking any picture on this page or this link, here are two easy tips, included in the recipe, to ensure your scrambled eggs turn out fluffy and tender, not fork-bouncing tough and rubbery.

Tip one: adding just a light dash of salt, as shown below, to the eggs before cooking them,…

…adds a little flavor but, more importantly, helps break down some of the proteins in the eggs so that they turn out soft and tender, as shown in the contrasting pictures below.

Tip two: make sure to heat the pan you’re using to the proper cooking temperature. To check the temperature, wet your fingers with tap water, and flick the water onto the hot pan surface. The pan is properly heated when the water sizzles and evaporates on the pan surface – but not so hot that it immediately turns to steam.

Here are the ingredients and…

…pieces of equipment needed to make stove cooked scrambled eggs.

Again, click any picture on this page or this link for easy to follow, step-by-step picture book directions, and have fun making your own scrambled eggs with full-on empowered confidence!

July 15th, 2024

Blog, Eggs, Food & Health, Nutrition

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Freeing Eggs From a Bad Rap

A month ago I wrote about the very undeserved bad rap bananas have gotten. And like I mentioned in that piece, I believed the negative hype and avoided bananas for a while. But life is about learning and adapting. I learned the truth about bananas and very quickly adapted my diet include them again, quite happily – and, actually, just had homemade banana ice cream with full-on flavor for dessert after lunch. Killer!

Along with bananas, there’s another exceptionally popular food that, until very recently, has been unfairly criticized: eggs. Their crime: allegedly raising blood cholesterol and increasing the chances of heart disease. Wrong – and that’s based on objective scientific research, meaning scientific research that is not tainted by industry self-interest. Still, if you query “latest research on eggs and health“, and I urge you to do that on your own – and be sure to check both the source and date of what you find – you will still find continued “good vs. bad” controversy.

Regarding cholesterol, yes, eggs are high in cholesterol and are also extraordinarily rich in protein and other vital nutrients. As Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, author of The Clot Thickens , said in a January 2022 interview you can see by clicking this link or the image below and going to the 4 minute 40 second mark, an egg yolk is so rich in cholesterol “because it takes an awful lot of cholesterol to build a healthy chicken”. (My bold for emphasis.)

You can read more about Dr. Kendrick and his scientifically-based work by checking out my last blog. As I wrote in that piece, I’ve put his diet and health advice to practice – and love it for the foods I enjoy, how I feel as a young 66 year old and my consistently outstanding blood test results.

Next up: pan fried scrambled eggs – the first thing I ever tried to cook long ago but… Ha! I’m asking you to wait -not too long – to see exactly what that “but” means.

March 2nd, 2023

Blog, Cycling Food, Eggs, Fitness Food, Running Food

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Scrambled Eggs with Pasta and Plantain Picture Directions

Almost every time I hop out on the bike, I think about what I’m going to have for lunch when I get home. That’s actually a good part of the fun while I ride.

Here’s how some of that thinking goes and what I do about it – all about putting “imagination is your only limit” to practice.

The other day, while I was out with a good group of Hickory Velo Club buds, it all started with a quiet monologue. “Shrimp’s gone. Finished beef last night. Want something quick. I do have cooked pasta in the fridge. Eggs…cheese… That’s a start…”

Here’s how I put that to action, all on the fly (aka, improvised as I was putting the dish together).

I chopped cooked pasta, cracked 3 eggs, added shots of chili lime powder, ginger sauce and teriyaki sauce to the eggs and mixed it all up.

While the pan warmed over medium heat, I grabbed a fully ripened plantain and garlic from the top of my fridge and cut and chopped them as shown below.

When the pan warmed, I added a slab of butter, swirled it in the pan to cover the pan surface,…

…and added the cut plantains and topped them with a good shake of ground turmeric and ground ginger. I let the plantains brown on both sides for a few minutes, as shown below, and then added the pasta and scrambled egg mix.

I then added chopped garlic and some sliced cheese and let that all cook until the bottom of the eggs just started to firm (about a minute).

Once the eggs started to firm up, I scooped and turned the egg mix every 30 seconds or so to let them cook cook evenly until the eggs were just about solid, and then turned off the stove heat.

I slid pan off the warm burner, let the eggs finish cooking on their own and chopped both a piece of dried spiced mango and half a small avocado.

I finished by scooping a spoon of the cooked egg, pasta and plantain into a bowl and topped it all with the cut avocado and spiced mango, a shot of parmesan cheese, salad dressing and a tiny spoon of a spice mix called Harissa (big time kick), until what I had looked like…

…this.

Killer flavor! Something I’ve never had before. And all a terrific exclamation point to a fun ride with good buds!

February 24th, 2021

Blog, Breakfast, Cooking Technique, Cycling Food, Eggs, Fitness Food, Running Food

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Scrambled Pancake Picture Directions

The other day I wanted something a little different for breakfast with flavor and substance to power me through a good late winter Hickory, NC, group bike ride. Here’s what I came up with. I call it scrambled pancake because I used most of the ingredients I use to make a fruit pancake but scrambled the batter like scrambled eggs.

These are the ingredients that I mixed in the bowl you see at the bottom of the picture below.

Those ingredients and rough proportions are (no need to measure precisely: with these ingredients, your result will turn out great): 2 eggs, dash of salt, good shake of ground cinnamon, about 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 big tablespoon of each: ground flaxseed, cooked quinoa (the red grains in the square container above the butter), cooked steel cut oats (the white grains in the square container between the vanilla extract), and a handful of raisins.

Of course, as an improvised recipe, which is just a guide, and I was using what I already had in the fridge, specifically regarding the quinoa and steel cut oats. I can imagine you don’t have those – and possibly not ground flaxseed also – ready to grab and go. No problem: just substitute any or all the grains above with any favorite cooked or ready to eat grain, like cold oat cereal, granola or wheat germ. Your imagination is your only limit.

Here’s how to cook what you’ve mixed.

Add about as much butter as you see above to a frying pan warmed to the same temperature needed to make scrambled or fried eggs. Add and spread the batter, and give the pan a good back and forth shuffle like you see in the last picture above to “encourage” the batter not to stick to the pan surface.

After a 1-3 minutes, when the bottom of the cooked batter looks lightly browned like the top photo above, use a spatula to turn the batter. Don’t worry about trying to turn it all in one piece. (I tried doing that myself – and failed with a smile). Then use the spatula to break and turn the batter, like you would do to make scrambled eggs, until it is cooked through as shown below.

You can then scoop what you’ve cooked into a bowl and add whatever you want want: maple syrup, honey, jam, peanut or any nut butter, yogurt, whipped cream – anything. Next post, I’ll show what I added to make what you see below that easily sustained me for 40 miles on the bike, no problem.

More very soon!

February 16th, 2015

Blog, Breakfast, Cycling Food, Eggs, One Bowl Meals

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Microwave Cooked Power Cereal – Warm, Flavorful, and All in Pictures

You bet it’s cold outside, but there is a bright side. It’s mid-February, the days are getting longer, and everyday forward brings us closer to spring.

Still, all we ever have to deal with is the here and now. So, to make that here and now more comfortable, flavorful, easy to deal with…and nutritionally sound, here’s Microwave Power Cereal. Microwave Power Cereal has a lot going for it. First, it tastes great and requires only commonly found ingredients. Secondly, it gives you just what you need for a sustained energy burn by combining complex carbohydrates with protein. And finally, you use the same bowl to mix, cook, and eat the cereal from, which greatly minimizes cleanup. All good stuff! Read more »

July 26th, 2014

Blog, Breakfast, Cycling Food, Eggs, Fitness/Health, Special Recipes

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Power Finish to Tour & Fully Flavorful Microwave Omelet S2E – In Pictures

Wet & nasty stage 19 of the Tour de France yesterday. Powerful 30-plus time trial today. On to the Paris tomorrow. Wow, it’s been a rip of a tour!

Here’s something that no matter the weather or need for power will give you a bright breakfast smile: Microwave Cooked Omelet – From Simple to Exciting. Aside from the flavor, the really cool thing about making this omelet is that you can mix, cook, and eat the omelet from the same plate. I dig that – a lot!

Scrambled Eggs with Sausage, Bell Pepper and Cheese – All in Pictures

This full-on flavor recipe combines the protein power of eggs and sausage, fresh zest of red bell pepper and shallots and richness of Parmesan cheese – all in one pan.

As mentioned in other scrambled egg recipes here, adding just a small amount of salt to the eggs before cooking them not only enhances scrambled egg flavor, it also ensures the eggs will turn out soft and tender. Eggs cooked without salt tend to be tough and rubbery as shown in the comparison pictures below.

Left-Handed (Fully Flavorful) Fried Eggs – All in Pictures

I’ve posted a few microwave cooked pasta one-bowl meals here recently, and though I do have one more all set to go, I thought I’d change it up a bit with a fully flavorful fried egg recipe my son introduced me to last year he calls “Left-Handed Eggs”.

I asked my son, why the name, “left-handed”? “Just because.” Quite right! Absolutely! Right on!

The great things about these “left-handed eggs” is that, first, they taste great, and second, they take no longer to make than straight up fried eggs because the flavor-enhancing ingredients are added as the eggs cook in the pan.

Here’s what it takes to make left-handed (fully flavorful) fried eggs.

As always, click any picture on this page for a complete, easy to follow step-by-step picture book recipe.

April 18th, 2014

Blog, Breakfast, Eggs, How To & Tips

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Easy and Safe Soft or Hard Boiled Eggs – In Pictures and Video

All right! Adios, snow – bring on spring! The weather’s getting better – yah! We’ve got a big holiday weekend ahead. Boiled eggs – either plain white or brightly colored – are gonna’ be centerpieces of kids’ dreams Saturday night and breakfast tables Sunday morning – and, yes, it takes a real man – or woman – to eat those eggs out of the cups you see above – all in fun.

For the easiest and safest way I know to make soft or hard boiled eggs, just click any picture on this page for a free, newly revised much more colorful Gotta’ Eat, Can’t Cook step-by-step picture book recipe, and/or check out this short step-by-step video.