No one should tell you how to take your eggs. But everyone should know how to make scrambled eggs well! 60 seconds, soft, creamy, custardy. Perfection! Serve on homemade crusty Artisan bread for the ultimate eggs on toast – now officially the world’s easiest yeast bread.👌🏻
How I make Scrambled Eggs – soft and creamy
One might assume that everyone knows how to scramble eggs – until you see someone frantically stirring and you peer into the skillet to see a pile of crumbly mound of tortured yellow stuff that used to be eggs….😩
So today I’m sharing how to cook scrambled eggs well, like the way diners make them.
I’m not here to tell you how you should take your scrambled eggs, just how to make them well! Choose your desired level of doneness:
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soft and custardy (as pictured) – the status quo served at bistros if you don’t specify otherwise;
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ever so slightly underdone; or
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100% fully cooked and set (it’s almost like an omelette, except in scrambled egg form. And still NOT dry and crumbly!).
Good scrambled eggs is a life essential that takes all of 60 seconds. I like to make mine soft and custardy. But who am I to judge? Make yours as you please!
What you need for scrambled eggs
Here what you need to make scrambled eggs:
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Eggs – 2 per serving is my standard. Organic free range is better than normal free range is better than caged. The hen’s diet determines the colour of the yolks. Pasture diets (ie. free range) tend to produce eggs with the most deeply coloured orange or yellow yolks.
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Butter – for flavour and greasing the skillet;
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Milk – makes the eggs extra moist and creamy but it’s not essential, scrambled eggs can still be creamy without. Use 1/2 tablespoon per egg – eggs can’t hold any more than that, it makes them runny. Some people use cream – I personally find it too rich, you get that creamy mouthfeel; and
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Salt and pepper (let’s pretend it’s in the photo).
How to make scrambled eggs
Great scrambled eggs is all about slow, sleepy strokes and low heat:
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Whisk the eggs, milk, salt and pepper;
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Melt butter in a non stick pan or well seasoned skillet over medium heat (or medium low if your stove is strong);
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Add egg mixture, wait 5 seconds (for the base to just start setting) then start leisurely (not frantically!) running a rubber spatula or flat edge wooden spoon in long strokes back and forth across the pan, and around the edges. This technique pushes the cooked egg off the base and piles them up (which creates those beautiful soft curds you see) and lets the raw egg spread out into the pan to cook;
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After 30 seconds, also start gently folding the eggs over (ie scoop and gently flip). Keep pushing/folding for 60 seconds total cook time or until raw runny egg no longer spreads out onto the pan and you have a pile of soft, custardy egg, ever so slightly underdone;
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Remove from the stove, stir / fold for another 10 seconds or until cooked to your taste. If you want it cooked more, return it to the stove briefly. Photo below shows the eggs just off the stove, ready for serving.
Perfect Scrambled Eggs…
The scrambled eggs in the photo above are finished, just ready for serving. Notice how:
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all the egg pushes into a pile and stays together, indicating it’s cooked ie. there’s no raw, runny egg leaking around the edges;
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the surface is shiny so you can tell it’s still custardy and moist;
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how the egg on the rubber spatula is semi transparent but sticking to the rubber – this is a small bit of semi cooked egg (if it was fully raw, it would not stick to it it just slides off) that will finish cooking in the time it takes for the egg to go from the skillet onto the toast and into your mouth. Egg cooks super fast; and
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you can pile the eggs up high on toast – unlike crumbly overcooked scrambled eggs that scatter everywhere!
Scrambled Eggs Tips
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Stove heat – eggs cook super quickly. Use medium for a standard stove, or medium low if your stove is strong/hot/big burner.
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Use a smaller skillet if cooking less eggs. ~25cm/10″ for 4 eggs, ~20cm/8″ or less for 2 eggs.
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Non stick or well seasoned cast iron skillet highly recommended for ease – eggs are the ultimate food glue.
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Rubber spatula is best, follow by a flat edge wooden spoon (or similar shaped utensil), so it can scrape along the skillet to create beautiful soft curds.
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Scrambled eggs should not be browned or crispy at all, it should be yellow and creamy all the way through.
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DO NOT viciously stir around in circles, or zig zag frantically back and forth! This will create rough, “chopped up” dried scrambled eggs (like pictured at the top of the post), rather than soft and creamy. Use gentle, leisurely, sleepy strokes.
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Use pushing / folding / turning motions with the rubber spatula so you get soft, creamy scrambled egg curds, rather than crumbly eggs.
This is what perfect creamy scrambled eggs looks like inside
And here’s a close up of what soft and creamy scrambled eggs look like inside – shiny with moisture but not a single droplet of raw egg running down the cut face bitten face of the toast.
Serve on starch of choice, though for me, I can’t go past a hot buttered slice of toasted Artisan Bread which I’m pretty sure we can now officially call the world’s easiest yeast bread, being that it’s no knead and incredibly flexible and the astonishing number of people who have made and left lovely messages on it.
To make a full English breakfast, add a side of bacon, sausages or sausage patties*, garlic butter mushrooms and sautéed spinach. Devour and weep with joy. – Nagi x
* Use the patties in the Sausage and Egg McMuffins recipe – the seasoning is terrific (and so it should be – it’s a McDonald’s copycat!)
Watch how to make it
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Scrambled eggs - soft and creamy, just as they should be!
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 2 tbsp milk , any fat % (optional, Note 1)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 grinds black pepper
- 1 tbsp / 15g butter (or margarine or oil)
For serving:
- 4 slices bread , toasted & slathered with butter
Instructions
- Use a non stick skillet or well seasoned cast iron pan (about 25cm / 10") and a rubber spatular (or flat edge wooden spoon).
- Whisk together eggs, milk, salt and pepper.
- Melt butter over medium heat (Note 1), then pour egg in.
- Wait 5 seconds, then start leisurely pushing the rubber spatula back and forth in long strokes, and all around the skillet edges, to push the set egg out of the way and let raw egg run onto the skillet to cook. After 30 seconds or so, start adding some folding action too.
- Cook for 60 seconds in total until you have a pile of soft, custardy scrambled egg folds ("curds") and no raw egg leaking on the edges of the pile.
- Take it off the stove when it's still a bit undercooked for your taste.
- Gently push /fold the eggs for another 10 seconds - it will finish cooking with residual pan heat - then slide onto hot toasted crusty bread slathered with butter.
- Sprinkle with extra pepper then devour immediately! For a touch of garnish, look no further than an 80's style sprig of curly parsley. 👌🏻
Recipe Notes:
- World's easiest crusty Artisan bread
- No yeast sandwich bread
- Irish soda bread (a no yeast bread)
- Stove heat - use medium low if your stove is strong/hot.
- Use a smaller skillet if cooking less eggs. ~25cm/10" for 4 eggs, ~20cm/8" or less for 2 eggs.
- Non stick or well seasoned cast iron skillet highly recommended for ease - eggs are the ultimate food glue.
- Scrambled eggs should not be browned or crispy at all, it should be yellow and creamy all the way through.
- DO NOT viciously stir around in circles, or zig zag frantically back and forth! This will create rough, "chopped up" dried scrambled eggs, rather than soft and creamy. Use gentle, leisurely strokes.
- Use pushing / folding / turning motions with the rubber spatula so you get soft, creamy scrambled egg curds, rather than a raggedy chopped up dry pile of scrambled eggs.
Nutrition Information:
Life of Dozer
The only one happy about overcooked, tortured scrambled eggs – because he gets to have them!
Quick and neat❣️
Perfect everytime
These were perfect, I followed one of the comments to add a generous TBSP of grated cheese & a pinch of salt after I turned them off. So good, so professional. I’m a bit ashamed I’ve been making the crash & bash type all these years.
Amazing!!! Gorgeous results after doing it for so long the wrong way round. Thanks Nagi
Nagi, you are a life-changer! These eggs are perfection. Turns out I have been badly overcomplicating things for years.
One question – if I wanted to make my scrambled eggs cheesey, what would you recommend? Grated cheese at the beginning of cooking?
Always add cheese and herbs at the very end after you’ve removed the eggs from heat! the residual heat is enough to melt the cheese and blend with the herbs and won’t cause problems like direct heat can. I hope this helps!
Just made these for my daughter, chef’s kiss!!! Quick and easy.
Perfection! Divine! Delicious! Creamy! Easy! The only way to cook eggs! Thanks Nagi!
This is how my mom made them also. Simply delicious!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Nagi.
Tried it for the 1st time.
A bit custardy.
Will have another next time.
Many thanks.
Hi Nagi,
If you use full cream cream they stay beautiful for longer – they don’t weep. 👌👌👌
Your scramble looks fantastic. I do mine almost identically EXCEPT I do not add salt to the eggs. I read this somewhere from an emminent chef’s blog. I don’t understand the reasoning but my scrambled eggs went up to the next level.
Thanks for that tip Peter!! N x
I only have Cast Iron skillet.
Any tips of how to make the eggs on it?
I’m worried it will overcook because of the heat..
Thanks!
Just cook them low and slowly while stirring and they should be fine in cast iron! N x
Nagi, you seem like a good person, but I am here to represent people who like scrambled eggs that you describe as tortured. No runny eggs for me!
Hey! To each his own!! You feel free to torture your eggs as you please 🤣😂🤣🥚🍳!!! N x
Breakfast is usually a chore with my 5 year old but he wolfed this down. I’ve never made scrambled eggs like a cafe before! Very happy crew here this morning.
Yes!!! N x
After years of trying to perfect scrambled eggs, today I went simple and tried this recipe. I have always added heaps of condiments and never once got it right. This is the best tasting scrambled eggs I have ever eaten. So quick, so simple and so tasty. Just perfect!
Great scrambled eggs. I never knew what I was doing wrong but your explanation was just what I needed to succeed!
Shouldn’t add salt when cooking scrambled eggs it chemically reacts with the egg making them firm.
Should not add salt until eggs are cooked
Hi Peter, that’s exactly what I was always taught too!😊👍🏻
Really nothing to add, but I will pass it on just FYI. Somewhere in a land far away, I read to scramble your eggs with chop sticks. Tried it once, took a little longer but sure seem to make the texture creamier.
I dated this guy in my early twenty’s who made me the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever eaten in my life one morning and the memory has always haunted me because I’ve never been able to recreate them. That has all changed now thanks to you Nagi!! I can finally make them myself and not live haunted by the memory of those better than sex scrambled eggs he served up that morning 😂