#daredtoask: should you put milk in your scrambled eggs or not?
Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: with or without milk in your scrambled eggs?
Scrambled eggs aren't really a dish you use a recipe for. If you were to do that, you'd notice that in some recipes milk is on the ingredient list and in others it isn't. And then the pondering begins: with or without milk? Which milk? Is a splash of cream also good? We looked it up for you.
You probably don't think about it, but something as simple as an egg turns out to be quite complex chemically. The white of the egg consists largely of water with a bit of protein. The yolk is mostly fat, with fifty percent water. In scrambled eggs, but also in an omelet or a fried egg, the protein provides firmness and the yolk provides a creamy flavor. The water from both the white and yolk must evaporate first, but that happens automatically in your frying pan when you cook the egg.
Rubbery crumbs
In scrambled eggs, the yolk and white are first whisked together. The perfect scrambled egg is soft and creamy, in other words: it still contains enough moisture and the yolk should not completely solidify. If you cook it too hard, you get rubbery crumbs; not very tasty. Could that be the reason milk is added to scrambled eggs? Then it makes sense to add milk. Extra moisture so it doesn't dry out too quickly, plus a bit of fat, so extra flavor.
Milk is not necessary
But milk isn't really necessary: a lump of butter in the scrambled eggs also provides creaminess and the water from the milk evaporates during cooking anyway. Whole milk contains about 8 grams of fat per liter, so a glass of milk doesn't really add much creaminess. The ultimate trick to prevent you from having to eat rubbery bits? Turn off the heat under your frying pan when the egg starts to solidify a bit, add a lump of butter or a good splash of cream, and then stir one more time with a spatula to mix the egg and butter together. Make sure the plate, toast (extra delicious: with smashed avocado!) and orange juice are ready, because scrambled eggs are ready in a flash and you can't save them. No, not even in a chafing dish. No, not even at a breakfast buffet in a hotel. Just: no.
