I recently had the great pleasure of visiting my Mother in Lake Charles, LA one last time before she and her husband of three decades, Jim, sell their home and move to Houston full time.

Lake Charles holds many great memories for me, but none more than getting engaged to my wife of 21 years, Jennifer. But this post is about eggs. but also about love; mostly the love of eggs.

The best part of visiting my mother was getting to cook in her near commercial kitchen. My mother was a professional cook in Houston for about 18 years owning a very successful catering business, french style deli and teaching countless cooking classes. I’ve always loved the way she cooks so effortlessly making us muffins each morning on our recent trip, creme brûlée for dessert and magically creating a red wine demi-glace for our beef tenders and asparagus dinner.

So my mom and I talk about cooking a lot. And we love to share ideas, tips, tricks and recipes for what we are cooking now. And now we are talking soft scrambled eggs. On our recent trip, mom asked if we’d like some soft scrambled eggs to have with our fresh muffins. Of course! We love soft scrambled eggs and have been toying with the many ways to make them, including Gordon Ramsay’s soft scramble recently demonstrated on Master Chef. This is method my mom used minus the Creme Fraiche. We agreed they always turn out well, but we aren’t as fond of the small curds this creates as opposed the large curds with classic slow and low cooked soft scrambled eggs.

So I decided in the future I’d stick with the tried-and-true Mark Bittman recipe of slow and low cooked eggs, until my mother sent me this recipe. Intrigued, I had to try it out.

So I grabbed my favorite egg pan and started cracking. Here is a shot of the process beginning with the pan:

As you can see, this is like making fried eggs until you begin to stir the whites. I had the heat on medium low on a relatively small burner so as to not overcook them my first time out. After about one minute, when the whites were stirred and beginning to turn opaque, I removed from the heat, broke the yolks and stirred them into the whites.

What I like about this method, as opposed to Gordon Ramsay’s, is the yolks stay quite a bit runnier and it is easier to control the cook. I put them back on medium low heat for a few seconds to reheat the whole scramble and cook down some of the albumen still floating. One thing I really noticed was that the yolks would cook in their entirety if not forced to separate and mix. Try it and you will understand, but they were more like poached yolks than scrambled yolks.

The result – Mixed. Truly mixed, not just by my taste, but as you can see in the final ‘scramble’, the whites and yolks are quite separated. So I am calling these ‘Mixed Eggs’ as opposed to Scrambled Eggs. If you come up with a better name, please let me know.

When I tasted the eggs, I was pleasantly surprised. Having the yolks separated creates a hearty mouthfeel while allowing for tasting the whites that resemble fried or softly poached eggs. The whole of the eggs were very soft, slightly runny and creamy. The best part is the ability to control the cook on the yolks apart from the whites creating an effect similar to a medium fried egg. So part poach, part fried and part scramble? Yep. And delicious. I have feeling Jennifer will fall in love all over again. With the eggs of course.

TMJ