The Incredible Edible Egg : Tamago-yaki


"It says here breakfast any time.... I'll have eggs in the age of enlightment"
- Mikey, "Swingers"




My fantabulous friend Cate (of the hummus fame) recently celebrated a birthday by throwing a sushi making party at her home. Each guest was asked to bring a side dish or an ingredient for the sushi. Never one to make things simple for myself, I decided to try my hand at tamago-yaki (sweet egg omelet). I'd never made tamago-yaki before but figured it couldn't be too hard (hah!). Turns out that there are only minimal ingredients needed but there's definitely a technique to rolling the omelet with chopsticks that I'll need to work on. My pan was bigger than the one in the recipe I used, so I doubled the ingredients for each tamago-yaki (see below). Anyhow, I was able to produce a few omelets to take and they were a huge hit...except with Mr. S. who kept insisting that it tasted like french toast...um, what?!?  Regardless, yay me!

Adapted from Momofukufor2's Tamago-yaki Recipe

Tools

Makiyakinabe (a Japanese rectangularish frying pan- Oto's sells them in their housewares department. Mine was about $8. You can also purchase them online via sites like Amazon). The pans come in different sizes; the one I used was 9.5 in x 9.5 in

Long chopsticks

Spatula (optional)


Ingredients

1 dozen eggs

4 T mirin

4 T sugar

4 t light soy sauce


Instructions

- Crack 6 of your eggs in a bowl and lightly mix them using your chopsticks. Do not whip them. Mix well, making sure the egg whites and yolk are homogeneous.

- Add 2 T of mirin, 2 T of sugar and 2 t of light soy sauce. Mix.

- Use a folded paper towel to evenly spread a bit of oil in your pan. Heat it on medium low heat, then pour in the eggs so they cover the bottom of the pan.


- After 2-3 minutes, the egg will start to cook and solidify. The eggs don’t need to be entirely cooked, in fact, they should be a tiny bit moist on top so that the egg sticks to itself. Using chopsticks (or a spatula), fold the egg over evenly onto itself twice, like how you would fold a letter into thirds. Don’t flip the eggs, just push them to the end of the pan.





- Use your oily paper towel to spread a tiny bit more oil in the pan and add a bit more of the eggs. Lift up the log of already cooked eggs so that the raw eggs are touching them. When the new layer of egg is almost cooked, fold the eggs over onto themselves again. Repeat until all the egg batter is used.


- Wrap in saran wrap and using a sushi mat, press the tamago-yaki into a rectangle shape.

- Let cool completely, then slice.

- Repeat the process with the other remaining 6 eggs and ingredients.

At Cate's party some people made nigiri sushi out of the sliced tamago-yaki, some people cut it up and placed it in their sushi rolls and a few just popped it in their mouth whole...whatever method works for you, as long as you enjoy it. 

Makes 2 large rolls of tamago-yaki.

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