What they never tell you ...

Ever tried to make a perfect French omelette? Did you fail?

If so, you're not alone.

If you try and make one out of Julia Child, you're pretty much guaranteed to fail. Which is pretty shocking because the perfect French omelette is not only absurdly easy but one of those joys of life that should be experienced sooner rather than later, and preferably weekly at that.

What's the real problem?

What she does describe is a specific technique that works for the kinda pan that she is thinking about and the kinda burner she is working with rather than explaining the general principle that can work with any pan and any burner. She probably never grasped the general principle herself.

You don't need any of that banging or smacking or wrist-rolling if you actually bother to understand the science behind the French omelette.

Let's split this up into two parts. What makes the French omelette so delicious?

It's light, fluffy, moist, the egg is layered, and barely cooked; the center is all moist and juicy and terrifically (Ed: no such word, love!) delicious.

So how do you make it work in practice?

The correct answer (which they never tell you) is that it depends on the thermal capacity of the pan (= how quickly does it heat up + retain heat) and the thermal output of the burner (= how many calories is that baby pumping out each second?)

In short, each situation is different, and you pretty much kinda need to grasp the science behind the entire problem before you can nail the omelette. Or to put it more bluntly, reading Julia Child is a humongous waste of time since she doesn't actually expound the principles involved.

And onwards we go to the real principles.

Eggs cook quickly so the general principle is to use low heat. The omelette is the exception where you need to crank the burner all the way up to "medium high" because of the flat area involved.

To get the layered effect, there are two ways. Scrape the edges inward in a radial fashion (lightly and quickly) to get the effect while "rolling" the wet stuff into that spot, or use a teflon scraper and roll the wet egg mixture "underneath" the edges to get the layers.

Goal: never let any of the original mixture stay in contact with the hot pan for "long enough".

Lightly cook + no contact with hot pan = moist wet juicy deliciousness (Ed: this is not a porn video!)

And in both cases, you need to take the skillet off the heat LONG before the end because it still has some thermal capacity. (The same principle applies if you need a "filled omelette".)

Yep, this takes some practice. But these general principles are far more useful than the generically wasteful Julia Child full of banging and smacking and other generalities that can only lead you to the orthopedic surgeon pretty quickly.

It's quite easy, really. Try it!

You'll end up loving both the French omelette and the CC.