Sunday, April 19, 2009

Rolled Omelette or Tamagoyaki


One of the students of a colleague of mine is the chef in a local restaurant and regularly brings us lunch on her lesson day! It's so kind! One of the dishes she recently brought included this beautiful rolled omelette made using stock (dashi tamagoyaki). It looked like a mille feuille or baumkuchen in terms of the incredibly thin layers.

I really want to get the hang of making this using stock, because it looks more beautiful the thinner the layers, but this is my attempt at regular Japanese rolled omelette. I don't think I mixed the egg thoroughly enough, because the white and yolk seem too separate, but it's still delicious!

Ingredients
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon mirin
  • vegetable oil
Some people also use 1 tablespoon of sugar, but the mirin is sweet cooking sake anyway. I don't measure out the ingredients exactly. If you want, you can add other ingredients such as bonito flakes or roll in thinly sliced ham or fish.

Method
  • Using some kitchen paper, grease a small frying pan. I use a small rectangle pan measuring 14cm x 19cm x 3cm. This makes the tamagoyaki more regularly shaped than if you use a round pan.
  • Thoroughly mix the eggs, soy sauce and mirin, without incorporating too much air.
  • Heat the pan over a medium heat. It is ready when you add a drop of the egg mixture and it easily lifts from the pan.
  • Pour over a thin layer of egg mixture. As soon as it is half set, start to roll it from one side of the pan to the other. Keep the roll at one end of the pan. Wipe clean with the oiled kitchen paper, and pour in another thin layer of egg mixture, lifting the roll briefly so that the egg mixture covers the whole pan.
  • Again, when half set, roll the omelette starting from the first one so that this first one is inside the second. Repeat for as much egg mixture as you've got.
  • To serve, cut into thick slices. Delicious hot or cold.
There is a nice descriptionwith step-by-step photos of how to make this really well at this website http://www.justhungry.com/tamagoyaki

1 comment:

  1. Update! Tried making a 2 egg dashi tamagoyaki today, it's very difficult - lots more practice needed. Added about 2 tablespoons of bonito stock to the basic recipe. It sets well, but becomes quite fragile to roll. Still delicious though, but looked more like Japanese scrambled eggs, and was wetter - the one yesterday was good finger food... Maybe too much dashi?

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