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I make not-omelets pretty often. This is a one dish meal that’s easy to make. It’s the single pan equivalent of a frittata. The ingredients are whatever I have on hand at the time. If you’re careful matching the type of cheese to the ingredients, they’re a tasty way to handle many leftovers. This dish can be served for breakfast, lunch or dinner and it goes great with a green salad.
The base for this not-omelet is 2 or 3 eggs and a one or two tablespoons of milk. This dish can be sized up or down depending on the mouths to feed and leftovers to use. The egg is just a binder to hold everything together. It is not the star of the dish.
My favorite not-omelet includes onion, peppers, shrimp, tiny scallops, broccoli or asparagus and chevre, a mild and creamy goat cheese.
For this not-omelet I added sautéed fennel bulb, onion, red and green peppers and parsley. I also added chopped left over steamed broccoli and some of the sausage I had fried up for pizza. I topped it with some pepper jack cheese. I needed to use up the fennel and parsley and pepper jack. Chedda woulda been betta but I was out and the pepper jack needed used up.
Here are the steps to this simple any-time dish.
In salted butter, sauté whatever you want to add. I seem to always use onion, though I usually also include peppers. Whatever you add has to be precooked.
Whip the egg and milk together with a fork. If you’re adding a soft cheese like cream cheese or chevre, or you want to include sour cream, mix it into the eggs before adding the other ingredients. Fold in everything. I tip the sautéed veges in right from the pan, then reuse the pan to cook the not-omelet.
With the pan on medium heat, add some more butter. Once it’s melted and coating the bottom of the skillet, tip in the egg mixture. Shake the pan to level the mix and turn the heat down to low. Cover the pan with a plate. The goal is a to gently cook the egg just enough to have it set and no more. Using a cast iron skillet and covering with a plate allows excess moisture to escape. If you have a pan with a tight fitting lid, set the lid on slightly askew so the dish can breathe away the excess moisture as it cooks.
And the most important thing . . . do not overcook. If you shake the pan and nothing gives a wet wiggle, it’s done. If there is just a tiny bit of wiggle at a spot or two on the surface, turn the heat off, cover the skillet and leave it for a couple minutes. The residual heat should finish the job.
There is an alternative way to cook this dish. I ate a seafood frittata at Sundecker, Boondocker and Green Thumb on Broadway in Seattle. It was a truly awesome dish (crab, shrimp and scallops). This was cooked in a small skillet. At the “turn the heat down to low and cover” part, they instead put it in the oven to set the egg. The frittata was then turned out on a plate and garnished with grated cheddar, tomatoes and green onions. This frittata is the gold standard for my not-omelets.