Here’s Why You Should Put Cornstarch in Your Scrambled Eggs

May 29, 20158:02 AM

Lady and Pups’ magic 15-second creamy scrambled eggs.

Photo by Mark Weinberg

This post originally appeared on Food52.

There are so many decisions confronting scrambled egg lovers: Do you loosen the beaten eggs with milk or cream (or water or stock) or is all of that anathema? Which pan, what spatula? And what about cheese?

But the most vexing—and the most likely to draw a wide chasm between what I might gently call scrambled egg snobs and the rest of us—is whether you insist on cooking them low and slow for custardy, creamy eggs, or do something a little more efficient with your morning. You can tell which direction I lean.

What Mandy at Lady and Pups has done for all of us, especially the impatient types, is speed up the beautifully soft scrambled egg from something like 15 minutes of constant stirring (or upwards of an hour in a double boiler, if you follow Laurie Colwin) to 15 seconds. Not only that, but Mandy has made the whole process more forgiving, too.

How? It involved those pups: After doctoring eggs with cornstarch for her “temporarily anorexic dog-son,” she decided to cook and eat some herself. “A thickening agent is the answer to the previously-thought-impossible scrambled eggs fantasy,” she writes. “Speed, and creaminess, all together.”

This might sound confusing or strange, until you realize that cornstarch is itself an egg substitute. We’ve seen it standing in for egg in this genius ice cream base and other Philadephia-style recipes. And the allergic, vegan, or unprepared swap it freely into baking recipes.

But a small amount of cornstarch (or potato starch) is much better than a straight replacement—eggs are delicate, and cooking them too fast and hot results in the proteins seizing up, squeezing out moisture, and the eggs going dry and tough. Cornstarch stands in the way of these protein connections, as I learned from J. Kenji López-Alt at Serious Eats, who likes to add cornstarch to the eggs in egg drop soup to protect them from overcooking and turning rubbery.

This changes everything.

I’ve had jags of making scrambled eggs and toast every night for dinner for weeks, always aiming for a certain 3-second window of perfection and comfort. I finally got the seasoning down (¼ teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt for 2 eggs), but in my impatience I still tend to overshoot and wind up with spongy eggs more often than I want to admit. Cornstarch saves me. “It’s just concealing the fact that you overcooked your eggs,” said one disgruntled Lifehacker commenter named Tristan. Yes! The eggs pictured here sat in the pan way too long while they were photographed. We ate them all.

You’ll notice that this calls for a lot of butter, so just to be safe I tried the recipe both with and without the cornstarch, to see how much was really just the goodness of butter. Without cornstarch, the eggs were good but stiffer, the butter more free-floating. And I’ve found that even if you skimp on the butter, the cornstarch has dramatic effects.

Put them in tacos and breakfast burritos, on English muffins or toast (no need to butter!). Add herbs or salty bacon or just eat a big bowlful all by itself. Or, do like Mandy: “This may be weird, but I like soft on soft, so a savory oatmeal topped with this scrambled egg, with anchovy toasted breadcrumbs, would make me real happy.”

Lady and Pups’ Magic 15-Second Creamy Scrambled Eggs
Adapted slightly from Lady and Pups
Serves 1

3 large eggs
1½ tablespoons whole milk (½ tablespoon for each egg)
1¾ teaspoons cornstarch or potato starch (½+⅛ teaspoon for each egg)
Salt to season
3 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 tablespoon for each egg)

See the full recipe at Food52.

Got a genius recipe to share—from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Please send it my way (and tell me what’s so smart about it) at kristen@food52.com. Thanks to contributing writer and editor Lindsay-Jean Hard for this one!