Traditional Indian home cooking tips: Eggs

My Dhaba presents to you a new blog series named 'traditonal Indian home cooking tips'. In many cases, traditonal knowledge has been orally passed for generations from person to person and is not written down. Such knowledge typically distinguishes one community from another, per wiki. With these series of traditional cooking tips, it is our endeavor to chronicle the torchlight of traditional knowledge and collective experiences accumulated and passed on by generation to generation.

Let us start off My Dhaba's traditonal Indian home cooking tips' series with eggs as the subject today. Hope you will like these series.

We welcome you to add your inputs via the comments if you heard of any other such cooking tips pertaining to the discussed subject.

My Dhaba's traditional Indian home cooking tips: Eggs

1. Do you wonder why the yolk of the hard boiled egg moves away from the center? Remedy this by stirring the eggs frequently while boiling.
2. Have you seen eggs cracking while they are getting half-boiled or hard-boiled? Put a little vinegar into the water when you cook eggs to seal the cracks and will prevent the contents of the egg from coming out.
3. When boiling eggs, a small teaspoonful of salt in the cooking water will help to prevent the shells from cracking.
4. Do you fail to make a frothy omelette? Here is an easy method to get real tasty frothy omelette, especially in the case of duck’s eggs. Beat the whites and the yolks separately. Add a pinch of salt or bicarbonate of soda to the whites. It is the protein which gives you the trouble.
5. To store hardboiled eggs, remove the shells, cover with cold water and keep in the refrigerator. They will last for weeks.
6. An omelette, well-dried and cut into square pieces makes delicious curry with the usual curry masala powders, potatoes, tomatoes, peas, etc.
7. Hardboiled eggs, cut into neat round slices, fried in besan batter with onions, green chillies and coriander leaves makes a nice snack.
8. Crack the shell of a hardboiled egg, then gently roll between the palms of both hands before shelling. This loosens the cleavage and shelling is much easier.
9. It is timeconsuming to clean a frying pan in which scrambled eggs are prepared. Fill it with salt water and see the result.
10. It is appetising to have bits of crisply fried bacon into scrampled eggs. Use bacon fat for extra aroma.
11. It is better to make scrambled eggs softer by adding one tablespoonful of water instead of the oft-used milk.
12. It is colorful to have scrambled eggs look like burnished gold. Some like flecks of gold and white in their plate. To have solid gold color, beat eggs till yolks and whites are thoroughly mixed. To have flecks of gold and white, beat till yolks and whites are just broken.
13. Beat eggs slightly when used as a thickening agent, e.g., in custard, puddings, etc. Beat eggs well when used to make foods light as in sponge cakes, puffy omelettes.
14. It is advisable to break each egg separately into a cup to test for freshness.
15. If any egg yolk happens to get into the white when separating eggs, the whites will not beat up stiffly. Remove the yolk with a piece of the egg shell as the edges are sharper than a spoon.
16. Eggs leave an awful smell in the plates if not washed properly. Hold the plate in front of the fire for few seconds and the smell will disappear fast. Washing the plates with the left-over tea and tea leaves from the tea pot prior to cleansing power of lotion also helps to remove this smell.
17. If you do not have enough eggs to set and egg and milk custard, then put a slice of bread cut into pieces. The custard will set beautifully.
18. Give a truly professional touch to homemade biscuits and buns by brushing the tops with a well-beaten egg. The gloss on the biscuits and bun tops and the fresh from-the-oven aroma make your pastery appetising.
19. Whipping cream is a thankless job. To get better results, have the cream and all the utensils as cold as possible. A well-beaten egg white may be added to the cream to get desired results.
20. Keep eggs fresh by rubbing them lightly with either oil or butter.
21. Eggs should not be washed before storing. Eggshells are porous and allow water to permeate through; thus eggs become stale.
22. To find out whether the eggs are stale or fresh, shake them. If these give sound, these will be old. Freshness of the eggs could also be found by immersing them in mild saline water. While the good ones sink at the bottom, the bad ones will surface.
23. A cracked egg is not really a catastrophe. If you still want to boil it without having the bother of the white running out into the saucepan, all you need is to wrap the egg in some housefoil and then boil in the usual way.
24. Hard boiled eggs dropped hot in cold water peel easily.
25. To prevent the dark circle forming around the yolk of a hard boiled eggg, plunge immediately after boiling into cold water to cool rapidly.
26. Instead of using eggs for frying meat or vegetable cutlets, keep ready roasted gram powder which can substitute for eggs. Make a thinnish batter with this gram powder, dip the prepared cutlets in it and fry.
27. Add a little maida flour to each egg when making omelettes. This helps omelette to keep its shape if guests are late at table.

Traditional Indian Home Cooking Tips