Why I like Italian Food - There's No Ziploc Bag Involved · Jan 12, 08:50 AM by James Martin
Maybe I’m dense. I just don’t get it.
Food Channel hottie Rachel Ray has a guy on the show who teaches presumably sane people how to cook an omelet inside a Ziploc bag by immersing the thing in boiling water.
Why the hell would anyone want to do this? It’s not like you’re saving a pan. In fact, you’re wasting energy, you’re wasting a Ziploc bag, you got the same number of pans to clean and besides, the process is darn sure to be toxic!
Here’s the breakdown for a real omelet:
You heat up a pan. You put a tiny bit of butter or oil in it when it’s hot. You gently whip up some eggs with a tablespoon of water or so. You put the egg and water mixture in pan until cooked.
How hard is that?
If you want a great batch of scrambled eggs, you stick a garlic clove on the tines of a fork and use it to stir the eggs until they’re almost done. Then you put them on the plate to finish firming up.
How hard is that?
So, for the baglady omelet you do pretty much the same prep, except boiling a pot of water takes longer, involves a bigger pot, and wastes most of the energy it takes to boil the water. And you don’t get that slightly brown crusty bit that a real omelet has that makes the flavor more complex and well, yummy.
It’s harder to do. It makes a crappy product. And, did I mention it before, it’s likely to be cancer-causing TOXIC.
So I don’t get it at all. Why do we do these things? To save the tiny sliver of butter? Gimme a break.
Save the Ziplock for the valuable liquids you’re taking on the plane to slather on your perfect body when you land. Or, if you really want to create a stir, cook up a baggy omelet and stuff it in your pants when you go to the airport. This will raise the curiosity of the people they hire to pat you down. At least it won’t cause anyone to get cancer.
And it might be good for a laugh. You never know.
Why I like Italian Food - There's No Ziploc Bag Involved originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jan 12, 2007, © James Martin, 
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