Some nights I don’t know what to do for dinner – I didn’t have the foresight to thaw any of the various varieties of frozen meat in my freezer and I have a certain abhorrence for thawing meat in the microwave, so I usually just stand and stare into my fridge for a couple minutes and try to suss out what I have and what I can fix quickly for dinner that isn’t a sandwich or a bowl of cereal, or a bag of steamed vegetables from the freezer – Admittedly, I do like steamed veggies from the freezer, but how many times in a row can you eat steamed winter vegetables before you start getting good and darned tired of them?
On nights like this, I usually try to cobble something together that’s edible, if not nutritious, but I’ve hit on rather a winner this go-round. I’m going to call it the souffle-like omelet.
As I dine on my dessert of fresh cherries, I’m going to write up the recipe that I’ve just made up. I’ve probably seen a gorzillion recipes like this somewhere sometime before, but I was in the kitchen just now and didn’t consult any recipe books to come up with it, so I’m claiming this as mine, for now:
Souffle-like Omelet with tasty!
3 eggs
2-3 strips cooked bacon
granulated garlic
dried diced onion (or fresh – you make the call. I had dried, so I used dried.
Adkin’s seasoning(think like a Lawry’s seasoned salt, but sweeter)
salt
pepper
paprika (just cuz)
~1/2 c. med-sharp cheddar, shredded.
a little water (not measured, just out of the tap)
little mixing bowl
little mixer – I used this one: 
small skillet
Spray skillet with Pam (or other vegetable oil spray), put on medium heat to begin warming.
Break 3 eggs in little mixing bowl, put a little water in the bowl with them (I held them under the tap for about 1 second – just a little water, honestly – I find that it makes the eggs fluffier once you whip them up. Shake in garlic powder, salt, pepper, paprika, Adkin’s, to taste, and start mixing. (Please don’t taste the egg mixture while it’s raw – just use what you would use if you were making scrambled eggs. Go easy on the salt, though – you’re adding bacon) Mix until the ‘batter’ appears to have doubled in size – it should be pretty fluffy-lookin’*, but not anywhere near meringue – if you’ve beaten it to soft peaks, you’ve beaten it too much. (Plus, it has yolks in it, and no sugar, so you shouldn’t be getting a meringue. Just sayin’.) Pour into now-warm skillet – you should hear the ’sss’ sound when it goes in, and the edges will begin to look dry almost immediately, as if you were cooking pancakes. Use this time you’re waiting on the eggs to shred your cheese. I’m kind of a freak – I just shred right into the bowl that I used to beat my eggs – no sense in getting another bowl dirty, after all, and you’re going to cook the cheese anyway, so there won’t be any worry of germs. Leave the cheese in the bowl and work on the bacon. The eggs are still cooking.
Rough dice 2-3 strips pre-cooked bacon – these do NOT have to be perfect by any stretch. Just get into smallish pieces – I went over mine twice with my santuko santoku Rachael Ray** knife. Rough dice. I used Hormel Black Label bacon, because that’s what I had leftover from last night, when Mr. Man and I made bacon & cheese-patty melts (I had mine with no bread). Just use your leftover bacon***. I think I had about 1/2 c. of bacon after I diced it up. Note that bacon cooked in the oven may not be as crispy as bacon cooked in the microwave. This worked to my advantage this time, as the bacon was nice and meaty, instead of being like little bacon chips, all dry and hard to eat. Your bacony mileage may vary.
When the eggs are looking dry around the outside 1-1 1/2″ of the pan, toss in the bacon and let it sink into the egg mixture (it’ll look just about right by the time you’ve finished dicing the bacon.) Then toss in the cheese, being careful not to let it hit the edges of the pan – I like the cronchy cheese as much as the next girl, but that comes in the next steps, so be patient, padawan.
Let it cook until you have about a 1 1/2″ circle in the middle of the egg-cheese-bacon mixture that still looks runny and liquid, then run a stiff spatula around the outside edge of the skillet, pick it up, tilt the pan and flip the omelet totally over. The bottom will look kinda dark brown, like this:
Don’t freak out. It’s NOT burnt. Remember how much you beat the eggs before you cooked them? Yeah, this is the manifestation of that. It’ll be tasty. Breathe deep.
Now this, this is the cronchy cheese portion of our program. The cheese is flat against the bottom of that hot pan now, getting all melty and cronchy. Let it sit for a minute, getting all cronchy, then put that baby, bottom side down, on a plate and LET IT REST FOR A MINUTE. (Not like a literal minute. Just let it rest.). (I let it rest long enough to go get my camera, because I thought it was pretty and wanted to take a picture. )
Cut yourself a wedge out – there’ll be steamy-goodness rising from the middle, but it should be cooked all the way through – no worries about food-borne illness here! Also – look at that bottom picture – the dark brown on the bottom is ONLY on the bottom – not all the way through. Have a bite. Have two – it’s tasty. I ate about 2/3 of it for dinner tonight, and I’ll probably have the other bit for breakfast tomorrow. The great part? This is low carb. Love. It.
If you’re cooking for more than 1 person, I recommend doing about 2 eggs per person, but make SURE that it’s still a size you can turn and maneuver it in the pan – 18 eggs in a giant skillet will NOT be easy to work with. I used 3 eggs because that’s how many I had left in the carton and I have an innate hatred for leaving ONE egg in a carton all alone – what good is one egg? You almost always need 2 for any recipe you’re going to do, so 3 it was.
Anyway, that’s it – Souffle-like Omelet. Hope you enjoy! Holler if you have questions.
______________________________Footnotes_________________________
* Who’s fluffy lookin’?! (With apologies to Star Wars)
**It’s not the Rachael Ray brand knife – it’s just the knife she uses all the time. Like a chef knife but with a flat, non-curving blade edge. You know the one.
*** HA that’s a trick – there’s no such thing as leftover bacon. Well, mostly. Mr. Man and I cooked a whole pound, because I fully intended to have bacon to eat on my salads this week. We cooked it yesterday (5/31). Today (6/1), it’s all gone. We loves us some bacon.
