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People tend to cook fundamental things the same way over and over again, even if they hear about a better way to do it. There are a thousand ways to scramble eggs, but I still make them as I learned in cooking school some 25 years ago: nothing added but salt and pepper, scrambled in a skillet with butter over medium-high heat. It’s quick and consistent, but never transcendent.
Since then, I’ve regularly come across recommendations to scramble eggs low and slow to get them creamy and soft. That’s exactly how I prefer my scrambled eggs, but I’m too impatient to bother with low heat.
Then, in a conversation completely unrelated to eggs, a chef insisted that the low-heat results of soft, creamy eggs are possible using high heat if you scramble the heck out of them and pull them from the burner early so they finish cooking on their own.
Creamy eggs over high heat sounded too good to be true. The only way to settle it was to try low heat and high heat side by side.
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The Best Heat for Cooking Scrambled Eggs
After weeks of testing and tweaking variables, I saw over and over that low and slow does indeed yield the softest, creamiest eggs. The results I got following Ree Drummond’s low-and-slow recipe in particular wowed me. No matter how I switched up scrambling over high heat, the eggs just couldn’t compare. The chef I’d spoken with was engaging in wishful thinking with that “as long as you scramble fast enough” business.
Science plays this out. In her first edition of her classic volume, CookWise, Shirley O. Corriher broke down egg cookery as a function of heat rearranging proteins. “The longer you heat proteins and the tighter the temperature, the tighter the bonds of the protein mesh become, squeezing out the water.” In other words, gentle heat is the key to the most tender and moist scrambled eggs. High heat dries them out faster, even if you scramble them frantically and pull the pan from the heat early.
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Pros and Cons of High Heat vs. Low Heat
Even after seeing (and eating) definitive proof that low heat is the way to go for soft and creamy eggs, I’ll still default to high heat because when I make scrambled eggs I’m usually starving and about to eat half a bag of tortilla chips for dinner. The time-saving and utterly acceptable results of scrambling quickly over high heat win out with hangriness in the picture.
If you like firm and fluffy eggs, medium-high heat is a good way to go. They won’t puff up over low heat. You can of course still overcook them this way, but there’s no reason to draw out the scrambling process if you don’t like them a little wet and soft.
The Takeaway
You could spend days reading dissertations on cooking scrambled eggs, but nothing beats trial and error in your own kitchen—even if, like me, you learned how to scramble eggs at a fancy cooking school. Eggs are cheap, and scrambling them is a low stakes way to play scientist at home. Unless you’re married to an actual recipe-recipe for scrambled eggs, I encourage you to nerd out and try new methods and tricks. Who knows, you may just wind up debunking a chef.
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