>> male announcer: Funding for Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking was provided by: >> Prudhomme: Hi, I'm Chef Paul Prudhomme.

We're going to egg it up today.

We're doing a sweet potato omelet.

Oh, you're going to love it.

We're doing andouille-and-egg muffins.

You know, we're always cooking, and with eggs, you can cook it anywheres, anyplace, any time.

Come on.

I'll show you how to do it.

Egg it up.

[lively Cajun music] ♪ ♪ Oh, everything you want to know about eggs.

[laughing] Eggs are wonderful.

They really are, and there are so many things you can do with them, and we put them in so many things, and it's just absolutely wonderful.

But we're going to talk about a couple things.

One is the poaching process.

You know, I've worked in restaurants where you do brunch in New Orleans, and they were big restaurants, and you know, there were literally--I mean, 1,500 people would come, and probably more than 70% would get poached eggs.

So they needed to be ready in the beginning, and so one of the things we'd do, we'd put--we've got boiling water.

And so we're going to talk about poached eggs first, boiling water.

And then we put some salt in it, and you don't need a whole lot of salt.

And put vinegar in it, and vinegar is something that I've found that if you're going to do a lot of them, like in a restaurant, you'd probably renew the vinegar every now and then.

You don't need a lot of vinegar, but the vinegar really helps bring the egg white literally to a nice texture without cooking the yolk.

Okay, now, we've got some eggs that we're going to also boil, simple boiled eggs.

This is cold water, and we're going to just put the eggs right in it, and we're going to start the boiling process from scratch.

Now, my goal here is to reduce the inside of the egg and to reduce it to a point where I can take and--you want the egg to move away from the shell so when you go to peel it, it's real easy to peel.

And there are some steps to do that, and one is, start with cold water.

You bring it to a boil.

When you know that-- and you set a timer on it.

You boil 15 to 20 minutes, and you should have a great hard-cooked egg, boiled egg.

And so boiling eggs is relatively simple, and once they're boiled, take them out.

I really enjoy putting either very, very cold tap water on or putting tap water with ice in it, because I think when you do that, it shrinks the inside and especially the whites, and it makes it easier to peel and for it to come out real pretty as a boiled egg once you peel it.

Now, I've got a good boil going, so I'm going to lower it just a little bit, because it don't need to be this high or this quick of a boil, and we're going to take and--I like these.

When I grew up, you know, the eggs that we had were brown eggs, and I just--I've always been partial to brown eggs.

To get the yolk out of the egg-- get the white out and just the yolk, you can do one of these, or you can do like when I was a kid.

I'll show you the way we did it, and we would simply just take an egg, and we would break it like that, and then we'd open it, and then we'd just go back and forth.

And so then, when it hangs out like that, you just take it and just take the egg, the other yolk--I mean the other eggshell--and just scrape it off, and you have a nice egg yolk.

In poaching the eggs, put the vinegar in there, and you seen me do that in the beginning.

And we got a small amount of salt, and some people don't like to put salt, but I like to put a small amount of salt.

And you don't want it to be boiling real hard.

And you just drop them in, and it ought to bring it right back up.

The timing for poaching of eggs--a medium egg--would be roughly three minutes for a really soft-cooked yolk, five minutes for a medium-cooked yolk, and 10 to 12 minutes for a hard yolk.

It's not doing that, but it's coming real pretty, and you need ice water to put it in after it comes out, and this is to hold eggs.

This is when you poach them and you want to hold them.

Let's say you got ten people coming and you want to do eggs for ten people, and, well, to do it while they're there or while you're getting ready to serve is kind of tough, but if you do it in advance like I'm doing it here, then you can have the eggs all ready to go, and then you can just reheat them, and it works very well, and look at that.

I mean, that is really gorgeous, because it's nice and soft on the inside.

I mean, you can see the softness.

Just drop them in the ice water, and just--they'll be there waiting for you when you need them.

I think I've got me another poached egg here, and I'm going to take it out and put it in the water, gonna cool it down.

And when I'm ready to go, ready to do brunch, the eggs are ready.

We're going to reheat the eggs, and when you reheat the eggs, it's a very, very quick process, and it's amazing, because once you get them reheated, you could put them in tepid water or water probably at 100 degrees, and they'll still hold in there, and they'll be warm enough to serve.

But you just take them and you put them back, and you just scoop them up, and you dip them in the hot water, and you literally just leave them in there a couple of seconds.

I mean, it doesn't take very long to reheat an egg, and you don't want to cook it.

And I've got some muffins here to put them on with a little bit of hash, and so, just, when you feel like they're hot, probably count to--I'd count to 15 or 20 real slow: one, two, three-- maybe 25--and then just put it right on top of here and then whatever you want to put on top of the egg.

You could put a hollandaise sauce.

You could put a béarnaise sauce.

You could put just any good sauce that you like with eggs.

A little bit of corned beef hash to go with it with some potatoes in it, and you've got a great brunch dish.

Sweet potato omelet: one of my great loves.

Sweet potato omelet: you know, it's one of those things that-- I mean, I've done them all over e world, literally, and it's so wonderful, because it has the ingredients that just makes it perfect, and I'll just go over them with you.

Of course, we have seasoning.

We'll put a little potatoes in there, regular potatoes, because it's a breakfast thing.

We got tasso in them.

This is what it looks like.

I mean, it really has a great look to it.

We got, also, in this a sweet potato.

Now, I grew up with sweet potatoes, and it was one of the things that the family grew, and you know, I've learned so much.

I mean, I've been doing sweet potatoes since I'm a kid, and it's just such a wonderful thing.

If you cook it correctly in the oven, the skin peels away.

You know, it makes it real easy to peel, and it has such a great aroma on it, and the sweetness and the taste of it, I mean, it's just absolutely, absolutely spectacular, and it just has a great taste to it.

We've got some diced, and we're going to put a little brown sugar in them, and that's one of the things that we've done at my house for a long time.

We're going to put them in and just sort of mash the brown sugar in with the sweet potatoes and mash the sweet potatoes at the same time, and it really makes it a great omelet, a great taste.

You can make the omelet several different ways, and what I mean by that is that I'm going to just do an omelet in the skillet, but you could take the omelet and you could make a huge one in a very large skillet, and then you could put it in the oven to finish it, because that works really good.

If you got a really good broiler--and you have to have a really good broiler to do it-- but if you have a good broiler, it really works well to do that.

I'm going to take and put the onions in with a little bit of oil, and I'm going to start the process of building flavors.

I'm going to put the bell peppers in, and I'm not going to--normally, you know, you'd put the oil right in the pan, but I don't like to do that anymore, because I like to use less oil.

I think we don't need the huge amount of oil that normally goes into a lot of dishes.

So what I'm doing now is making the filling for the omelet.

I'm going to add the potatoes to it, and I'm going to put just a dash of oil in them.

These potatoes have been boiled a little bit, I think.

Let me taste them to make sure, just--yup.

A little bit of oil on them, and so they're kind of soft.

They'll cook very quick.

Put a little oil with it, and just go to it.

Drop them in, and the more you get brown on the things like the potatoes and the onions and the bell peppers, the better off your flavors are going to be, and it's starting to do that, because I've preheated a skillet, and you can see the brown starting there, and I'm going to help the brown go, you know, go forward by putting herbs and spices on it, because the wonderful thing about the oil and herbs and spices is that it browns very, very quickly, and so you'll be able to see it right in front of your eyes, how-- See the smoke color change, and the herbs and spices are going to brown right on the-- it's going to brown right on the potatoes and the bell pepper and the celery.

Now, the next thing I'm going to put in is the tasso.

Now, the tasso has a huge amount of flavor, and by the way, I'm not following my recipe.

And so we got the omelet going here, the ingredients for the omelet.

We're putting in the zucchini and the yellow squash.

The next step is, we're going to put the sweet potatoes in.

Now, at this point, you're going to have the sweet potato with the brown sugar in it, and at this point, you're going to have a massive amount of stuff, and you want to get it together, the stuff: in other words, all the things cooked.

And you don't want to overcook them, because they're going to go in an omelet, and then you're going to cook it some more.

So just keep turning it and let it go.

I'm going to lower the fire and let it simmer while I deal with the eggs, and so--oh, I wish you could smell this.

Man, this is great, and the sweet potato is going to make such a difference in it.

It's going to give it diverse taste, with all the greens and all the things in it.

So all right, I'm going to do the omelet.

Now, I like to put cream in the omelet, and I also like to put a little bit of seasoning in it, so I'm going to start out with the seasoning and put a little bit in.

And this is a six-egg omelet.

It could be less.

It could be more, depending on what you want.

Put the cream in, and this is real cream.

It's 40% butterfat cream.

Now, I think this is an essential part of making an omelet is the whisking of it, because the more you fluff it, the more air you put into it, the better it's going to be, and see the color changes as you put in there?

See those giant bubbles in there?

I mean, that's air, and as you beat it, the bubbles get smaller and smaller, and it stays in there.

I mean, it just-- it's right there.

I mean, it's in the air.

The oxygen is right in the eggs, and so I love to beat them.

I'm going to switch the skillets, because this is too much for a single omelet, unless you're making a huge omelet.

So I'm going to turn the fire down low on that and let it cook, and then I'm going to start the omelet, but I still need to whisk it a bit.

I'm not a real big fan of putting a lot of oil on the omelet, so I like to take and put it on a towel and then oil the pan with that.

And you can just put it in here like this and then take a paper towel and just make sure you-- I like to get most of it out.

It doesn't matter if there's some of it left, but you want to oil the pan.

This pan is hot.

I want this to really fluff up, and I want it to, hopefully, not stick, because you don't want an omelet to stick.

Oh, yes, yes, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.

All right, we got it.

Now, when I first start an omelet, I want to give it strength, and so by giving it strength, I mean I want to give it some texture and some, you know--especially when you got a lot of ingredients to put into it.

So you start out--I start out by making the omelet real strong on the bottom by doing the whisking.

Now, you see how it's thick?

The omelet's thick, and so now I want to make sure that it don't stick, and if it does stick, I'm in trouble.

It's not sticking.

Yay.

Now, at this point, I got choices to make.

I can wait.

I can turn this over and then fold in the ingredients that goes in it, but I would prefer to put the ingredients in it now and then roll it, because as it's cooking, you know, it's just going to get a really nice color on the bottom, and then you can roll it, and you have a beautiful roll on your omelet that's going to give it a really, really great--oh, look at that.

It's going to give it a great taste, and it's going to give it a lot of character.

Now, at this point, what you do is, you start the roll process.

You just roll it.

Roll it.

Look at that.

Oh, isn't that beautiful?

Make sure I got the fire off.

I don't want to put the plate on the fire.

And you just slide it right out of there, kind of help it along the way.

And then you take and you add a little more stuff on it.

It's just a wonderful omelet, and I'm speechless, because I want to take a bite of it, and I got some right here that I want to share with me.

Ah, isn't this wonderful?

It's cool enough to eat.

Look how beautiful this is, and I know it's going to be good.

Here's omelet to you.

Mmm.

Mmm, you'll love it.

Louisiana andouille-and-egg muffin cups, yum.

You're going to really like this andouille and egg in a muffin cup.

It's just spectacular.

I mean, it really, really is good.

Andouille is one of the best things in the world, and put it in a muffin with eggs, it's absolutely perfect.

But we need to make the dough, so we've got some milk, and we need to get it to 110 degrees, and so we've got the pan sort of warm here so that it'll go quickly, and I'm going to turn it up.

And then we're going to put the thermometer in to make sure it don't go over 110 degrees, and I don't want to burn me, so I'm going to put the thermometer-- perfect; I can see it.

So we're going to add the other ingredients in.

We're going to put the flour in, and we just put it right in the mixing bowl.

And so put the whole thing in at one time.

We're going to save a little bit, actually.

I'm not going to put it all in, just in case I need extra, and we're going to put the yeast in.

Now we're going to put the salt and the sugar in.

Now, the egg I'm going to wait for a second, and I'm going to crank this up, and you just let that turn.

Let it mix.

[mixer whirring] Want to check my thermometer.

I'm at a little more than 100, so I'm going to put my eggs in it.

So I need to put this on and let it turn slowly to put the-- actually, I'll do it this way.

It'll be easier, and you'll be able to see it better.

I'll just put the milk right back in the measuring cup and just pour it in.

We've got it.

What I was looking for and what you need to look for when you're making a dough is the elasticity of it, and almost all of it--see how that's moved away from the side?

That's good, and the elasticity is really great.

Now, this has got to rise, and when it rises, it's going to change again, but it's important to rise.

Now, see, I'm going to do it-- just show you how--you see how that comes almost clean out of your hand?

That dough is ready.

There's no doubt about it.

And so the next step we're going to take, we're going to start doing the filling that goes in it, the andouille filling.

All right, we've got the pan hot, and we're going to make the filling for it.

We're going to make the good part--I mean the really good part--of it.

We're going to add a small amount of butter to begin with, because I want to brown things off, so I'm putting the butter in.

Put the onions in.

Now, the onions--the butter is going to help the onions brown, and so we want to get a good brown on them, and we want to put some seasoning in them, which also really makes the onions very, very happy.

I mean, when you put the seasonings with the butter, I mean, just happiness starts to happen almost immediately.

Look at the changing in the air.

I mean, it's just got some smoke coming out of it, and the onions, with the seasoning on it, it's going to brown real quick, and it's going to give it a wonderful taste and a spectacular smell, and it's just one of the things that really, really is important in our cooking is to get those flavors out, and I want to give it a little taste to make sure my onions and the seasoning's at a good point.

I mean, it's just--ah.

Oh, it's just wonderful.

It just really is.

Going to put--and that's a lot of seasoning, but it's because I just started out, and when you start out, I like to put a lot of seasoning and brown it, and then after I do that, then it just spreads as you add other ingredients to it.

So I added bell pepper and celery with the onions, and those of you who have watched me cook before, you know about onions and bell pepper and celery.

Those are very important.

Now, this is going to cook again.

I'm going to put andouille in it, and the andouille has been shaven to be just about the same size as the onion and the bell pepper, and so it's going to look good, and it's going to cook good together.

And so now, what we're doing is literally making a filling that's going to go in the cup, and then we're going to put the eggs on top of it.

And making a filling and putting the eggs on top of it and putting it in the oven is one of the ways that you get a huge amount of taste with it, because, of course, you got a good dough, and you could use your own.

I'm using one of my doughs, and you get the flavor from the andouille, and the sausage and the seasonings are two of the real key, important parts of it.

Ah, needs a little more seasoning.

But the flavors are wonderful.

I'm starting to get a little bit of brown on the andouille, and because I've been cooking with andouille all my life, I know the difference, and what I mean by the difference is that the taste difference once it starts browning and how it affects it, and I just absolutely don't want to do it any other way.

I've added a little bit more butter to it, and the butter is going to help the process quicken, because the fire is getting very hot now.

And we're going to add some stock to it, and it's very important to add stock instead of water, and those of you who have watched the show before know how I feel about that, because if you put water in it, you're going to take away from the flavors, because that's what water does.

It diminishes taste or diminishes flavors or dilute things, and so I'm adding a little flour now.

I want to get this to a nice thickness so when I put it on the dough, it's not going to affect the dough or not going to make it too wet.

So we're getting close to this.

I think I probably got enough there.

Now, I've got some--you got to cool it down before you put it in the muffin pans, and so I'm going to move it over here, and I've got some all ready to go, but we're going to talk about the dough a little bit.

I've got some dough here that's been rising.

I'm going to move these aside and put a little bit of flour down.

Get this towel out of the way, and just--you don't need a whole lot of flour down, and if you do need more, you can put more, and this has been rising.

And so we're going to take it and just take a small part of it and do the inside of the muffin--inside of the muffin cup.

Just let 'er roll.

Let 'er roll.

Just turn it over and roll.

You want it to be fairly thin, and you want it to be even on all sides, so you just keep doing that.

Get the middle going.

Ah, look-a-there.

It's really--and, I mean, the dough is perfect.

It really is.

We need to spray the bottom of the muffin pan.

You don't need much.

You can put just a little bit of regular oil in there and just press it in.

Then you take this and you put it inside, and you just sink it.

You simply sink it, and then you want it to just be hanging out a little bit on the top part, but you want it to be solidly on the bottom, and we've got some cold stuffing here that we've made to put inside, the dressing, and we're going to put that in.

We're going to pack it in.

Now, I need to leave enough space to put the egg in, because you don't want the egg to run out.

You just bang it on the side, and then you just drop it in.

Ooh, look-a-there.

Going to add a little bit of seasoning to the top of the egg, just to give the egg a little more appeal and energy, and you've seen what happened to seasonings in a skillet, how it browns real quick.

Well, this is going to help give the brown color to it.

I got some in the oven, and we're going to go over there.

I can't wait, because, I mean, I just know it's going to taste good.

[chuckles] 325 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes or until they look like this.

I'm going to show you, yeah.

Oh, does this look gorgeous or what?

Is this beautiful or what?

Yum.

Now if I'm lucky, you can just reach in here and take one out.

Ooh, look at that.

Isn't that beautiful?

And who won't be happy with that for a breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

And that's good cooking, good eating, good loving.

We love you guys.

Take care.

>> announcer: A cookbook featuring all the recipes from Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking is available for $15.95 plus $7.95 shipping and handling.

The cookbook features 97 recipes, color photos, and cooking tips from Chef Paul.

To order a copy of the companion cookbook, call: And pay by credit card.

Or send a check or money order to: >> Prudhomme: ♪ Well, say now, ♪ ♪ blue moon of Kentucky, ♪ ♪ keep on shining.

♪ >> Okay.

>> Prudhomme: I knew that would get him started.

Captioning by CaptionMax www.captionmax.com >> Prudhomme: And I'm going to wrap it up with the foil, and-- >> Stop.

Let's wrap and then show, okay?

>> Prudhomme: It's not fun.

I got 'em.

It looks better.

I have tongs.

Eat the cheese?

Okay, I'll do that too.

Really?

[laughing] That'll shake me up.

Na, na, na, na.

You know that thing like, na, na, na.

>> Say "yum," something good like that.

>> Prudhomme: Yum.

Ah, ah, ugh.

>> announcer: Funding for Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking was provided by: