9 Easy Ways To Make Your Scrambled Eggs Taste Gourmet

After spending years cooking scrambled eggs and omelets to order for diners, I've learned a few tricks along the way. In fact — not to toot my own horn here too much — I've had diners go out of their way to tell me that I made them the best eggs they'd ever had. A compliment like that means the world to me, because you can generally tell a lot about someone's cooking skills based on how they cook eggs. Anyone can recklessly rush a messy plate of rubbery eggs to the table, but creating a luscious mound of amazingly silky scrambled eggs requires real technique and finesse.

Eggs are one of those essential foods that are universally enjoyed across the world. If you see what breakfast looks like in other countries, you'll notice there's often one ingredient in common: the almighty egg. Because of this prominence, learning how to cook eggs properly is a particularly good idea. Like any other skill, improving in this arena really just amounts to knowledge and practice. And the good news is, there are a handful of ways you can easily elevate your eggs to achieve impressively delicious results. If you're looking for simple ways to make your scrambled eggs gourmet, then you're in the right place.

While there's certainly nothing wrong with using plain butter to make scrambled eggs, compound butter presents a perfect opportunity to kick the flavor up a notch. But what is compound butter and how do you use it? Compound butter is just a term for flavored butter; it's made by mixing softened butter with different ingredients. Common ingredients in compound butter recipes typically include herbs (fresh or dried) such as parsley, dill, and thyme. Citrus is also added, such as fresh lime and lemon zest. This results in a deliciously complex fat and — if you go down this route — exceptionally delicious scrambled eggs.

You might not even need to make it yourself. Check out the butter section of your favorite grocery stores — these days, some companies offer a variety of flavored butters that pair well with scrambled eggs, so you can just conveniently add a dollop to your pan. At the same time, making compound butter from scratch is quite easy: All you really need to do is mix the ingredients together and chill the resulting combo. No matter which approach you take here, you can really boost your scrambled eggs with minimal effort.

When it comes to scrambled eggs, one of my favorite ways to make them is to incorporate tortilla chips and salsa. Both of these ingredients are ready to go right out of the jar and bag, which makes using them extra appealing in the morning — no one loves having to bust out a knife and cutting board that early in the day. There are a number of Mexican-style dishes that mix tortillas and eggs in delicious ways, such as chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, and migas. I like to make a simpler version of these dishes, using nothing but tortilla chips and salsa to flavor my scrambled eggs (along with a sprinkle of cheddar cheese).

One important thing to keep in mind here is that tortilla chips are often coated in salt. You don't want your scrambled eggs to turn out too salty, so salt your eggs more lightly if you're using tortilla chips. The way I do it is like this: I scramble my eggs in the pan with some butter as I normally would, mix in a spoonful of chunky salsa towards the end of cooking, and then fold in a handful or crushed tortilla chips. Tortilla chips and salsa dramatically enhance scrambled eggs, mimicking the flavors and texture of a breakfast burrito without all the fuss of rolling one up.

The best ways to cook scrambled eggs often involve adding dairy. Simply put, it's an easy way to make scrambled eggs extra velvety and creamy. While it's common for people to add a splash of milk to scrambled eggs, I often prefer a spoonful of cream cheese. Unlike milk, cream cheese offers a rich tanginess that brings more depth of flavor. The consistency of cream cheese also has a thickness to it that adds more body to scrambled eggs. The trick here is making sure the cream cheese is softened before adding it to the scrambled eggs, because if the cream cheese is cold, it will get clumpy. When cream cheese is softened, it smoothly blends into the eggs to create a more unified texture. The best way to soften cream cheese is to let a couple spoonfuls sit out at room temperature for a little bit before you start cooking.

While plain cream cheese is certainly a good choice, opting for flavored cream cheese can make scrambled eggs even more delicious. Some flavored cream cheese options that work great with scrambled eggs include chive, jalapeno, and sun-dried tomato. The next time you're in the cheese aisle, scope out the cream cheese options at your fingertips and use some to whip up your next batch of scrambled eggs for breakfast. You can thank me later.

One of the most important things you can do to make consistently good scrambled eggs is be extra mindful about how much heat you're cooking with. With this dish, the real key to success is texture, and it's much easier to keep scrambled eggs moist and creamy when they're cooked over low heat.

Believe it or not, a lot of people don't pay close enough attention to the heat level on their burner. This can really mess up the texture of scrambled eggs, because they're so delicate. Many times, the problem is that people will crank the heat up high so that the pan heats up more quickly, but then they forget to turn it back down until it's too late. This ends up scorching the bottom of the eggs, which ruins the texture. If you're going to turn the heat up in that initial cooking period, it's important to remember to lower it back down once the pan has been warmed, before you add the eggs.

I love keeping some smoked salmon (which shouldn't be confused with lox) on hand. Not only is it delicious and packed with protein, it often lasts for over a week in the fridge, so long as it's kept unopened. This gives me a pretty big window of time to use it. While I often enjoy it on bagels with cream cheese and some fresh dill for breakfast, I also like pairing it with eggs.

Rather than adding the smoked salmon directly into the scrambled eggs, I like putting scrambled eggs on a well-toasted piece of nice bread, then gently layering a few pieces of smoked salmon on top. This creates some nice textural contrast between the crunch of the toasted bread, the tender smoked salmon, and the fluffy scrambled eggs. The rich complexity of smoked salmon combines with creamy scrambled eggs in a way that feels more luxurious than other breakfast meats, like bacon. If you have any leftover smoked salmon, try using it to make some simple sushi rolls for dinner the next night.

First things first: I'm talking about shredding parmesan cheese fresh off the block, not using the pre-shredded kind that comes in a little tub, or the powdered stuff. This is an important distinction to make, since the pre-shredded stuff doesn't melt easily (it contains anti-caking agents to prevent strands of cheese from clumping together) and the texture and flavor of the powdered stuff doesn't work well in this dish.

Because parmesan cheese is often paired with Italian food or appetizers, it often gets overlooked in the breakfast department. But the truth is that parmesan cheese's salty nuttiness adds an elegant flavor profile that really lifts the flavor of scrambled eggs into a new dimension of deliciousness. I like pairing shredded parmesan with sautéed spinach in my eggs — there's something about spinach's earthiness and parmesan that go hand-in-hand. Spinach also adds a nice pop of color to cheesy scrambled eggs that makes them look even more appetizing.

Cottage cheese is another one of my favorite breakfast ingredients. If I'm not eating it with some fresh berries and a little drizzle of honey, I'm often adding a spoonful of it to scrambled eggs. The inherent tanginess of cottage cheese adds some nice flavor that's somewhat similar to cream cheese, but with a major difference in texture. While cream cheese has a homogeneous consistency that blends in, cottage cheese offers something different: Creamy little curds that bring totally new body to scrambled eggs.

The method here couldn't be any easier. All you need to do is add a spoonful of cottage cheese right at the end of cooking your scrambled eggs. I would recommend using small curd cottage cheese, because I feel the smaller curds incorporate into the scrambled eggs better than large curds. I like adding a lot of freshly cracked black pepper on top of cottage cheese scrambled eggs too; that extra punch of pepper does a great job of balancing out the creaminess of the eggs.

As simple as scrambled eggs may seem, there are actually a lot of different approaches to the scrambling itself. Some say it's best to scramble the eggs immediately, then add the salt later on. Others swear by adding the salt while the eggs are being whisked and recommend letting the whisked, salted eggs rest for a little bit before getting cooked in the pan.

As it turns out, there's some magic that happens when eggs are whisked and seasoned with salt before they get cooked in the pan. Letting seasoned scrambled eggs sit for a few minutes before cooking allows the salt to break down the proteins in the eggs. This ends up improving the texture of the eggs, creating scrambled eggs that are ultra light and fluffy. What's cool about this is that it doesn't require much time: You only have to let the salted scrambled eggs sit for about 15 minutes before cooking. That's a small price to pay for better scrambled eggs.

Fresh herbs are one of the most versatile ingredients you can keep on hand in the kitchen. They can be used in everything from salad dressings and lemonade to salsas and sandwiches. But perhaps one of the easiest ways to utilize fresh herbs is simply as a garnish — which is how I often use them in scrambled eggs.

Hands down, my favorite fresh herb to pair with scrambled eggs is dill. All I do is chop up a little sprig and then sprinkle a pinch of it on top of the eggs when they're on the plate. There is no cooking required here, making it ideal for low-key chefs. The flavor of fresh dill adds a distinctly bright and grassy note to scrambled eggs that I honestly never get tired of. Other herbs that work well include thyme, oregano, and chives. The next time you're in the produce section, check out the fresh herbs and see what looks good, then add them to your scrambled eggs. Once you taste the difference, you'll never look back.