1 egg Japanese Omelette

Have you ever had a Japanese omelet before?  They have all these uber thin layers upon layers of egg in them.  It's like paper thin crepe-like omelettes.  I don't know how to explain it.  If you've never had it before then you are missing out.  Go get yourself a container of Baileys Ice cream and have a good cry.

Anyhow, many moons ago, before I was married and knew how to cook, I attempted to prepare tamagoyaki.  It was a dreadful and horrible failure.  Yeah.  I had a Japanese cookbook and I followed the directions exactly.  I got a whole pan of scrambled eggs.  Whoopie.  Talk about a let down.


As luck would have it, I happened across a recipe called Tamagoyaki for one from Just Bento. It only uses one egg!  That is my kind of recipe. If I totally screw it up, I've not wasted a bunch of ingredients.

I think I did a fairly decent job of making the egg layers.  You can sort of see the layers in middle of the omelet in the photo above.  It's not exactly perfect, but closer to the real thing than any other attempt I've made in the past.  Yay me!

1-egg tamagoyaki from Just Bento
1 ‘large’ egg
1 Tbs. water
1 tsp. soy sauce (regular or light-colored; here I used regular, since that’s all I had in stock)
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 Tbs. bonito flakes (optional, for added flavor)
Vegetable oil for cooking

Mix all ingredients together well with a fork or chopsticks. Heat up a small (6 ") non-stick frying pan and spread thinly with oil (or use a non-stick cooking spray). From this point on, it only takes about a minute and a half!

Once the pan is hot (if you put a droplet of water in, it dances and evaporates immediately), pour in the egg. Stir gently with a fork or chopsticks until it’s half-set. Fold in half with a spatula. Tidy up the other side a bit with the spatula. Fold the one third of the egg over with the spatula. Press down. Fold the other end of the egg over with the spatula. Press the whole thing down. Flip over, and press again. Remove from the heat before it browns too much. (If you use light colored soy sauce, it won’t get as brown.) Cut in half and put cut side up, it is nicely multi-layered.