My original plan had been to make a sour cream and chutney omelette this morning. I knew we still had a little bit of sour cream left and it was already past its expiry, so I figured that'd be a good way to use it up. Unfortunately, I was a bit too late with my clever plan and the sour cream had already gone off. This left me scrambling for an alternate breakfast plan.

I would have tried one of the sweet omelette recipes in the book except I had already added salt and pepper to the eggs and I didn't think that would be very harmonious with, for example, jam and toasted almonds. So, at that point I was pretty much locked in to doing a savoury omelette. And I had to make it with ingredients that I had on hand.

I ended up going with the caramelized onion, ham, and gruyère omelette recipe and making a few substitutions. I know that tocino SPAM and extra old cheddar may not exactly lend the same flavour to the final dish as some nice ham and guryère would, but it was still a nice omelette and, importantly, it was ready in time for the Kidlet to have breakfast before heading off to camp for the day!

Caramelized Onion, SPAM, and Cheddar Omelette

Adapted from The Good Egg by Marie Simmons

Ingredients

• 4 tsp. unsalted butter, divided
• 1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 6 large eggs
• 1/4 c. water
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1/4 c. diced SPAM
• 2 Tbsp. grated Cheddar

Directions

1. Melt 1 Tbsp. of the butter in a medium pan over medium heat.
2. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and brown (~30 minutes).¹
3. Meanwhile, beat the eggs with the water, salt, and pepper.
4. Melt the remaining 1 tsp. of butter in a large pan over medium-low heat.
5. Pour in the egg and cook until bottom and edges just begin to set (~2 minutes).
6. Push the cooked bits into the centre and let the raw egg flow to the edges of the pan. Try to smooth it out so that you have one even layer of egg again.
7. Cover and continue to cook over medium-low heat while onions caramelize and SPAM crisps.
8. Remove the onions from the pan and set aside.
9. Add the SPAM and cook until crispy.
10. Remove from pan and set aside. (You can combine it with the onions if you like.)
11. At this point the surface of the egg should be set or nearly so. Add the onion, SPAM, and cheese to one half of the omelette.
12. Fold the bare half of the omelette over to cover the topped half and cook until the cheese starts to melt.
13. Flip and cook for a minute or two more if the egg isn't quite set yet.
14. Transfer to a plate and serve.

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¹ If you have time, try turning the heat down a hair and cooking the onions for an hour or more. This should yield even better results, but requires more time and patience than I had available this morning. ^Back