A Twenty Something’s Journey To Becoming An Amateur Chef: Hakuna Frittata

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I used to cook. Like, a lot. I worked in a restaurant for two years and tried my hardest to keep that skill once I left. Well, it’s been almost 3 years, and whatever I had was gone.

This is my attempt to get it back.

Hakuna Frittata

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve been crazy busy at work lately. I didn’t have a chance to actually cook at all last week, partially because I was neck deep in spreadsheets and partially because by the time I got home all I wanted to do was chill out and watch Stranger Things. Either way, after spending a week eating frozen pizza and tacos, I figured it was time to chill out and try something a little healthier. Time to toss on something smooth and hit the kitchen.

Here’s what you’ll need:

-6 eggs
-About half of a green bell pepper
-Actually, about half of a red bell pepper too
-Maybe, like, a small handful of onions
-Some asparagus stalks. I’m talking, like, 3-4
-3-4 grape tomatoes
-Any other veggies you want
-Olive oil
-Salt and pepper

Let me pose a question to you: What is the difference between a frittata and a quiche? A lot of people might not know. I’m one of those people. All I know is I made this one time in college and was able to eat it for leftovers for about a day or two afterwards which I consider a win in and of itself.

Here’s what you’ll do:

1. Crack 6 eggs into a big ass bowl. Scramble them with whatever you want. Whisk? Sure. Big fork? That works too. Rapid finger movement? As long as you’re not hurting yourself, go for it. Just remember to preheat the oven to 400 degrees when you’re done.

2. Start slicing up your veggies. I personally like my peppers long and thinly sliced because that’s how they came at my favorite pizza place in college. If you want to dice them, you certainly can. As for the asparagus, I would chop off that bottom inch or so because it’s super tough to chew through, and then I would just keep chopping them in one inch increments. We’re going to want our onions a little bit stringier this time, so maybe do that thing where you cut one big onion ring off and then cut that into quarters. Finally, we’re just going to slice our grape tomatoes in half. Once you’re done with all of this, toss it all into a cast iron skillet with a good amount of olive oil to grease it up.

3. Toss the cast iron skillet with your veggies onto the stove on medium to high heat. Big thing to note about cast iron skillets: the entire damn skillet gets hot. That means the handle too. So when you grab this motherfucker, make sure you have a dry dish towel or something around the handle. Perhaps wear an oven mitt. Your call. Anyway, we’re going to toss our veggies around until there’s a good amount of burn on them. Not, like, they’re burned, but that they have those stove marks on them.

4. Remember those eggs? Time to dump those bad boys in with the veggies. The goal here is to have the scrambled eggs cover the entire pan. We’ll wait for a little while here, maybe do that thing where you put the spatula behind the edges of the eggs to let the uncooked eggs seep behind the cooked part so that they cook faster.

5. Once the base of the eggs has cooked, we’re actually going to take the entire skillet and put it in the oven. The bottom of the eggs is cooked, apparently this cooks the top portion too without burning the bottom. I don’t really understand the science. We’ll let it sit in there for either 20 minutes or until the top is a little bit browned over.

Once you take it out of the oven, you can slice it up just like you would a pizza and eat it however you want. Frittatas really aren’t that hard to make, and if you manage to cook them without fucking it up, they can be pretty damn good. What sucks is that if you do fuck it up and burn it, you run the risk of having your apartment smell like burnt eggs.

Overall, I’m rating this baby a 7/10. It’s not my absolute favorite, but it gets the job done and makes you feel like you’re eating pizza so that’s gotta count for something.

If you decide to try and replicate this meal—which I think would be awesome—feel free to send me pics and tips for what you did that might make it better..

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Hey, I saw this on Post Grad Problems. Check it out.

Charlie

Using sarcasm as a defense mechanism since 1993. At any given moment I'm either tired, drunk, or stressed out. Get at me at charliepgp@gmail.com or whatever.

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