Leftover lettuce salad omelette - so many ways

"Done and dusted. Out of this world." Foodie China 888/YouTube

This picture comes from the end of one of the most captivating cooking videos I have seen on YouTube. In roughly 25 seconds you are shown - complete with instructions to use either your right hand or your left hand -how to make this Rolled lettuce omelette. The pictures are very clear, the voiceover is male - he calls himself Foodie China 888 and has a slight Chinese accent I think. Halfway through, a kitsch little china duck with a beanie on appears behind the cooking going on. I love it. I have no idea what the sauce is that the cut up omelette is drizzled with at the end as our chef intones the words of my opening quote.

It was not, however my starting point for this post - that was Tom Hunt's Inside out lettuce omelette which featured in a recent Guardian newsletter. More professionally styled but fundamentally the same, and his drizzled sauce didn't come out of a bottle, it came out of a jar - it's crispy chilli oil - which will brighten up virtually anything I think. In his introduction he mentions that he discovered that it has become a trendy thing on social media and he even has his own video on Instagram, which is slightly longer than our Foodie China 888 man, and it was interesting to see Tom Hunt's nervousness over the rolling bit - and he's a chef. So reassuring for us mere mortals. The Chinese Foodie 888 guy had obviously been doing this for a long time - with chopsticks moreover. The basic method is to separate your eggs, beat up both in separate bowls, mix your shredded lettuce with the whites, cook the whites and lettuce, roll it up; pour the yolks into the open side of the pan, then roll the lettuce bit over the yolk bit. Cut into slices and dress with something - you have to watch the video really.

There are heaps of other such videos online, so I think it is indeed a trend. And why not - it's simple, it looks good, and it also demonstrates the whole point for Tom Hunt - it's a brilliant way to use up wilting lettuce or lettuce left over from a dressed salad. I mean you can't really eat leftovers of that as it is because the dressing definitely wilts it. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall suggests you shake off any extra dressing, but I don't think that probably matters.

Of course you can use fresh lettuce too - don't think of lettuce of being reserved for salads. Try this Salad bag soup from Tom Hunt, or make up your own. Soup is such a forgiving thing and a place where it is simple to experiment to your heart's content. Tom Hunt added some beans to his to thicken it up, but you could use potatoes, pumpkin maybe ,although then it would be more pumpkin flavoured than lettuce.

But back to omelettes. And before I leave that rolled kind here is another variation - Chinese omelette with lettuce - It's my Dish. In this instance the omelette (eggs and lettuce) is cooked on top of a very thin tortilla which has been lightly browned. Turned, cooked, turned again - removed and rolled up then cut. This one has a sauce concocted from garlic, soy sauce paste and a little water - and there is another very short video to show you how. The author tells us that this is popular Chinese street food.

Then, on Facebook, you can find Rudyruth Nermal/Facebook making their version of a lettuce omelette - no video here, but there is a recipe and a picture, and as you can see it's a folded and stuffed omelette. I'm including this recipe because I think it demonstrates how 'ordinary' people incorporate things like off-the-shelf seasonings into their recipes, and it's a slightly different way of using the same basic ingredients:

"Do you have lettuce leftovers. Are you tired of eating salad all the time? Here’s what you can do with your lettuce leftovers. This is what I did so it won’t go to waste. I made a lettuce omelette.

First I sautéed some diced onions and then added them to the shredded lettuce in a bowl. I added Maggi Sarap pollo or Knorr seasoning to the mixture and mixed it throughly. Then I put a small amount of olive oil on a skillet, beat an egg and when the oil is hot I put the beaten egg on the skillet; let it spread in the bottom of the skillet. When egg is cooked, add some of the lettuce mixture on top of half of egg, then fold the empty half of egg to cover lettuce side. Next invert the omelette and let it cook for a minute. Do the rest of the remaining lettuce mixtures until all is cooked. Bon Appetit." Rudyruth Nermal/Facebook

Humble, but probably pretty tasty - a bit like the Shepherd's pie we shall be having for dinner tonight, although probably with more personal experimentation.

Then there is a rather more slapdash version in which the lettuce is not shredded at all and is just placed on top of the cooked eggs, folded over, and cooked a little more on both sides - Omelet with lettuces - Summer Setting. I forgot to say that there is also ham in this dish - the ham having been cooked a little first, and then the eggs added before the lettuce. The logic expressed here is that if you cook the lettuce with the egg, so that it touches the pan, then you will lose all your vitamins, etc. The author tells us it's a good breakfast dish. The toast I get, but the orange? What do you do with the orange? Perhaps you just take it away and eat it after you have finished your omelette. It's an option, but really I think however you cook your lettuce omelette it ought to be shredded.

Mind you there is an even more extreme version of not shredding your lettuce. This one Simple and different lettuce omelet - Recipe Manual/Facebook - there is a video - is slightly weird, because this cook puts whole leaves in a pan, breaks eggs on top, cooks, scatters cheese over the top, covers the pan and cooks some more. I'm not sure you would call it an omelette at all, as the eggs are still intact under the cheese. I guess you couldn't brown the cheese under a grill either, because then you would probably burn the lettuce. But isn't it wonderful that people can dream up things like this? It certainly is different.

There is however, a much more obvious way of making a lettuce omelette - just mix everything together and cook it - a bit like a frittata - and indeed I found two very European recipes Tortilla de Lechuga Malagueña (Málaga Style Lettuce Omelette) - Costa del Sol - Málaga and Omelet with romaine lettuce - Irina Barisi/Una Romana, as well as a Chinese version of this method of cooking - complete with it's snappy YouTube video Lettuce and egg omelette - Chinese Food 0805/YouTube. The only thing that makes it Chinese is the deft use of chopsticks and a sprinkling of sesame seeds - although that in itself is a small personal touch.

I also discovered that there is another classic Chinese omelette - Chinese-style layered omelette which Sho Spaeth tells us about on the Serious Eats website. This one, according to the late British Chinese cooking expert Kenneth Lo, "originated from the boat-dwellers of Wang Pu, a city on the Pearl River." It's a bit of a cheat as far as this blog is concerned because there is no lettuce - just spring onions. It is rather more complicated because of the layers which are cooked one by one, placed on a plate, sprinkled with the spring onions and a little soy sauce, topped with the next cooked omelette and so on. It's rather more elegant, but I think you could probably also do it with lettuce?

It also has the disadvantage of being somewhat lukewarm by the time you have finished the layering, but then it is traditionally served with hot rice which will mask the lukewarm bit.

And then I saw a recipe for lettuce tart - which was, of course, a bit like a quiche. I guess it's just a small step from an omelette to a quiche.

I very rarely have any leftover lettuce salad - only when we have had the family here for dinner but yes, I do then, and I never quite know what to do with it, because it goes so limp and soggy. Now I might not go the omelette route, but this whole thing has been a reminder that you can always do something with it. Do not throw it away. And I did enjoy all those clever little videos. Of course it takes more than 25 seconds to make those rolled lettuce omelettes, but not much longer - maybe a couple of minutes. More fun to watch (for me anyway) than cute dogs and tigers - or whatever. And definetely better than a takeaway pizza.

YEARS GONE BY

July 24

2025 - Leftovers, of leftovers, of leftovers

2024 - Self-doubt and a recipe

2023 - Wee drams

2022 - Pomelo

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Montepulciano wine is not from Montepulciano

2018 - Nothing

2017 - L'Hostellerie de l'Abbaye and Logis de France

2016 - Nothing