Asparagus Omelette with Goat’s Cheese

Main Course

A softly set French omelette filled with quickly sautéed green asparagus and creamy chèvre frais, served with dressed rocket leaves on the side. The eggs are pale and yielding, the asparagus keeps a bit of bite, and the goat's cheese melts just enough to turn creamy and tangy throughout. This is spring cooking at its most straightforward, seasonal, fast, and properly good.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Total Time 20 minutes mins

Servings 2

Ingredients 

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For the asparagus filling

• 200 gr green asparagus woody ends snapped off, cut into 3–4cm pieces
• 15 gr unsalted butter
• salt and black pepper

For each omelette (makes 2)

• 3 eggs
• 1 gr unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp cold water
• salt and black pepper

To finish

• 80 gr goat cheese
• 1 handful rocket
• 1 drizzle olive oil
• 1 squeeze lemon juice

Equipment

• 1 frying pan for the asparagus
• 1 frying pan 20–22cm, for the omelette
• whisk
• spatula
• mixing jug

Instructions

• 1. Cook the asparagus

  Melt the butter in a small frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the asparagus pieces and cook for 3-4 minutes, tossing occasionally, until just tender with a little colour on them. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside and keep warm. You'll divide this between two omelettes.
• 2. Prepare the eggs

  Crack 3 eggs into a bowl. Add a tablespoon of cold water, a good pinch of salt, and some black pepper. Beat firmly with a whisk until the yolks and whites are fully combined and the mixture is slightly frothy. Don't over-beat it, you want it mixed, not aerated. Do this fresh for each omelette rather than beating all six eggs at once.
• 3. Cook the omelette

  This is the part that requires attention. Heat your non-stick pan over a high heat until properly hot. Add the butter and let it foam. The moment the foam starts to subside, not before, not after, pour in the beaten eggs.

  Immediately start stirring with a spatula in quick, small circular movements, pulling the set egg from the edges towards the centre whilst shaking the pan gently with your other hand. Keep going for about 30–40 seconds until the eggs are about 80% set but still look slightly wet and glossy on top. This happens fast.
• 4. Add the filling and fold

  Scatter half the asparagus over one half of the omelette. Add half the crumbled goat cheese. Now stop stirring and let the omelette sit for about 10 seconds, just enough for the base to set without colouring.

  Tilt the pan away from you at about 45 degrees. Using the spatula, fold the unfilled half of the omelette over the filled half. Slide it onto a warm plate. The omelette should be pale, slightly golden at most, with no brown. If it looks like scrambled eggs wrapped in a pancake, the heat was too high or you cooked it too long. It comes with practice.
• 5. Repeat for the second omelette

  Wipe the pan quickly with kitchen paper, return to the heat, and repeat with the remaining eggs and filling. Serve both immediately.
• 6. Dress the rocket and serve

  Toss the rocket leaves with a small drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of salt. Serve alongside the omelette. Simple as that.

Notes

• Pan size is not optional. A 20-22cm non-stick pan for a 3-egg omelette is the standard for a reason. Too big and the eggs spread too thin and set too quickly. Too small and you get a thick, under-set slab. If yours is bigger, use 4 eggs.
• Don’t brown the omelette. This is the most important rule in French omelette-making. The moment you see colour on the outside, it’s overcooked by French standards. High heat for speed, not for colour.
• The cold water trick is worth doing. A tablespoon of cold water beaten into the eggs creates a slightly lighter, more tender result. Some French cooks use a splash of crème fraîche instead. Both work.
• Goat cheese is what you want here, the soft, fresh kind that crumbles easily and melts into the eggs. Aged, rind-on chèvre is a different thing entirely and won’t work the same way.
• Asparagus season runs April to June in France. Outside those months, this recipe is still worth making, but it’s best when asparagus is actually in season and tastes like something.
• Serve on warm plates. A French omelette cools and firms up quickly. Cold plates are the enemy.

About this recipe

The French omelette is one of the foundational tests of French cooking. Auguste Escoffier, the 19th-century chef who codified much of classical French cuisine, considered the ability to make a proper omelette an essential measure of a cook’s skill. The reasoning is straightforward: there is nowhere to hide. No sauce to cover a mistake, no garnish to distract. Just eggs, butter, heat, and technique.

The classic French omelette traces its roots back to at least the 16th century. The word itself is thought to derive from the old French alumette or alemette, meaning a thin blade, which describes the shape reasonably well. By the 17th century it appeared regularly in French culinary writing, and by the 19th century it had become a symbol of French domestic cooking at its most essential.

What distinguishes a French omelette from the kind cooked everywhere else is almost entirely a matter of approach. The eggs are beaten thoroughly but not excessively. The pan is properly hot before the butter goes in. The cooking takes less than two minutes, start to finish. The result is pale, soft, and barely set in the centre, folded rather than rolled, with no browning on the outside. In France, a brown omelette is considered overcooked. It is not a matter of opinion.

Asparagus and eggs have a long history together in French cooking. The combination appears in French recipe collections from the 18th century onwards, often in the form of omelettes or soft-scrambled eggs served alongside or topped with asparagus tips. It makes obvious sense, the slight bitterness and grassy flavour of asparagus cuts through the richness of the eggs in the same way that lemon cuts through butter.

Green asparagus, specifically, became increasingly popular in French cooking through the 20th century alongside the white asparagus that had dominated French tables for centuries. White asparagus from the Loire Valley and Alsace remains a significant seasonal event in France, harvested before the spears break the soil surface and prized for its tenderness and mild, slightly sweet flavour. Green asparagus, allowed to grow above ground and develop chlorophyll, has a more assertive, grassy character that works particularly well with eggs and goat’s cheese.

The addition of goat cheese is a more modern touch, but a thoroughly French one. Goat’s cheese production is woven into the landscape of the Loire Valley, the Périgord, and Provence, and soft, fresh chèvre appears in French cooking in everything from salads and tarts to pasta and omelettes. Its tangy, creamy character is a natural partner for asparagus, and the way it softens and melts slightly against the warm eggs without fully disappearing gives this asparagus omelette a richness and depth that a harder cheese simply wouldn’t.

This is the kind of recipe that rewards understanding rather than just following instructions. Learn to make a proper French omelette and you have a fast, endlessly adaptable weeknight supper that works with whatever happens to be in the fridge. The asparagus and goat’s cheese version is simply one of the best.