Friday I made the Khai Jiao (Thai-Style Omelet) recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

Khai Jiao is not a new dish to me; I’ve made the Hot Thai Kitchen version several times for myself. This proved helpful because The Wok version calls for eight eggs for one serving. I’m confident this is a typo as the recipe description references a “two-egg omelet.” Sure enough, cross-referencing with the Hot Thai Kitchen recipe calls for 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon of fish sauce per omelet, the same amount of fish sauce called for in The Wok. (I wish cookbooks published known errata online somewhere.) According to Kenji, the recipe is for four servings.

Moving forward with that adjustment to the recipe, I made two plain omelets for the kids and two of the “with Green Beans, Chiles, and Herbs” variants listed for my wife and me.

Two interesting points in The Wok version: one, drizzling the beaten egg into the hot oil, and two, turning the heat from high to medium with the addition of the egg. Drizzling the egg really seemed to help it puff upon hitting the oil, but I’m not so sure about turning down the heat. The flip side just didn’t seem too cook the same. Notable Hot Thai Kitchen uses a medium high heat for the whole process.

I like Lopez-Alt’s encouragement to add ingredients . I bet the “Crab, Shrimp, or Oyster” variant is delicious. Growing up my family would occasionally get crab omelets at a restaurant in Wilmington and they were so good.

I liked the omelet, but we, as a family, don’t really consider a dish like this a dinner. My wife and son both thought it was only fine. My daughter refused to try it. I’ll likely continue to make it for myself as an easy lunch, and perhaps I’ll cook the seafood variant for my mom, who I think would enjoy it.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.