Padma Lakshmi Has A Simple Response To A Bizarre Egg Recipe

Scrambled eggs. How is it that a food so seemingly simple can generate so much debate and discussion? Gordon Ramsay's scrambled egg recipe is legendary, and it seems like everyone has their own secret ingredient or hack for making scrambled eggs worthy of adoration. Really, though, light and fluffy scrambled eggs should be as simple to make as cracking a few eggs, beating them, and throwing them in a pan. But perhaps in an effort to stand out, it seems like chefs and food writers alike are eager to come up with ways to reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately, not all of them make a lot of sense.

Padma Lakshmi happens to agree. The "Top Chef" judge and James Beard Award-winner (she earned that award for "Taste the Nation" in June 2022) recently made her scrambled eggs opinion known on Twitter after Food Insider posted, "I made scrambled eggs in a slow cooker, and it was worth waiting an hour for them to cook." It was accompanied by a photo of the resulting scrambled eggs that looked, well, rather unique. Lakshmi's quote-tweeted the post and echoed what a lot of people in the comments seemed to be thinking: "Respectfully, no."

As anyone who's spent any time on social media can probably guess, the comments on the original poster's tweet and Padma Lakshmi's reply were pretty heated and entertaining. On the original tweet, commenters mostly just didn't understand why one would choose such a lengthy cooking method to make a dish that usually takes just minutes. "I make eggs in about 5 min lol," said one. And of course, the name of the host of "Hell's Kitchen" was invoked. "Gordon Ramsay made eggs in 5, you can't do better than his method," shared another Twitter user.

While Lakshmi's reply was a polite rejection, some commenters suggested her response was too nice. "No need to be respectful about this travesty," joked one Twitter user; "Maybe if my stove, oven, Instant Pot and microwave were all broken..." wrote another. While many people pointed out that compared to regular scrambled eggs, these ones take forever to cook, the Insider article in question views things through a different lens: "Although many slow cooker recipes take six to eight hours, making eggs in this appliance only takes about 60 minutes." They're not wrong. It might be time-consuming for an egg recipe, but in the world of slow cookers, 60 minutes is nothing. So sure, one could say a slow cooker recipe that only takes an hour actually is a quick and easy slow cooker hack, respectfully.