Delicious Tomato Omelette Recipe for a Quick Breakfast

It’s been quite a while since we last published a frittata recipe. Five years to be exact. I’m not sure why. An omelette is just the kind of carefree, quick and easy dish we like to feature around here, especially this time of year when the weather is at its hottest and our urge to cook is at its lowest. But after a long hiatus, we’re pleased to share this delightful tomato omelette (Tomato Frittata) recipe with you.

And as we’ve mentioned before, a bit like pasta and risotto, you can make an omelette with just about any flavorings you can imagine. In the summer, a tomato omelettefilled with tomatoes and basil—especially if they’re fresh from your garden or local farmers market—is a marvelous choice. You can add bits of mozzarella if you like, in which case you have a kind of caprese omelette or perhaps a margherita pizza without the dough?

You can whip up a tomato omelette at the spur of the moment for a quick weekend dinner. If you cut it into little squares, you’ll have a fine appetizer, or finger food for cocktails, a picnic or cookout. Leftovers are equally delicious in a sandwich made with a crusty bread. And since it’s just as delicious at room temperature—even better in fact if you ask me—it’s an ideal make ahead dish. Not bad for 20 minutes’ work.

Ingredients

Serves 3-4 as a second course, 8 as an appetizer/starter

• 6-8 eggs, depending on their size and appetites
• 4 smallish tomatoes (about 200-250g/7-8 oz total), cut into wedges, or 200g (7 oz) cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
• A handful of fresh basil leaves, to taste
• 25g (1 oz) freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano or pecorino cheese, or more to taste
• 1-2 garlic cloves
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Optional:

• 50g (2 oz) mozzarella, cut into cubes, or more to taste

Directions

In a medium sized skillet, sauté the garlic very gently in olive oil until it is just beginning to brown around the edges. Remove the garlic.

Raise the heat and add the tomato wedges. Sauté the tomatoes over a live flame, tossing from time to time, until they have begun to soften and any excess liquid has evaporated. The tomatoes may caramelize some around the edges, which is fine.

Transfer the tomatoes to a plate and let them cool for a few minutes.

Meanwhile beat the eggs well with the grated cheese and a good pinch of salt and good grinding of black pepper. Fold in the basil leaves and the now tepid tomatoes, along with any juices they may have exuded, and if using the mozzarella cubes.

Heat more olive oil in a 23cm/9 inch skillet. When hot, pour the egg mixture into the skillet. Stir the eggs to distribute the filling ingredients evenly. Lift the eggs to let some of the uncooked eggs flow into the bottom.

Lower the flame and cover the skillet. Following the instructions in our post on How to Make an Omelette, proceed to cook the eggs on one side and then the other over a gentle flame.

Set on a serving platter to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes

TO tomato omelette it is one of the easiest kinds of dishes to make in the Italian repertoire. There is one tricky bit, however, which is flipping it over to cook the other side. As mentioned in the How to Make a Frittata post, there are various ways to go about this. These days, I favor just running the top under the broiler of my toaster-oven. It’s stupidly simple.

The other trick, if you will, is to cook the omelette over fairly gentle heat. If you flame is too high you risk browning the outside before the egg has time to set inside. Some (including Marcella Hazan) say that high heat toughens the eggs, though personally I haven’t found this to be the case.

Finally, you want to make sure the omelette doesn’t come out soggy. For that, you want nicely meaty tomatoes. And the initial sauté of the tomatoes helps, too. This recipe works equally well with smallish regular tomatoes—plum tomatoes are a good choice here—cut into wedges, or cherry or grape tomatoes. If using regular tomatoes, you can peel them if you like. Just parboil them very briefly (30 seconds max) to loosen their skins. After that it’s short work to peel them with a knife. Personally, I don’t bother. I’d avoid very large beefsteak type tomatoes for this dish.

Variations

In many recipes, the initial sautéed for a tomato omelette it is made with onions rather than garlic. Others call for oregano or parsley rather than fresh basil. As mentioned, the mozzarella is optional, and you can sub out other meltable cheeses if you like.

The treatment of the main filing ingredient can vary from recipe to recipe. In many modern recipes, especially those using grape or cherry tomatoes, you skip the initial sautéing of the tomatoes and just add raw tomatoes to the egg mixture. They do cook some, of course, along with the eggs. But personally I rather prefer the softer texture and more intense tomato flavor the sauté provides. The sauté brief also eliminates excess liquid that might make your omelette soggy.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jeanne Caròla Francesconi has an old timey recipe for tomato omelette in her classic cookbook, Neapolitan cuisinewhere the tomatoes aren’t just lightly sautéed but cooked down into an actual tomato sauce, which is mixed with the eggs and cheese.

If you’re a lover of hefty foods, Francesconi also has a recipe taken from early 19th century Neapolitan gastronome Ippolito Cavalcanti. The filling is enriched with bits of stale bread, soaked in milk and squeezed dry, together with cubes of Neapolitan salami and smoked scamorza cheese. An interesting choice if you want something more substantial, though I’d reckon this recipe is a bit heavy for most of us moderns.

Baking your omelette

If you’re willing to turn on your oven, you can also make yours tomato omelette in the oven. Just pour all the ingredients into a well greased baking dish. Bake in a hot (200C/400F) oven until set and brown on top, about 15-20 minutes. This is particularly nice if you want to cut the resulting square or rectangular omelette into little squares as a kind of finger food, as we see in this post.

Related