Proper preparation of veggies for an egg scramble

Question

I really enjoy cooking eggs for breakfast, and sometimes I'm feeling fancy enough to add veggies into my scramble. However, I'm never sure how to prepare the veggies to put into the scramble. If I don't cook them, usually they are too crunchy or tough (and sometimes make the scramble watery), and don't taste good with the eggs. If I try to cook them before adding them, they usually come out too dry/overdone. I figure this might depend on which veggies I'm cooking so here are my common favorites: tomatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions (suggestions welcome!)

To make my question more specific (and hopefully more answerable): how can I prepare the veggies so that they are not crunchy, but not over-cooked?

Answer 1

Those 4 vegetables (and fungi) all require different cooking times. Chop the onion and pepper into dices of roughly the same size, to ensure even cooking. Get them frying, with a little salt which will help to soften them, over a medium heat while you slice the mushrooms, then add those: it is more or less impossible to overcook a mushroom incidentally.

Once the onion has softened but still has some bite, chop the tomato and add that, then add your eggs more or less straight away - the tomato doesn't need much cooking.

Answer 2

While I agree with Elendil, in that different veggies need different cooking times, you can also cover them from some of the cooking time as the steam tends to reduce crunch.

I do this when I cook Torillia with potato as otherwise it can take a while for the potato to get soft.

Answer 3

To suppliment Elendil's answer:

Also, if you want your scramble to be more like a fritatta then just pour the eggs in over the cooking veggies and scramble. This is good, especially with some cheese in it.

On the other hand, if you like a "fluffy" scamble with lots of big curds of eggs, cook the veggies, dump them out of the pan and drain off any liquid, wipe the pan, get it very hot again with some oil, throw in the eggs, scramble madly and pour the veggies back in when the eggs are halfway cooked. The only way you can get big puffy eggs is in a pan which is at least 300F, which means it needs to be empty.

Also: liquid from cooking veggies is your enemy when scrambling eggs. Try to avoid adding too many "moist" veggies, such as tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini or sweet potatoes, at once.