Hard mode, I promise
I promise I’ll talk about non-food things very shortly, but for now I made scrambled eggs at brunch recently and everybody thought I was some kind of wizard. I am not. The first thing you do at prep is to start the scrambled eggs. The last thing you do is actually make them.
I cracked two dozen eggs for 14 people and whisked them with about 3 ounces of heavy cream and a four-finger pinch of salt. Obviously you can scale this down, but none of the ingredients are optional. A more reasonable proportion for two people is to fourth this, using 5 or 6 eggs with an ounce of heavy cream, about a tablespoon of salt, and about half a stick of butter. If you don't have heavy cream on hand, don't make scrambled eggs.
The salt goes in early in order to bind up the proteins that exist in the yolk. You can whisk occasionally to keep everything from settling, and as you do you will notice your eggs turning from yellow-orange to a dark orange. They need to sit for at least a half-hour before the next step. If you don't have that amount of time, don't make scrambled eggs.
Once you're ready, heat about two sticks of butter in a deep saucepan, deep enough to handle lots of whisking and enough butter to make sure the eggs don't stick. Set to medium low and whisk constantly, making sure you are scraping the bottom & sides with the whisk to keep as much egg from sticking as possible. It will look like nothing is setting until suddenly, within seconds, you have perfectly made scrambled eggs. Turning off the heat and serving into a bowl is not optional, since you need to stop the cooking right away. This much butter is also not optional. If you want less butter, don't make scrambled eggs.
Again, the absolute last thing you should do before you serve everything is to scramble the eggs. Scrambled eggs should be eaten as quickly as possible once they are off the heat.
Scrambled eggs have this impression of being easy mode. They are not. If you don't have the time or ingredients to pull this off, it's so much easier to fry or poach an egg. The goal is always to honor the ingredients you have within the time & constraints that you are given.
I think this is the lesson: not the recipe itself, but rather that if you’re given something, you should do the best that you can with it. Applied here, it is better to full-ass a poached egg (which takes 3 minutes) than to half-ass scrambled eggs.