Frying the Perfect Egg.

Cafe Society
21

Former short-order breakfast cook here; I’ll tell you the way I used to do it there, and still mostly do at home.

Take a 7 in. aluminum pan, like this one. Add a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Heat for about 15-30 seconds over low heat – on my gas stove at home, the right flame is just a little above the “low” setting on the dial. 30 seconds is for a cold pan, 15 is if the pan has been in use recently and is already warm. Swirl the oil in the pan, and then dump all of it out, leaving just what has coated the pan.

Place eggs in pan. You probably want to break them into a bowl first, but with practice, that’s really not necessary. You can then just wait until the whites are fully set and serve, but to most people’s taste, if you do so, either the yolks will be a little over, or the white will be undercooked, especially around and between the yolks.

Here’s the trick to deal with that: Eggs are not just white and yolk. When you put the eggs in the pan, you’ll notice that the whites are actually two distinct bits – there’s the white that spreads out evenly throughout the pan, but there’s also a sac of white that forms up next to yolk. When you first put the eggs in the pan, take an iced tea spoon an gently break that sac. Give it a gentle scramble to spread it. Then, once the whites start to set – around the time you could actually pour them onto a plate and have them still retain their shape, but while there is still uncooked white on top of a layer of cooked white – take that same spoon and gently scrape the uncooked white from between the two yolks. Don’t scrape all the way to the pan! Leave that cooked white there, and even a bit of the uncooked. The white between the yolks is always last to cook, and if you scrape some of it out of there, you’ll get a more even cook without overcooking the remainder of the eggs.

That’s the way we did it, but of course you can vary things. Oils other than vegetable are fine. Feel free to use Pam spray – it’s a pain in the ass to heat a tablespoon of oil just to dump it out as a home cook. In the restaurant, we just dumped it back in the oil container for use on the next order.

People who tell you to baste the eggs are just wrong. Doing so is fine, but then, obviously, you have basted eggs and not sunny side up eggs. Don’t cover the eggs while they cook – if you do, the small amount of white that invariably clings to the tops of the yolks will whiten, and you’ll have a nice edible egg, but it won’t have the pretty, entirely yellow yolk that is the hallmark of well cooked sunny side up eggs.

Finally, if you want the perfect sunny side up eggs that you see in menu pictures, cheat. Crack two eggs, separate the yolks and the whites. Cook the whites, plate, and then place the uncooked yolks on top.

22

Crunchy fried eggs? You may as well leave bit of shell shrapnel in there.

Sunny side up, runny yolk, non crunchy white, set the top of white with a propane torch.

23

Are the eggs being stored in the refrigerator? That’s a big issue: cold whites will be rubbery and cold yolks will produce inconsistent cooking. Place the eggs in a bowl of very hot water for at least 10 minutes before cooking.

Crack into medium-hot pan of butter. Edges should start to bubble immediately. Fold the edges into the main body so that they don’t burn. Cover for 60 - 90 seconds then flip. If the pan temperature is correct, this will be easy and the yolks will not break. Cook for 30 - 60 more according to preference of runnyness.

24

I have a 7-inch nonstick skillet which is kept SOLELY for cooking eggs and omelettes. It makes a big difference.

Medium high heat, teaspoon of butter. Break eggs into pan, add salt and pepper. Dip your fingers into water and flick a few drops into the pan, then cover immediately. Count off one minute. Uncover – the albumen over the yolks will have steamed and whitened – and slips eggs onto plate. Perfectly cooked whites and nice loose yolks, and you haven’t assumed the terrifying risk of flipping the egg and breaking the yolk and ruining breakfast AND EVERYTHING.

If you get good enough through practice, flipping the egg isn’t all that difficult. Lift the pan and tip it; gravity will help you slide the egg onto the spatula. Turn the egg gently back into the pan and turn off the heat. That wasn’t so hard!

25

[ul]
[li]Eggs at room temp. When I made breakfast this morning, I placed two eggs in a bowl to sit on the counter until tomorrow AM I’ve done this for years.[/li][li]Small non-stick good quality fry pan. I know people love their cast iron, but I have an anodized aluminum Calphalon pan that I have used for at least 10 years. I know exactly how it heats up.[/li][li]Over medium/low heat for 10 minutes to get the pan to the right temp.[/li][li]A teaspoon or maybe a tad more of butter, from the butter bell on the counter, so it too is at room temperature.[/li][li]Butter melts, I swish it around in the pan so it’s all covered.[/li][li]Meanwhile, eggs have been cracked and are waiting in a small bowl[/li][li]In they go![/li][li]Salt and fresh cracked pepper.[/li][li]I like over medium, so they fry till I can tell the yolks are starting to firm up. just a little.[/li][li]Lift the pan from the burner, tilt forward so the egg starts to slide, then a flick of the wrist and she is perfectly flipped. I break a yolk maybe once out of 30 flips.[/li][li]Salt and fresh cracked pepper this side too.[/li][li]Another minute or so, and slide out onto plate.[/li][/ul]

I am a creature of habit. I have these eggs, 4 strips of bacon, 2 pieces of toast with butter and a smear of preserves almost every day. Once a week or so, I’ll do a “Full English” which replaces two strips of my bacon with sausage links, adds a condiment bowl sized serving of baked beans, and the same size of cooked mushrooms. During the summer this also means adding two halves of a roasted tomato.

26

Proper English beans, or some American abomination?

That is a proper fry-up. Good job! Can you do mine about a minute longer on both sides? I’m a barbarian and want my eggs dead.

27

Aceplace has it right here.
I just use the spatula to gently coax waves of bacon grease onto the surface of the huevo. I’m sure this is how they do it in Heaven. :slight_smile:

28

I’m not a chef and I like my eggs in a way most people would say are over cooked but I do have some general suggestions:

  1. Even if you want a soft yolk, covering for a minute or two helps set the white so you don’t get that gooky stuff.

  2. Eggs will cook a bit even after the heat is off so you should turn off the heat before you think the eggs are ready.

29

I was gonna suggest this. Steam-basting (this method) is probably the easiest, most fool-proof method if you’re having trouble. If I do them this way, I use medium to medium-high heat and about a good tablespoon or so of water. The difference between this method and the regular sunny-side-up-fry-without-a-cover method is that the yolks will develop a translucent white film over them, rather than being completely yellow. They end up looking like this. The yolk will still be runny (or not, if you prefer it that way and cook it longer.) I call them “fake over easy eggs.”

As for tips about doing eggs over easy, I suggest a good, non-stick pan. I still use a bit of cooking spray and/or butter. Crack the eggs into the pan over medium to medium-high heat. When the bottom is done, I take a spatula and lift the edges while shaking the pan laterally to make sure the egg is completely released from the pan and able to slide well. Then the tricky part comes (and you need practice for this). You have to flip the eggs with the pan. You kind of point the pan down and out, let the eggs slide down it, and when it reaches the lip, you flick your wrist to get it to flip up and over (I think I jerk my hand back as well when I do the flip. It’s a bit hard to describe the motion–I’m sure there’s Youtube videos that show it.) I only do two eggs at a time this way. I’m not good enough to get three eggs flipped consistently without screwing it up. You can also try flipping with a spatula in the pan.

30

Bumping this to link to a new article by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt on the subject of frying eggs over super high heat so that they taste really fried. It’s a good read. Crispy Fried Eggs Recipe

31

You need a non-stick pan of sufficient quality that the inside bottom is really flat, and small enough so the whites are equally distributed across the surface, but not too thinly.

I bought a set of T-Fal Professional fry pans about a year ago and the 8 inch is perfect for 2 eggs.

I see they make a 4.75 inch called the “One Egg Wonder.”

32

Try froaching your eggs.

This morning I fried a strip of bacon, removed the bacon, froached an egg in the bacon grease, crumbled the bacon into a bowl of grits, put the egg on top and mixed the yoke into the grits. Good stuff.

33

We eat over easy eggs here. (I never cared for the ‘over’ in egg descriptions. ‘Over easy’ sounds like ‘too easy’ instead of ‘easy and flipped over’.) First I melt a goodly amount of butter in a heavy, 10" non-stick frying pan. This is for four eggs, and I like them to swim. I melt the butter with the element set to ‘low’ while the bacon is cooking. When I’m ready to cook the eggs, I put the pan on the (large) element the bacon was on and set the heat to six. When the bottoms of the whites start to set, I separate the eggs with a spatula. This allows more white to get to the pan. When the whites are just about half-done, I flip the eggs over, being careful not to break the yolks. (Hey, if we wanted hard yolks we’d go to McDonald’s or use the breakfast sandwich maker or something.) At this point it takes about the same time for the eggs to finish cooking as it does to serve up the hashbrowns on the warmed plates. We put the eggs on top of the hashbrowns so that the yolk can run over them.

For those wondering why I don’t cook my eggs in bacon grease, we like a lighter flavour for hashbrowns and eggs, which is a heavy breakfast already. When I make ‘home fries’ the potatoes and onions are fried in the bacon grease and the eggs are steamed on top when the potatoes are done.

34

Basting is a great method to use (add a bit of water, let it boil, and then cover), but… it’s very easy to overcook. Even 15 extra seconds can ruin the egg and turn the yolk solid. I used to baste all the time, but too many overcooked eggs. Now, I use the “very low heat” method. Works great. Once the white is fully set, the yolk is still nice and fluid.

I do agree that butter or bacon grease adds a nice taste, but olive oil works reasonably well, too.