Oh, poached eggs with a runny yolk are the best! I love smashing it all up in a cup and then spooning the resulting runny, gooley, goodness over a piece of buttered toast.
I used to not get the appeal of runny eggs, then one time my toast fell onto the runny egg that I had order… and I picked up and lo and behold angels were faintly singing in the background.
I took a bite of this gooey mixture, and realized what I’d been doing wrong all these years.
It’s a sauce. There’s NO point to runny eggs unless you’re getting some sort of toast, then it becomes the delicious manna from heaven. Mmmm… eggy weggies…
I believe that the divide between runny and solid yoke is like the difference between tender, flavorful medium rare steak and tough, dry well-done steak - post-facto rationalization for a problem with the idea. I believe that most “well done” steak eaters would prefer medium rare if they were served it while wearing a blindfold. The flavor of a runny yolk is undeniably more intense, but I think those who can’t handle runny mainly have a problem with the texture.
Hard yolks are disgusting, mealy abominations. Just as the OP doesn’t understand the allure of runny yolks, I don’t understand how anyone can prefer solid yolks. The only time I will tolerate hard egg yolks is in hard-boiled eggs–not on their own, but being used as a part of another dish, like pickled eggs, a garnish for a soup, egg salad, etc. Growing up, for me, one of my favorite suppers was a couple of soft boiled eggs, some salt, and a piece of Polish rye bread. A rich, runny egg yolk with just a touch of salt (or truffle salt, if you’re feeling particularly decadent) is one of life’s simple pleasures.
To each his own.
If I want a hard yolk, I’ll eat a hard-boiled egg. Occasionally, I will cook a fried egg a little longer so there’s just a teeny bit of runniness if I plan on putting the egg in a sandwich, but I still like a little goo to drip out, I make an exception for Egg McMuffins. But otherwise I always like some runny yolk. I recently discovered the wonders of a soft-boiled egg. I never tried them before because they sounded disgusting and I always thought the whites wouldn’t be set, but they are and of course you must have toast soldiers to dunk in the yolk.
Slight hijack; does anyone know what this cooking method is called? It’s how my mother cooked eggs and I used to cook this way many years ago but now I prefer less oil. For a long time I never ordered anything but scrambled in restaurants because they didn’t cook fried eggs like my mom’s.
She would heat up a small puddle of cooking oil, break the egg in the pan, let the whites set and then spoon some hot oil over the yolk so that just the top would cook but it was still runny inside. It was like an over easy egg without turning it over. I liked this method because there was less chance of breaking your yolk accidentally and also less chance of overcooking the whites. I heard the name of this method once but I can’t remember what it was called.
When a yoke solidifies, most of the flavor goes away. Even with an omelet, I like a certain amount of runniness. Solid yokes are strictly for hard-boiled.
I’m not a huge fan of hard boiled eggs, and having grown up with constant runny yolks, I’m definitely in the “scrambled” camp. I love eggs, but the gooey yolks are just…bleh. I’m an omelet fan, through and through.
I’m not a picky eater by any standards*, and as I have a list of “disgusting” or “unusual” things I want to eat/have eaten (scrambled pig’s brains is on the list to be eaten, squid, gator, and tongue have already been eaten), I don’t think anyone could argue that I’m grossed out by the idea of runny yolks.
So starting in my teens I decided that the small list of foods I don’t care for was too large, and started trying these foods cooked various ways. I still don’t really see the point of water chestnuts, but everything else on the list I now genuinely enjoy. Except runny yolks. I’ll tolerate them, certainly, but if given a choice I’ll take my eggs scrambled or, less frequently, over hard.
The problem is two-fold. I don’t really like the flavor of the yolk at all, when fully cooked or otherwise. Mixed with the whites, it’s good, but I just don’t like it by itself. Combined with the fact that I’m not much of a dipper, therefore don’t see the runny yolks as sauce for my toast, means it’s just really pointless for me to eat runny yolks.
I’ll still eat them, of course, but I am very meh about them.
*The full list of my previous culinary dislikes (including foods I had just gotten sick of, like PB&J) included only 8 items. Now I suppose it would only include water chestnuts and hard-boiled eggs.
Count me in as somebody who doesn’t like runny eggs, Or anything less than medium in steaks. Both have this runny, bitter taste in common, but runny eggs also has the texture problem.
And hard fried yolks taste completely different from hard boiled yolks. I could understand why someone doesn’t like the latter, as they are dry and spongy.
I’m with the OP. Even with Eggs Benidict. I just ask for the eggs to be cooked well or hard.
And I love the yoke. For Huevos Rancheros, I get the eggs cooked ‘over, hard’.
My Wife does the runny yoke toast dipping thing. :shrug:
I think it’s not so much a flavor issue as a texture issue. Runny yolks have a smooth, tongue coating texture which is just sheer decadence.
Runny eggs also go well with biscuits. And grits. Bits of something porky are a bonus, of course…
I think it is a flavor issue for me. Runny yolks have 100 times the flavor of yolk mixed with white and cooked hard. The whites are nearly flavorless and significantly dilute the flavor of the yolk.
I like eggs over medium. **No one is able to accomplish this. **Therefore I order scrambled.
If there’s no toast, you dip the bacon in the yolk. If there’s no bacon, you dip the rest of the egg in it. If there’s no rest of egg, you lick the plate like an animal and think about prehistoric mammals sucking sun-warmed yolks out of eggs.
Or maybe that’s just me.
I have seen this thread title many times in the past day or so, and every time I read it I became hungry. Finally I made a fried egg sandwich this morning. I love the golden liquid oozing over the edges of the sandwich onto the plate. I sopped up the spilled yolk with the edges of the sandwich. It’s heaven.
I think eggs are like steak. Some people like them well done and some like them a little juicier. It’s a taste thing, of course, but my taste is the correct one. Steak should be medium rare or even rare, depending on the cut, and eggs should have runny yolks but firm whites. I think the mouth feel of a runny yolk is entirely different. It’s like a food that adds it own sauce.
I’ve rarely had a problem with over medium, surprisingly.
I’ve never even heard anyone else *order *over medium. Waitress look at me as if I’d ordered fried eagle eggs.
Yeah, that’s it. I remembered it was a common cooking term but couldn’t remember exactly what it was.