Food Gold: How To Fry An Egg Perfectly

Posted on Jun 25th, 2010 in Food Gold by Mr. Goldbar

For this week’s Food Gold we are taking you back to culinary boot camp ala our very popular perfect scrambled eggs post and showing you one of the most important things any home cook should know how to do, FRY AN EGG! Not only can you add an extra dimension of flavor to almost any sandwich/pasta via the fried egg addition (see asparagus and fried egg recipe) but knowing the science behind this stuff will inevitably carry over into your other cooking adventures. Let’s dig a little deeper into this and break it down.

Sweat The Technique: Perfect Fried Eggs

1. Be sure your skillet is an appropriate size for the number of eggs you are frying. If the skillet is too small and you want to fry three eggs at once, the temperature of the pan will drop too quickly and you will get ugly, un-browned, unappetizing eggs. They also might all run together, which is not cool either. Also no matter how big your skillet you really don’t want to try and fry more than 3 eggs at once—too many things to attention to. Also a NON STICK skillet is a good look here.

2. Heat your butter over medium heat until it is melted and foamy. You don’t want it to brown but you don’t want it to be lukewarm either. To achieve that restaurant style browned around the edges/handsome egg look, be sure the butter is hot enough. This should take about 90 seconds or so. Also, for the sake of simplicity I will say use about 1 tablespoon butter for every two eggs you want to fry. Feel free to experiment and see what you like best. Olive oil is fine too, I guess….

3. Once you have heated up your appropriately sized skillet with the appropriate amount of hot butter CAREFULLY crack yo eggz and add them to the hot pan. If you want to be a fancy pants you can crack them into a small bowl or ramekin first and gently slide them in, whites first. This makes for a very nice presentation/texture as the whites will begin to cook while the yokes will be runny.

4. Leave the eggs alone. Think about a great new song you heard. Or why you haven’t read The Master and Margarita lately. Or about what shoes you need to cop for this summer (sartorial co-sign: APC penny loafers.) Just don’t fuck with them. Each egg takes about 2-3 minutes total to cook but don’t go by time go by what we see and what you want. If you like your eggs sunny side up, simply let the egg cook until the edges are browned/curled up and whites are set. If you like them over-easy just flip ’em over halfway after the whites are set. No matter what just make sure the yolks are runny. That’s the master move here, a lovely browned white with a totally runny yolk center.

That’s it! Welcome to the best thing that ever happened to your ham and cheese sandwich. Now grab a carton and practice these moves! Here’s a delicious recipe with asparagus to help you start applying this science, knowledge gods.

Fork The World,

Elliot

Tags: ,
Posted in Food Gold