Fried Eggs, All About

Few of us in this generation have had a perfectly fried egg, so, unlike past generations, many of us don't know that we have not had one. McDonald's would have us believe that the relatively tasteless egg of perfectly round form is the ideal in egg preparation, yet there was a time, not so long ago, when eggs were flavorful and special, with perhaps somewhat subtle flavors created by the cook.

As every professional short-order cook has always known, the grill, or frying pan, must already be hot, but not too hot, when the egg makes contact. That egg will also be a better fried egg if it is less then 5 days old and if it is brought out of the refrigerator for cooking. Room temperature eggs don't fry quite as well. It is hard not to inadvertently break the yolks on older eggs.

All real amateurs will simply grab that egg and crack it directly into the pan or onto the grill. A professional knows that it is best to break the egg into a small bowl, then slide the egg onto the hot surface. That said, a very highly experienced professional will probably have developed the motions necessary to slide the egg out of the shell, with no shell pieces sticking, neatly and yolk centered onto the grill. The motion is so neat, and practiced into such efficiency that the casual observer may flatter themselves that there is nothing to it, until they try and fail in ways likely to cause laughter from onlookers.

A professional grill is so clean and so smooth that no non-stick chemical bonding needs to be added. Most of us are dependent on those non-stick surfaces so that we don't have to completely saturate our foods in fats to get them off the pan. Yet, even a professional with a non-stick surface needs some small amount of fat under the egg to cook it. Olive oil has been recommended by those who apparently don't care that the olive oil taste will overwhelm the flavor of the egg. Butter works, but great care must be used to keep the temperature hot enough but not too hot, because butter burns easily. A light vegetable oil or vegetable oil-based margarine is easier to work with and less overwhelming to the egg.

Bacon fat and grease work very well in small amounts, and were the fat of choice by coffee shop and deli cooks for many years. Mothers of baby boomers routinely cooked bacon first and left the bacon grease in the pan. That grease can be used at a much hotter temperature then butter, so the eggs that went in cooked quickly, and tended to come out with crisp edges. With the bacon, this breakfast is the unhealthy comfort food of many older Americans even now.

So the oil, butter, margarine, or fat of choice must be placed on the grill or in the pan and swirled and pushed around to cover the cooking area well. If it smokes or browns at all the heat must be turned down because the cooking area is too hot. However, the heat must be kept high enough that the egg will cook pretty quickly, or the whites will spread out too far and the egg will get rubbery.

For those who love to know trivia and stuff, about 200 degrees in the pan is about right. Too much hotter and the fat will burn instead of protecting the pan from the eggs and the eggs will stick.

A little salt and pepper can be added now, but too much salt will make the egg get hard.

Some people insist that the egg should be covered at this point. Some insist that it should not be covered. I am not aware of any short order cooks who cover the eggs, and I do not cover my own. Steam fried eggs must be covered, but more about that later.

If the heat is at a good level, then in about two minutes the white will set, and the yolk will be runny, and a perfect "sunny side up" egg will be on the spatula heading to the plate. To turn that same egg into an "over easy" one, the egg is simply turned over back into the frying pan, but is brought back up in less then a minute with the yolk still runny. This process ensures that no part of the white is very soft or runny.

"Over medium" is hard to gauge, because the "over easy" egg is cooked just seconds longer, until the yolk is thick but not cooked through. "Over hard" is easier to judge, because the yolk is cooked through. The difficulty with "over hard" is ensuring that the egg is off the heat soon enough to not become rubbery.

Fried egg sandwiches are usually made with an egg cooked hard, but the yolk is broken. When the white has set but before it is ready to be flipped the yolk is cut with the side of the spatula and allowed to cook a little longer, then the egg is flipped carefully, being sure that the still wet yolk doesn't pour over the grill, and the yolk is broken once more on the cooked side. This makes sure that the egg is thoroughly cooked for a much less messy sandwich. Chinese egg recipes usually call for the egg to be cooked this way, as well.

McDonald's serves about 46 million people per day. Only about 10 per cent of them come in for breakfast, and less then 10 per cent of those eat a sandwich with an egg. Still, 10 per cent of 10 per cent of 46 million is more than a few. To make their perfect round fried eggs, McDonalds adapted a trick well known in England, and still used by thousands every day. It is called "toad in a hole" or "square eggs" or "eggs in basket", and is a simple way of controlling the spread of the whites. A piece of bread has a hole made in its center while the frying pan is heating up. A very small amount of fat is put in the pan and one side of the bread is toasted in it. A little more fat is put in the pan when the bread is turned over, and an egg is put into the hole. A little salt and pepper, the pan is covered and the whole thing cooks until the egg whites are done. The spatula slides under the whole thing and the toad is transferred to the plate.

You can duplicate McDonald's method of the tall round fried egg. Egg rings are readily available for purchase, though a tuna can makes a fine one. Spray the heated grill or fry pan with a cooking oil, set the egg ring, purchased or made, on the cooking surface, and spray it all around the inside. Crack a large egg into the ring, and break the yolk. Let it cook for about 2 or 2 1/2 minutes, until it is almost cooked but still just a bit wet, then carefully lift the egg ring off the egg. Now carefully turn the egg over to cook for 30 seconds to a minute.

Of course, you can do much more fun things then cooking an egg in an egg ring or tuna can. Try cutting some really thick slices of green or red or yellow peppers or onions. Set one of the resulting rings on the preheated and greased cooking surface, and cook the egg in it. Flip the egg and it's ring together. Voila! Egg in a ring with added flavor!

Speaking of flavor, add it to the egg without completely covering the flavor of the egg itself. A little parmesan cheese, a little garlic, a little thyme, a little basil, a little chopped chives.... The trick is to add a small amount of the chosen combinations just before the egg is ready to leave the pan.

Another fun way to fry an egg is with cookie cutters. First we need to talk about steam-frying eggs. It's simply a sunny side up egg, but in the last minute or so of cooking you pour a small amount of water around the egg and cover the pan. The water will turn to steam and cook the top of the egg. Spray cooking oil on the inside of the cookie cutters, place the cookie cutter on the preheated and greased pan, and break the egg into the cutter. A minute before the eggs are ready, pour some water into the pan, cover it up, and let it finish cooking.

Part of the art of the fried egg is in the cooking, but the rest is in the eating. In our habitual in-a-hurry McDonald's drive-through kind of lifestyles, the very pleasurable art of eating is too often lost. A really great fried egg is going to be ready in 3 to 10 minutes. Why not spend a whole 10 minutes enjoying the experience?

So, can you really fry your egg on the sidewalk? Yes. No. Both.

An egg starts frying at 158 degrees, according to the Research Center at the Library of Congress. That temperature, or above, must be maintained for the egg to really cook. Pavement doesn't conduct heat well, so you can't add heat under the egg once the egg is cracked onto the pavement. Cracking the egg onto the pavement will also immediately cool the pavement under that egg slightly. So, even on the hottest day of the year the egg will probably cook better on the hood of your car.

There is an annual contest in Oatman, Arizona, held on the 4^th of July, to fry that egg on the pavement in 15 minutes or less. Contestants are allowed to use aluminum foil, magnifying glasses, mirrors, and anything they made at home to fry the eggs. It's usually around 106 degrees on that day, so it's not hot enough to cook the egg without aids, but with the creative tools people do it. One guy even cooked bacon and potatoes with his egg in a homemade solar oven.

Can you fry an egg on your Mac, or other Intel processor? That rumor has spread around the internet for years, and the truth is that it was started as a joke by a guy who was, understandably, annoyed by the amount of heat his Mac was generating. So he sort of overstated the problem to make his point.

Yes, you can deep fry an egg. It's a bit easier if you use a really heavy and deep pan, like the kind most of us fry chicken in. Eggs don't take up much room, so fill the pan pretty close to the top with oil. Heat it to about 350 degrees, just before it starts to smoke. Break the egg right out of the refrigerator into the oil. It will keep its shape, so use two wooden spoons pretty quickly to slide the white up and around the yolk. It's not hard to tell when it's done, so take it out right away with a slotted spoon. The white will be cooked and the inside will be soft. Place it on a towel to drain, then serve immediately. If you're frying several eggs you need to keep them apart, because they will really cook together quickly.

So, how many calories in a fried egg? If you fry a large one there is somewhere between 76 and 102. There are many variables, of course. First, the size of the egg, which are graded by weight, not by size. A large egg has about 76 calories, with 17 of those in the whites and 59 in the yolk. Different oils and fats have different calories, of course, and then there is the question of how much of the fat got transferred with the egg to the plate and then to your mouth. 100 is a nice even number, so easy to work with, and usually you will have had less than 100 with your fried egg, so its safe to guesstimate 100. Of course, it is possible to fry your egg with no fats whatsoever, resulting in a bare-bones egg with the same 76 calories installed by the manufacturer.

What about salmonella in eggs? First, there can be a problem even in a carefully handled and intact egg. If the hen got a salmonella infection in her ovaries, there can be salmonella in her eggs. The incidence of salmonella in commercial eggs seems to be about 1 in 12,000 eggs. So your chance of getting that egg is pretty small.

Salmonella is a bacteria, and the more of the bacteria a person gets in one serving the more likely that person is to get symptoms. It is possible to get an egg with a small amount of salmonella in it and not get sick, particularly if your immune system is strong. Keep the eggs in the refrigerator until it's time to cook them to slow any salmonella growth.

Thorough cooking kills salmonella completely. The easiest way to make sure that an immune deficient person never has to cope with the bacteria is to fry the egg completely through. A sunny side up egg, with a runny yolk, may have some salmonella bacteria still alive in it, if it is that one in 12,000. That is why some restaurants will not serve sunny side eggs up at all anymore.

So, who ate the first fried egg? I don't have a clue. The 1918 Fanny Farmer cookbook says to fry your egg on just one side and then spoon some of the hot fat over the top to somewhat cook the yolk. Obviously, fried eggs were popular in 1918. I tried to find an older cookbook with instructions for the fried egg, but so far I have failed. I did learn that the world's oldest surviving cookbook, De Re Coquinaria ("On Cookery"), is attributed to a 1st century Roman named Apicius. This is another place where I have failed, so far, as I have been unable to learn what is in that tome.... but isn't it possible that the fried egg is in there? Much reading through fascinating cookbooks from medieval times to Fanny Farmer has not yet yielded directions for fried eggs, though eggs were used as binding and thickening agents, and as the basis for many fritters, scrambled eggs, and other egg dishes. So here is my request that a reader might contribute to my undersized history of the fried egg.

These are not the last words on the fried egg. Much could be added, like sauces, and side dishes, but no words can improve on the experience of eating, no, savoring, a truly well made fried egg.