Teach Me How to Fry a Perfect Over-Medium Egg

[SuperGaper]

Work on the flip, spatulas are for jongs.

If you have a dozen eggs to practice with, you will master it this week.

[bagtagley]

Embracing fat is the key to eliminating non-stick from your kitchen. Cast iron is perfect for fried eggs, and you can't beat carbon steel for scrambled and omelets.

[grskier]

I fry in selected fat of the morning, not picky, bacon grease if I cooked bacon, butter, or oil... medium high heat, shot glass of water, cover...

Still have a perfectly slightly brown bottom, fully cooked top. If the spatula has already been used, then I'll flip occasionally... it's really easy to do these, even the flip, if you know your way around a pan... (I can't flip with the cast iron yet though.. too heavy).

Either way, these are all easy methods, if you can't cook an egg, stay the fuck out of my kitchen

[BeanDip4All]

So it's a little white trash but I decided to blow off my plans and instead use the night tonight to drink beer and practice flipping eggs. I'm two beers in and two eggs in. so far i'm at: 1 ruined (yolk broke on flip) and 1 perfect.

I ate one and gavethe other to my dog.

[BeanDip4All]

Oh and i bought a $70 8" egg pan today at a restaurant supply shop, which I am.using!

[snowsprite]

Beandip...I think your $70 pan needs to meet a $30 ostrich egg! I must look into special delivery options!

Sprite

[RShea]

A dedicated egg pan (that is not a poach egg pan)? What is so special about it and what is the pan made of? After about $40 or so worth of ruined eggs practicing in a regular pan I would think you should have it down right.

[BeanDip4All]

It has high curved sides for ease of flipping. I dont think its just for eggs, specifically. I think its just a fancy restaurant pan. 2 more came out perfect, 1 broken yolk b4 it even hit the pan (wtf?! I finally learn how to fry eggs but now I have 2 work on cracking eggs) and then 2 more perfect. Made bAcon egg and cheese samdwiches on and asiago cheesesourdiugh bread.

Boyfriebd, dog and I are all fat drunk and happy.! Think im done 4 the night.
Cat got no eggs.

[Tye 1on]

Rshea an egg pan is just that. Perfect size and shape for typically two eggs. Hard to describe but the fkna tool for the job.

Tacodip prolly ate the busted yolk one and gave the perfect one to the luckiest Corgi in the west.

[doughboyshredder]

I cook em in the same cast iron griddle pan I cook most everything in. Nothing sticks to that thing. I don't flip it, and I don't add water. I just set a steel pan bottom up over the top of it, which cooks the egg whites perfectly. Leaves the yolk nice and a little over easy. Gives a nice crispy griddle patterned bottom.

[Tye 1on]

I cook em in the same cast iron griddle pan I cook most everything in. Nothing sticks to that thing. I don't flip it, and I don't add water. I just set a steel pan bottom up over the top of it, which cooks the egg whites perfectly. Leaves the yolk nice and a little over easy. Gives a nice crispy griddle patterned bottom.

That's not over medium. Focus, dude.

[mtngirl79]

I actually did this yesterday! I just used butter.. the white was cooked through, and slightly brown, and the yoke was runny, and not broken.. that's over medium, right?

I think my problem is not actually frying eggs, but knowing the definitions, like over easy, over hard, etc and then getting them how people want them..

[leroy jenkins]

The first thing you need to do is let go of silly labels like over medium, sunny side up, etc.

The easiest way to get the yolks runny and the whites cooked is to crack the egg(s) into the pan, then once they have cooked just enough for the whites to become white on the bottom, break up the whites and 'scramble' them without touching the yolks. Egg whites are cooked in like 30 seconds, and yolks are runny.

Any method of cooking the whites that does not involve flipping or stirring just the whites will inevitably lead to some of the yolks being cooked. There is no way around this.


Try them all runny yolked on top of homemade chicken pot pie. Probably my favorite meal.

[mtngirl79]

my yoke was cooked on the outside and runny in the middle.. that's over medium, right?

[Spats]

Jesus, this seams to be a girl thing! Seeing that I'm in the same boat as beandip and mtngirl.......... why is it we can cook a blackforest cake, tiramisu, eggs Benedict etc yet the damn over medium egg mocks us everytime.

That's because you're afraid of fat. The egg should be floating on a layer of fat. Then it will cook with no problem at all. You won't even have to flip it unless you turned the heat up too high.

As already pointed out, leftover bacon fat is great. If you didn't do that, refined coconut oil or clarified butter is best. Regular butter will burn a little bit. If you use "vegetable oil" you are a Philistine and enjoy heart disease.

[Tye 1on]

They're 'over' if you flipped them. They're medium if a bit of the top of the yolk is cooked and every bit of the white. No flip/cooked white/runny yolk=sunny side up.

[iceman]

They're 'over' if you flipped them. They're medium if a bit of the top of the yolk is cooked and every bit of the white. No flip/cooked white/runny yolk=sunny side up.

It's pretty simple people.

[TNKen]

Don't eat stuff that comes out of a chicken's ass.

Follow this advice and you will have no problems.

[iceman]

It's a cloaca, dude.

[Tunco]

If I boil them for 12 minutes and then decorate them for Easter, thats over-medium, right?

[PNWbrit]

While on the subject of egg cooking.

Do yourselves a flavor and learn the classic 30 second omelette à la Julia Childs.

[TNKen]

It's a cloaca, dude.

Ass, cloaca, vent, whatever.

Still the same place excrement and eggs come out.

HAHA!! Went to wikipedia. Cloaca comes from Latin, and means "sewer." So, I guess it is an egg sewer.

CHOW DOWN, EGG HOUNDS!!

[AbsolutStoli]

progress report?

i can't claim im a master at the egg, but i did spend a bit of time on the breakfast shift at a busy restaurant and cooked my fair share of eggs. the key elements are patience and a scratch free non-stick pan. you dont need a $70 one, just find a restaurant supply store or even world market or bed bath and beyond and pick one up for less than $20. find one thats not handle heavy, a pan that wont tip over on the burner, and should have smooth rounded sides without a significant crease. 8" is easier to find, but 7" is best for 2 eggs as the whites dont spread out as much.

the way i did my eggs, and i rarely had any sent back, is pan on high heat, add butter or olive oil, just a little is enough or else you'll have a greasy mess when you go to plate. crack eggs into pan and dont touch. once the whites start setting up you can start to move the pan a little to loosen the eggs. when you cant see the pan through the whites anymore, move the yolks to the opposite side of the handle and flip (this is where practice comes into play). turn heat down to low and dont move the pan for a few seconds. it shouldnt take more than 10-15 seconds for the whites to finish cooking, flip again and plate. you can use a spatula to get under the egg if they're too greasy, but if you didn't use enough fat you can just slide them on the plate.

our goal was to not have any color on the easy and medium eggs, with whole butter this is tougher to accomplish. we use clarified butter in the restaurant, which is just butter fat and none of the milk solids, which burn.

[BeanDip4All]

progress report?

i can't claim im a master at the egg, but i did spend a bit of time on the breakfast shift at a busy restaurant and cooked my fair share of eggs. the key elements are patience and a scratch free non-stick pan. you dont need a $70 one, just find a restaurant supply store or even world market or bed bath and beyond and pick one up for less than $20. find one thats not handle heavy, a pan that wont tip over on the burner, and should have smooth rounded sides without a significant crease. 8" is easier to find, but 7" is best for 2 eggs as the whites dont spread out as much.

the way i did my eggs, and i rarely had any sent back, is pan on high heat, add butter or olive oil, just a little is enough or else you'll have a greasy mess when you go to plate. crack eggs into pan and dont touch. once the whites start setting up you can start to move the pan a little to loosen the eggs. when you cant see the pan through the whites anymore, move the yolks to the opposite side of the handle and flip (this is where practice comes into play). turn heat down to low and dont move the pan for a few seconds. it shouldnt take more than 10-15 seconds for the whites to finish cooking, flip again and plate. you can use a spatula to get under the egg if they're too greasy, but if you didn't use enough fat you can just slide them on the plate.

our goal was to not have any color on the easy and medium eggs, with whole butter this is tougher to accomplish. we use clarified butter in the restaurant, which is just butter fat and none of the milk solids, which burn.

dude, i knew you would come in with a shut-it-down reply to this sometime! thanks how is chef-ing going in ski country??

the progress report is: it's going really well. really, really well. In fact, at this point I am proud to say that I think I've mastered the perfectly cooked over medium egg. They're coming out consistently well. That night I got drunk and cooked a dozen and made like 5 bacon, egg, cheese and sourdough sandwiches really locked it down.

maybe it was the $70 pan, maybe it was the confidence that came with practice. I'm doing a no-spatula flip with a little butter, and following the "count to 10" then plate.

At this point in my egg-frying career I have to put the pan off the burner, lower it to about my hip and kinda use gravity to help with the flip, but... seems no real drawback other than style. Plus, the dag always seems excited that he might get to "help" with cleanup off the floor should i be overzealous with the flip and the eggs fly outta the pan.

Couple of questions for you experts:
1.) why the second flip? a lot of places I'm reading in my fried egg R&D say two flips: 1 flip, wait 10 seconds, then flip back and plate. Do you really need the 2nd flip? Just for aesthetics? what's the point?

2.) Any tips on cracking eggs? I've been doing the "crack into a bowl, then gently slide them into the pan. I'd like to be more steezy with my cracking... like this guy:

they kinda come out mangled and not cracking easily.

Anyways, frying eggs is awesome. I've been so excited to use my new skill to perfect my favorite "comfort meal" which is fun-shaped pasta, a red chile pepper/garlic/olive oil/anchovy sauce, lotsa parm, then topped with toasted garlic/breadcrumb mixture and 2 fried eggs. it's so quick, indulgent but easy and super duper delish... here's the recipe, i have worked on it over the past two years based on an aglio/olio recipe i saw on chowhound

start heating h2o to boil your pasta, then start cooking pasta i love to use lanterne for it, but anything with ridges comes out really yummy... or whatever kinda you wanna get rid of!

in separate pan, heat a splash of olive oil, then add chopped garlic. once garlic starts to brown, add in 2 handfuls of breadcrumbs and toast until they turn crunchy and golden brown. you can add some various spices to the breadcrumb mix, whatever's lying around, oregano, taragon, what have you.... remove from pan, set aside in a bowl. then heat more olive oil, add chopped garlic. when garlic starts to brown then add 1 chopped up anchovy fillet (for salt), and mucho, mucho hot pepper flakes. while this is cooking get your pasta straining and start to fry 2 eggs. toss the olive oil/anchovy/red pepper mix with pasta, either mix in or top with lotsa parmiggiano cheese. then add the bread crumbs on top and finally- put the eggs right on top...dig in and break up the yolks, kinda making this thick bread-crumby-cheesy, deliciousness.

the ultimate comfort food!!!

[chatton18]

The easiest way to get the yolks runny and the whites cooked is to crack the egg(s) into the pan, then once they have cooked just enough for the whites to become white on the bottom, break up the whites and 'scramble' them without touching the yolks. Egg whites are cooked in like 30 seconds, and yolks are runny.

Leroy has got it right, i dont know if i'd call it scrambling, but i always had trouble until i changed it around a bit. I like a nonstick flat griddle pan personally, but you can really do it with anything. Make sure its medium hot/hot, touch it with some pam/nonstick spray. Crack the egg, once the bottom part of the whites turn white start breaking apart the thicker egg white around the yoke (without cracking the yoke). They will cook quickly and you can flip, leave it on the other side for about 10-15 seconds then take it off, if you broke up the whites correctly you should have perfectly cooked whites and a nice runny yoke