Getting a perfect fried egg can be a daunting task. Despite all the high-faulutin talk from chefs about complex culinary techniques, it is the simplest things that can be the most difficult in the kitchen. Fried chicken has stymied many on accomplished home cook and fried can be just as hard to master. People make a big deal about poached eggs because it’s hard to even make one without it falling apart. But, although frying an egg may seem easier than poaching an egg, the difference between a great fried egg and an overcooked, rubbery, and profoundly disappointing one depends on several factors that can make or break your egg! So, here are useful egg frying tips to get you started toward fried egg mastery.
This article is meant to link up with some other useful articles here, which, together, will teach you more about frying eggs than any one article could possibly do. Before we start, however, you need to know what all the names for different types of fried eggs mean. You can’t expect to cook a perfect fried eggs if you can’t even order them the way you want them at the diner. So, first, learn about what kind of cooking the different terms for fried eggs mean.
1. Use Fresh Eggs
The best eggs for frying are the freshest eggs. Fresh eggs have yolks that will hold their shape and not run out all over the pan. When you place an egg in a pan, and the egg white tends to hold itself together in a compact little package, this indicates the egg is fresh. You may want to learn about how to tell if an egg is good before moving on.
You can judge how old eggs are getting by how much the white runs amok. The older the egg; the more watery the yolk. If you have farm fresh chicken eggs just out of the nest, these will make the best fried eggs you’ve ever had. Since you probably don’t, use the freshest eggs you have on hand (check the sell-by date).
Most grocery stores will sell Grade A eggs. If you can find grade AA eggs, these will be best for frying. Learn more about how egg grading works here on CulinaryLore.
2. Use Warm, Room Temperature Eggs, Not Cold Eggs
You would never see a professional short-order cook use an egg out of the refrigerator (I used to be one). A colder egg is much harder to fry up properly. The egg is cold, after all!
When cooking an egg, the whites begin to set up and become firm earlier than the yolk. Egg white albumin will begin to coagulate and become solid at around 140°F (60°C). Egg yolks start to coagulate and become firm a little later, at 149°F (65°C).
When you cook an egg that is cold from the refrigerator, it takes much longer for the heat to penetrate the whites and it retards the time that the whites coagulate, giving the cold egg yolk time to begin solidifying early. When you cook a cold egg, you are more likely to end up with rubbery, overcooked whites and at least part of the yolk being solid when you don’t want it to be. Frying warm, room-temperature eggs makes everything easier. The eggs can cook more gently and they will be more tender once done.
3. Use the Right Kind of Fat
To fry an egg, you need some kind of fat or oil in the pan. Yes, you need fat even when using a nonstick pan. We are frying eggs. Frying, by definition, means cooking with fat. The fat helps with heat transfer as well as providing some textural support. And, the right kind of fat adds great flavor.
My absolute favorite fat for frying eggs is clarified butter. I keep a jar of Organic Valley Clarified Butter on hand for this purpose. Without the solids in the butter, you don’t have to worry about it burning or discoloring the eggs. It still has that buttery taste, and, to me, it even seems like it makes the eggs less likely to stick.
If you want to be truly decadent, you can use duck fat to fry your eggs. This is expensive but some chefs swear by it. You can also use drippings such as bacon drippings, or lard. Olive oil also works well for frying eggs if you like the flavor it brings. Avacodo oil is a good egg frying oil, and neutral in taste. Any of these choices can also help you get crispy edges on your egg whites, if you desire (I do!).
4. Use the Right Pan
I’m going to be different and skip the cast iron skillet fetish that has inundated the internet. I’m assuming you don’t have a perfectly seasoned cast iron skillet. You don’t have to have a pan with a non-stick surface to fry eggs, anway. You can absolutely fry eggs in a stainless steel (clad aluminum) skillet.
But, in the beginning, you will probably want to opt for a good quality nonstick pan. Quality matters not because of the nonstick surface but because of the quality and thickness of the pan. Cheap thin pans will be more likely to distribute the heat unevenly and have hot spots which can ruin your egg-frying efforts.
When you flip your eggs, you can use a spatula but with practice, you can learn to flip an egg without one. When using a nonstick pan, use a plastic or rubberized silicone spatula. Flipping an egg without a spatula takes a lot of practice. Don’t try it unless you’re willing to lose some eggs and clean up some mess!
There are many brands of cookware, but one of the best for eggs, at a very nice price, is the T-Fal Advanced Nonstick 8 Inch Fry Pan or consider one of their larger nonstick pans. If you want a tougher pan that will also allow you to use a metal spatula, check out Le Creuset toughened nonstick pans like this Le Creuset Toughened NonStick 8-inch Fry Pan.
For flipping eggs, a solid metal spatula is not the best choice as it may tend to catch on the egg and its harder to get underneath. Use a slotted spatula such as a fish spatula.
5. Perfecting Sunny Side Up Eggs (The Ultimate Fried Egg)
I’ll be honest, I don’t care about sunny side up eggs. I’ll go for an over-medium for simplicity. But, some folks just love to see that yolk shining forth in all it’s runny glory so they can dip their toast right into it! For sunny side up, a good method is to start with a little oil, and as the egg begins to set, put in some butter, which will froth up.
You can then slide the egg around to allow the hot oil and frothy butter to slide over the white of the egg, which will help it set faster. However, this is not strictly necessary, and may not result in picture-perfect eggs.
I know I kind of dismissed sunny side up but I cook a lot of them because my son loves them. I’m not a fancy-pants chef, but I am pretty good at sunny side up, although nobody ever ordered them during my hash-slinging days. Still, I do occasionally rubberize the whites.
Here is another article to help you learn how to make perfect over easy eggs.
I could give cooking instructions but you can find those all over the web. However, to learn how to perfectly fry an egg, whether sunny side up, over easy, over medium, or over hard, look no further than the egg frying video from Rouxbe Online Cooking School.
Rouxbe produces some of the finest instructional cooking videos you will ever see. The narration is clear and concise, and the camera work captures the steps perfectly, without a lot of extraneous visuals or chat.
You’ll have to click the link above to watch it on YouTube, since they don’t allow embedding of videos. They give the same tips I gave above but I swear I wrote all that before I watched the video!
