Board Thread:Role Ideas/@comment-26715110-20161009005039/@comment-30187810-20161011195316

Over hard eggs are a way of eating fried eggs that is beyond me. I cannot forgo a runny yolk in my fried eggs because there is nothing like sopping up the yolk with your toast.

Speaking of sopping up the yolk, I said that there was no reason to have a sunny side up egg other than esthetics, but one thing a lot of sunny side up people enjoy is going right for that yolk with their toast. You can do that with an over easy or over medium egg too, to some extent, but you have to get past the film which has started to form over the yolks.

And there you have it, your fried egg manifesto according to me. This might be more than you ever wanted to know about fried eggs, or would ever care about. But, you may want to know the basic cooking techniques. We'll start with sunny side up, but first, some general egg frying tips.

Egg Frying Tips
 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, an the egg white tends to hold itself together in a compact little package, this indicates the eggs is fresh. In fact, 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).

 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 hard to fry up properly. The egg is cold, after all!

 Use Clarified Butter, If You Can.

The absolute best oil to fry an egg in is clarified butter. 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. Otherwise, choose a vegetable oil, or dripping, such as bacon dripping, if you're in a pork fat kind of mood. For sunny side up, a good method is the 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 actually 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. 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!

When you flip your eggs, you can use a spatula. If you are using nonstick pan, which you probably should be, use a plastic or rubberized 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!