Sunny side up or firm and crispy - learn how to fry the perfect egg every time.
I'm going to show you how to fry the perfect egg. OK, it's very, very simple. Now, if you can hear that crackling, what I've got over here is a little bacon. The reason I'm frying my bacon before I start my egg is I want the fat, so I'm going to pour some of that bacon fat into a pan and leave that bacon there for a little later and then using the bacon fat, we're going to fry the egg, OK? You want a warm pan - not a hot pan, just a warm pan.
Get yourself a couple of little cups and what you do is you crack your eggs into the cups first. That way you're not doing it over a hot pan, over a hot stove. You can do it over here on your board. You pick up your eggs and you're just going to gently pop those into the pan trying, as best you can, to keep them on separate sides of the pan. It doesn't matter if they touch a little bit 'cause that will be easy to move.
But if they're sitting together, it's a little bit more difficult. You don't want your pan too hot. The biggest mistake with fried eggs is people put it into really hot pans and then the bottom of the yolk cooks really quickly. You don't want that to happen because that will overcook before the top of it can overcook. So I've just put it into the pan. The thing you need to remember with fried eggs is don't overcrowd your pan. You know, you just want to put a couple in there in case you want to flip them over and do them over easy or over medium. I like mine sunny side up. Sunny side up, of course, means just cracking them and leaving them like that and you're gonna leave that beautiful egg yolk nice and gooey. So once your eggs have been in
for a minute or so, all you want to do is just gently shake your pan. Now, you'll see when you shake your pan, some of that eggwhite - the albumen of the egg - is still undercooked and you want that to be cooked. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just go ahead and separate this. Again, just nice and gently. That's why you don't overcrowd the pan with too many eggs 'cause then you're trying to cut it up into these little pieces to get a yolk per piece.
Now, it's quite traditional in different parts of Europe to add a little more butter. So get yourself a spoon. You'll see that butter will melt very, very quickly and then you can take a little bit of that fat and just pour it straight back over the egg and that will cook those little bit of egg whites from the top. Just before the eggs are cooked, you want to give them just a little crack of pepper and just a quick season of sea salt. And you're ready to go. You take your sunny side egg and place that straight on your plate. If you want to do an over easy egg, two things you can do. Just move it. Move your pan. Make sure that the egg's actually moving around. You can just flip it over or grab yourself a spatula and just go underneath just like that. Now, if you want it over easy, it means that you just flip it over, you set in that other side of the egg and then you serve it so you still have that nice runny yolk. It's so simple, but when you fry a perfect egg, it's just beautiful.
Step 1
Heat a little oil in a large frying pan over medium heat (if you prefer not to use oil, omit it and use a non-stick pan instead). Crack an egg into the pan.
Step 2
Cook for 2 mins or until the egg is golden underneath and the yolk is set (spooning some of the hot oil from the pan over the yolk will help it cook quicker), then remove it from the heat if you like ’em sunny-side up. For a firm yolk, flip the egg and cook for a further 1-2 mins or until the yolk is hard.
