When Jesse and I first got married, I barely knew how to scramble eggs. And if you had asked me to cook them any other way, I would have looked at you like you had a third eyeball. Luckily, Jesse had worked in a few restaurants, and he could teach me all the different ways to make them! I can even get my omelets to turn out looking nice…sometimes.
Today, we’re going to talk about several ways to cook eggs.
Poached Eggs
My Grandpa Welke would make two poached eggs every day for breakfast. He even had a little microwaveable contraption that he would put a bit of water and an egg in each side and they’d turn out perfect every time. You don’t need one of those to make a perfect poached egg though.
For the microwave version, fill a bowl with water and gently crack an egg into the bowl. Microwave for 45-60 seconds and scoop out with a slotted spoon.
For the stovetop version, heat a small pot of water to boiling and gently crack an egg into the boiling water. Scoop out with a slotted spoon when cooked to your liking.
Scrambled Eggs
If you know how to cook any type of eggs, chances are you’re like me and it’s scrambled eggs. Crack your eggs into a bowl, whisk to combine the yolks and whites, and pour onto a heated griddle or into a pan with some melted butter or oil. Wait until the eggs are nearly cooked, then flip and stir slightly.
Jesse and I were watching a cooking show once, and they served the eggs still wet and runny and jiggly and called them the perfect scrambled eggs. We turned to each other and I said, “If those are the perfect scrambled eggs, I don’t want them!” If you want cooking show scrambled eggs, you’re in the wrong place. In my opinion, these should be fully cooked.
Fried Eggs
For a fried egg, you have several choices: sunny side up, over easy, over medium, and over hard. But they all start the same way – crack an egg onto your heated griddle or into your pan with some melted butter or oil.
How do you know when to flip the egg? This is possibly the best piece of advice my husband gave me when he was showing me how to cook eggs. Once the white of the egg looks like Elmer’s glue – white and no longer clear and runny, wait a few seconds longer, then gently lift the edges and flip the egg. If some of the white is still runny, it will fall apart and ooze all over when you try to flip it.
The exception is a sunny side up egg, which doesn’t get flipped at all – just cooked longer so that the white is cooked through. Some people cover the pan to help it cook faster, which is totally acceptable.
The difference in the other three is how long you cook the egg after flipping it. For over easy eggs, you want the egg to be just cooked, with the yolk still very runny.
For over medium, you want it cooked a little bit longer, where the yolk is still soft but not as liquid.
And for over hard, you want your yolk cooked all the way through. The easiest way to do that is to poke the yolk with your spatula to break it either right before or right after flipping.
Can I be honest? There’s really no point to over hard eggs. They’re basically scrambled eggs that haven’t been mixed together.
We already talked about hard boiled eggs, which to me are a totally different animal, because I rarely eat them for breakfast, so they’re not part of the same category in my head. And I’m not going to get into omelets or eggs Benedict or anything fancy, because if you’re still working on cooking eggs all of these different ways, you don’t need to get fancy just yet. You’ve got enough to practice here!
What’s your favorite way to eat eggs? Can you cook them that way yourself?
Related Posts:
Leave a Reply