When it comes to cooking eggs, fried is the default option. Anyone can crack an egg into a hot pan. If you do nothing else at all, you are still technically frying an egg. We should not, however, think of the fried egg as something so basic that it’s unworthy of further culinary attention. There are hundreds of recipes from all over the world that use a fried egg as either a starting point, a main ingredient or a final flourish. Here are 17 of the best.
The first is a precautionary primer on egg-frying from Felicity Cloake. There may be more than one correct way to fry an egg – in butter or oil, on high heat or medium, yolk runny or just set – but there are also many wrong ways. Cloake can help you avoid some of the most common pitfalls. One tip I learned from her, never to be forgotten: don’t use cold eggs. Let them come to room temperature before frying, or the yolk will set long before the white is done.
