May 15, 2011 0

Flipping an egg – how to fry an over easy egg

By Jason Yeh in Food, Tips

I love eggs. If had to a pick a favorite preparation, it would have to be softboiled. Softboiled eggs are incredible on their own for breakfast, or served on top of asian noodles (noodle soup or dry noodles). The problem is the effort required to prepare a softboiled egg. There is the timing which can’t be eyeballed/estimated and then the serving which either requires a special softboiled egg holder/spoon or 10 frustrating minutes of peeling. Because of this, the over easy fried egg which provides the runny yolk without the frustration, is my go-to alternative to softboiled eggs.

Recently I learned a trick which eliminates the only small annoyance associated with frying eggs – the flipping. It can be a pain to get a spatula out and flip an egg because it creates one more thing you have to wash and the actual flipping motion can easily break the egg yolk. You have no idea how thrilled I was to find out you can easily flip an egg with one small back and forth movement of the frying pan.

Steps to cooking (and flipping!) an over-easy egg:

1) Put enough oil to lightly cover the frying pan so that small motions of the frying pan will make the cooking egg shift around

2) Cook the egg on medium heat. Cooking on high will cause the egg to burn a bit and increase chances of sticking to the pan.

3) When one side of the egg has been cooked long enough to see most of the egg white become opaque, a quick forward backward motion of the frying pan will make the egg slide forward, hit the lip of the frying pan and flip all the way over. You don’t need the circular motion that might seem natural to try in order to flip the egg. Just forward and back.

All done with no use of a spatula!

This is so simple that I was able to teach my buddy Adam, a former linebacker for the Virginia Cavaliers, how to do it. See the video below of his very first attempt to see the back and forward motion. A little shaky but successful nonetheless. His second attempt was even better.