Perfect Fried Eggs

The Perfect Fried Egg

The key to good fried eggs is to cook them correctly and use the freshest eggs possible. As with poached eggs, I like to go the coop and take eggs directly from there, put them into the pan and fry them.

The best frying pan is a heavy cast iron skillet.

There are different opinions about what to fry them in - olive oil, butter, or use a bit of bacon fat. Another alternative that works well and tastes great is about 3/4 oil and 1/4 butter, but you can play around with it and see what your palate prefers.

This recipe is for 2 fried eggs, so scale the oil or butter as appropriate for more or fewer eggs.

Ingredients

1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon butter, oil, or fat
2 eggs
Freshly ground pepper

Steps

Place a medium skillet over medium heat until warm. Add the butter, fat or oil and swirl the pan until it is well and evenly coated.
Do not allow the pan to overheat, which will burn the fat and cause the edges of the eggs to brown before the yolks are cooked.
When the butter's foam subsides or the oil is hot, cracks the eggs one at a time into the skillet, paying attention to the order in which they entered the pan. If you are using eggs from your coop and have a rooster or an hen producing eggs with fragile shells, it is recommended to crack the eggs into a bowl first and then gentle place them into the skillet. If you are cooking multiple eggs, do not allow the whites to touch one another.
As soon as the whites lose their translucence, turn the heat to very low and sprinkle with pepper.
Cook unit the whites are completely firm, carefully watching the area around the yolk as this is the final area to cook.
Remove the eggs from the pan and place onto plates. Serve immediately.

Cooking options:

If you want runny, sunny side up eggs, conclude at this point at Step 3
If you want firmer, sunny side up eggs, cook a minute longer.
For hard cooked fried eggs, cook the eggs for one minute, flip over the eggs with a spatula and cook for another 30 seconds.