OT Cooking eggs questions??

What's Going On

Mark Mandell - Gone Round In New Jersey

You haven't learned to fry eggs.

Keep trying. Your eggs are not, somehow, "defective" or fry-resistant.

There are alternatives, those being "scrambled" and "omelet", but I don't want to deflect the discussion.

Re: OT Cooking eggs questions??

Dick Coers

Fresh grocery store eggs might be a couple of weeks old. I've also read about how the egg shell is porous just like our skin, and the washing agents used in the factory farms soak into the egg. Just guessing.

Re: OT Cooking eggs questions??

Bill Howatt

See if you can get any useful information from the date on the carton. Fresh eggs don't mean the hen dropped it that morning.

The temperature of your frying pan may be influencing the behaviour as well. The pen should not be extremely hot. Also, are your eggs always at the same temperature when you put them in the pan, that is, do they sometimes go directly from the fridge to the pan and other times sit around before being placed in the pan. Always from shell to pan or from bowl to pan?

Why worry? If the egg is bad, you'll know it long before the yolk spreads out.

Bill

Re: OT Cooking eggs questions??

AZ in Colorado Springs

Maybe your hands are higher above the pan sometimes, so the egg contents fall further (even if just a few inches), hit the pan harder, & spread out sideways (and breaks whatever membrane keeps the yolk together).

Take a Hard Boiled Approach

George Colonel's Workshop-Havertown PA

Good Morning Barry,

That will retain the basic egg structure, avoiding coddling to poachers.



George

This Is A Yolk, Right?

PS

Mark Mandell - Gone Round In New Jersey

1. Try cracking your eggs into a small bowl and use that to gently pour them into the pan.

2. Some people have better luck using a smaller fry pan

3. A lid can help keep heat in the pan, lightly cooking the top surface of the egg so it's less likely to break

4. A very light oil spray (or wipe) can help, even in a non-stick pan

5. Too hot and the yolk will boil and rupture; lower and slower is better.

I'm scrambling to come up with a response

Just Don't Chicken Out

George Colonel's Workshop-Havertown PA

Good Morning Bill,

Clutch your resources.

George

It's how you crack the eggs

Ellis Walentine

Try cracking them gently with the edge of a fork, and then open them gently. If you crack them over the edge of the pan, you are slamming the yolk downward against the pan, and it's easy to wreck the yolk.

I'm sure there are other factors involved, too, but you'll have to google them.

I must say I never expected a question like this, but you never fail to surprise me, Barry.

Ellis

You Guys Are Poaching This Thread

Eggsactly!

Re: OT Cooking eggs questions??

Howard Norman

Here is my technique. Small nonstick pan, usually an 8" pan. med low heat, about 1/2 teaspoon of butter. Let the butter just melt and then crack the eggs together and put the first egg into the pan. Crack the second egg on the counter top and put in the pan. Cook about one minute and turn for another short minute.

Too hot a pan is my normal way to screw it up and then they overcook easily.

Re: What's Going On

Richard McComas

http://www.thekitchn.com/how-do-you-break-an-egg-39815

This is definitely a fertile topic

Usually that's old eggs...

John in NM

There's fresh, then there's supermarket fresh.

Also, lack of refrigeration causes eggs to "age" more quickly, so if they sat on a loading dock for a day, that would add about a week to their "age" - just a rule of thumb I imagine.

I've noticed after a couple years our hens start laying eggs like that, with fragile yolks even when fresh. I suspect it's some kind of nutritional deficiency at that point. When you're getting some that are fragile and some that aren't in the same carton, it could be something like that - old hens in the mix or something lacking in their diet.

I would say try a different brand of eggs - another company may only keep their layers a couple years before they head to the McNugget factory.

Re: OT Cooking eggs questions??

Al Goldstein

I agree. Tony Bourdain (the TV food chef) recommends gently cracking the egg on a flat surface. He says this is the way chefs crack eggs. This avoids small pieces of shell from breaking off and falling into the frying pan. Since I've been cracking eggs this way I've had no small pieces of shell in the pan.

Re: OT Cooking eggs questions??

Bill Turpin in WNC mountains

Chickens vary their laying schedule according to the calendar. As the day length shortens in winter they lay fewer eggs. Awake times means less food that is eaten = fewer eggs. Farmers leave the lights on in chicken houses in the winter, on timers. Chickens lay eggs to make more chickens. Chicks have to be brooded to keep them from getting too cold. They lay less to protect future chicks.

Egg companies stockpile eggs to even out the supply. The egg sales at Easter allow them to rid inventory of old stockpiles as NEW supplies become available in spring. Fresh eegs can be at least THREE MONTHS old. Have you ever seen a grocery store out of eggs in Dec/Jan unless there had been bad weather to stop delivery trucks?

Re: OT Cooking eggs questions??

Bill Tindall

For years we had chickens; get eggs from neighbor now. Eggs keep for weeks refrigerated so don't be paranoid about "fresh" eggs. That said, the internals of the egg change with age. The white gets thinner. Note sure about the yoke because I thoroughly "kill" these and cook them till firm. I am annoyed when I drop the egg from 20,000' into the pan and it doesn't splat. I have observed great differences in yokes robustness but never made note of whether age or the chicken caused it.

LOL ! 30 years . . .

steve mackay

I too like 'em "over medium". In 30 years of practice and every type of egg, all I can say is . . . . some of 'em DO and some of 'em don't. Its got more to do with the way you're holding your breath when it hits the pan !

Knew a Guy who Had A Sister Who Thought . .

You guys crack me up!!   

Wow!, Never know what stirs....

Barry Irby

The responses among Wood Centralians....

This is not a controlled scientific experiment, but I do use the same pan e very morning, remove the egg from the fridge and put in the pan within minutes, crack it on a flat surface as mentioned to avoid shell pieces, always drop the contents very slowly from very close to the pan, etc.

Sometimes I get a fairly small "footprint" with a nicely domed yolk, but other times the white is thin and runs far and wide and the yolk bursts under it own weigh and spreads out.

While I have not been making breakfast for a while or frying many eggs, when my sons were little guys I made them breakfast every morning. Short order cook. Who knew you could stack pancakes and french toast that high? Just run them through a kid first. I do not remember eggs being this inconsistent.

Never know what the knowledge base here will produce.

Re: OT Cooking eggs questions??

Rick Christopherson

A lot of cooks get hung up on the "appearance" of how they crack an egg. "You're not a real cook unless you can slam it on the edge of the pan and split it open with one hand." I say hogwash to that. Like you, not breaking the yoke is important to me for fried eggs. So much so, that I won't risk breaking one of them with a bad "crack".

For whatever reason, it is considered "unprofessional", but I use a knife to crack the egg. It doesn't leave broken fragments of shell that can fall into the egg, and it doesn't risk breaking the yoke from a hard whack. The yoke is heavier than the white, so tilt the egg upward and strike the side of the shell near the top.

For fried eggs, my personal preference is that all yokes are runny, but skimmed over with a perfect pink skin of cooked whites (i.e. whites are fully cooked). To achieve this, I baste them. I use a pre-heated pan (medium heat) and a pre-heated glass cover (so I can see exactly when they skin over). All the eggs are pre-cracked into a bowl and carefully poured into the pan. This keeps some of the yokes from cooking faster than the others. When I really want to keep the yokes runny with whites fully cooked, I will even add a small amount of water into the pan after the eggs. This turns to steam that is held in by the cover, and cooks the whites from above as well as below.

Of course, when I'm not in the mood for runny yokes, then I just scramble them and toss in some meat of some sort. :-)