HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR

EGGS? ELEVEN WAYS TO COOK

AN EGG
APRIL 8, 201446 COMMENTS

How do you want your eggs?

How many times have you been asked that at a restaurant and not known
exactly how to answer it? Whats the way where its fried but the yolk is still
runny? Arent sunny side up and over easy the same thing? Whats the
difference between over easy and over medium? What the heck are basted
eggs?
Eggs really tie breakfast together. Theyre great in so many ways:
inexpensive, easy to prepare, cook quickly, and offer a solid source of
protein.
So how do you answer the next time a server asks how youd like your eggs?
Here are 11 ways to cook an egg.

1. Hard Boiled
A hard boiled egg is cooked in its shell in boiling water. The hard refers to
the consistency of the egg white (or albumen) and the yolk. Making them is
simple. Fill a pot with enough water to cover your eggs by about two inches.
Bring it to a boil and carefully drop in the eggs and leave them for 10-12
minutes. For easier peeling, place the eggs immediately in an ice water bath
after boiling, then gently tap and roll them on a counter. (Theres also the
gimmick of adding a teaspoon of baking soda to the boiling water to help
loosen the shells, cracking the shells off both ends, and blowing the egg out
of its shell. Look it up on YouTube.) Bonus: you can hard boil a bunch of eggs
at a time and refrigerate them. Eat them with a sprinkle of kosher salt, or
chop onto salads.

2. Soft Boiled
Soft boiled eggs follow the same process as hard boiled eggs, but you cut the
cooking time roughly in half. This gets the egg white cooked while leaving
the yolk runny. Our preferred method is the six minute egg, which sounds
way fancy. (This is a pile of breadcrumbs and a six minute egg.
Ooooooo!) The six minute is just like it sounds: bring your water to a boil,
gently lower in the eggs, set a timer for six minutes, then remove the eggs
and drop them in an ice bath.
Sometimes soft boiled eggs are eaten in the shell, stood upright in little egg
cups. You can then daintily tap the top of the egg with a spoon and scoop out
the insides. Theyre great on toast, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and hot
sauce. We also love dropping a couple on a thick black bean soup.

3. Hard Scrambled
The almighty scrambled eggs. When theyre done right, theyre my favorite
preparation. I like that scrambled eggs can be made by accident: Oops, I
dropped these eggs. I guess Ill just mix them up over some heat.
Scrambled technically means that the whites and yolks are broken and mixed
together. Hard scrambled eggs are cooked all the through. This is the default
preparation for scrambled eggs at most restaurants, and while theyre good,
they border dangerously on dry.

4. Soft Scrambled
Thats why I prefer soft scrambled eggs, sometimes referred to as wet. The
texture is 10x better, and they play more nicely with other ingredients. The

difference between soft and hard scrambled eggs is cooking time. If you
want soft scrambled eggs, you need to keep in mind that eggs. cook. quickly.
You cant walk away from them. Whip your eggs (I add a little milk) in a
separate bowl. Heat your pan no higher than medium, grease it, pour the
eggs in, then stay close with a spatula. Turn and fold them repeatedly while
they cook. Use the spatula to prevent them from spreading out, especially up
the sides of the pan; when they spread too thin, theyll over-cook quickly. I
usually fold them until they no longer look runny, but still look wet (i.e. light
is reflecting in them). Have your plate ready so you can remove them from
heat immediately. Theyre perfect on buttered toast with salt and pepper; try
adding slices of cheese or sauteed kale.

4a. Perfect Scrambled Eggs

If you want super creamy soft scrambled eggs, you can use the method we
learned from Gordon Ramsay (watch it here). Drop eggs into a pan over
medium-high heat, along with one, thin pat of butter for each egg. Then start
stirring with a spatula. Break the yolks, let them mix with the butter and
whites. And keep stirring. If the pan gets too hot, lift it off the heat briefly.
And keep stirring. Do this for about 4-5 minutes, until the eggs start coming
together. Right before you take them off the heat, add a dash of milk, sour
cream, or creme fraiche. Stir that in, then ladle the eggs onto toast and

sprinkle with herbs (chive, dill, green onion) or salt and pepper. The result is
some of the creamiest, softest eggs youve ever tasted.

4b. Omelets & Frittatas

Scrambled eggs can be manipulated in many ways. Ordering plain scrambled
eggs means theyll be mixed and moved in the pan, whereas an omelet or
frittata indicates that the scrambled eggs are cooked until theyve stabilized
into a usable form and topped with other ingredients: cheeses, meats,
vegetables, anything. A frittata is typically open-faced, whereas an omelet is
folded over in half onto the additions. But the egg base remains the same
(except in egg white omelets, where yolks are separated out).

4c. Scrambles & Hashes

These preparations are pretty simple, as far as eggs go. A scramble usually
means other ingredients are scrambled in the pan with the eggs. This could
include meats, cheese, sauteed veggies, or diced potatoes (or, yes, hot
dogs). Good if youre a fan of scrambled eggs and, well, everything else
breakfast has to offer.

5. Sunny Side Up
Sunny side up means your egg yolk looks like a bright morning sun. To make:
crack an egg directly into your greased frying device. Then fry it until the
edges brown, WITHOUT flipping. Flipping your sunny side up egg turns it into
an over easy egg. The yolk is runny, and depending on how long you fry it,
the albumen is completely or partially set. We refer to these as runny or
dipping eggs. The runny yolk is great for dipping toast into.

6. Over Easy
Eggs over easy and sunny side up are often using interchangeably, but they
are different. You go from sunny side up to over easy by simply flipping your
egg when the edges are brown. The easy doesnt refer to the simplicity of

turning over an egg, but the state of your yolk. Over easy means the egg is
flipped and cooked just long enough to make a film on the top of the yolk.
When served, the yolk and some of the whites are still runny.

7. Over Medium
Over medium is the next step after easy: theyre fried, flipped, and fried a
little longer, enough to cook the whites through and brown the edges slightly.
Youll develop a thicker film on your yolk, but the inside is still runny. Good
for those like the dipping quality without a watery egg white.

8. Over Hard
And over hard is the final step. Over hard is fried, flipped, and fried again

usually with the yolk broken until both the white and the yolk are
completely cooked. Just tap the edge of your spatula into the yolk or poke it
with a fork before turning it over. Be careful not to dribble the yolk when
flipping.

9. Poached
Poaching ties with soft scrambled as my favorite preparation. Its like boiling
but without the shell, or like over medium that skips contact with the pan.
These means youre avoiding any hard edges. The white is cooked through
and the yolk is warm and runny. Just imagine it mixing with a bright
hollandaise on an eggs benedict.
Methods for poaching vary. Restaurants looking to poach in bulk will often
immerse ramekins with raw eggs into boiling water, sometimes a whole tray
full at a time. If youre just poaching at home, its actually much easier than
you may think. I havent perfected my personal method, but the two that
have worked for me are:
1.) The Whirlpool. Heat your water just shy of a rolling point. Add a dash of
vinegar (some recipes call for a 1/2 cup, but thats always too much for me. I
dont like my eggs tasting like acetic acid). Crack the egg into a tiny bowl.
Swirl the water in your pan to create a whirlpool, then carefully drop the egg
into the center. The swirling pulls whites altogether in the center. Leave it in
the water for about five minutes, then lift out with a slotted spoon.

2.) The Strainer. Heat water. Add vinegar. Crack the egg into a mesh strainer
to let the most watery portion of the whites (its not much) drip out this
prevents danglers. Carefully decant the egg from the strainer into the water.
Cook for about five minutes. Retrieve with slotted spoon.
And if you make a mistake well, just look up some recipes for egg drop
soup.

10. Baked or Shirred

Baked eggs are cracked and baked in a dish. Shirred refers to the flatbottomed dish in which theyre frequently cooked. Theyre almost always
mixed with other ingredients. The white mixes in and gets cooked through,
while the yolk is left runny. For example: a tomato provencal dish (pictured
from Pistacia Vera), with eggs cooked into a bed of cream, tomatoes, cheese,
and herbs. Or the North African/Mediterranean dish shakshouka (like
at Mazah). The benefit of this preparation is that the egg really blends into
the ingredients.

11. Basted
Ive come across some some eggs on restaurant menus that are labeled as
basted but are clearly poached. Generally basted means liquid or steam is
used to thoroughly cook the egg white without flipping. For instance, while
frying an egg in butter, you repeatedly scoop and pour the extra butter on
top of the egg. This cooks the yolk and top whites without forcing you to flip
it. Alternatively, you can also squirt some water into the pan and then cover
the egg with a lid, to steam the whites. If you do this quickly, you can cook
the whole egg before the edges start to brown, which seems to be the appeal
of basted eggs (much like poached eggs).

(Im sorry this picture isnt very good. You try

handling an iPhone while scooping hot oil.)
11a. Spanish fried eggs **NEW ADDITION**
One specific form of basting is known as Spanish fried eggs. Theyre popular
in France just kidding, Spain and are fried at high temps in olive oil, while
you spoon the hot oil over the egg. Youre in danger of getting splashed, but
we all need to live a little, right? I fry my eggs over medium heat, just below
the oils smoke point. Crack an egg into a small bowl first, then ladle it into
the hot oil, and start scooping oil over the white and the yolk for about 1
minute. The result is the best of all worlds: crispy edges, creamy whites, and
a runny yolk. Bonus: try different olive oils to affect the final flavor.
Okay, so that was actually fifteen ways to prepare eggs. But you get the
point: eggs are versatile, even in the different textures and flavors they offer
through different cooking methods. And theres so much you can do with
eggs once theyre cooked: fold scrambled eggs in a burrito, layer a fried egg
on a burger, chop a hard boiled egg in a salad, or put poached eggs on
everything. Regardless of how you use them, they enhance any breakfast
dish and they stand perfectly fine on their own.

Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of a large number of glucose units joined
by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants as an energy store. It is
the most common carbohydrate in human diets and is contained in large amounts in staple
foods such as potatoes, wheat, maize (corn), rice, andcassava.
Pure starch is a white, tasteless and odorless powder that is insoluble in cold water or alcohol. It
consists of two types of molecules: the linear and helical amylose and the branched amylopectin.
Depending on the plant, starch generally contains 20 to 25% amylose and 75 to 80% amylopectin by
weight.[2] Glycogen, the glucose store of animals, is a more branched version of amylopectin.
In industry, starch is converted into sugars, for example by malting, and fermented to
produce ethanol in the manufacture of beer, whisky and biofuel. It is processed to produce many of
the sugars used in processed foods. Dissolving starch in warm water gives wheatpaste, which can
be used as a thickening, stiffening or gluing agent. The biggest industrial non-food use of starch is as
an adhesive in the papermaking process. Starch can be applied to parts of some garments before
ironing, to stiffen them.