The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

preference.
For a long time, I was happy with my medium-heat eggs,
sacrificing a bit of liquid yolk for the extra crispness in the
whites, but then I saw a technique in Spain that made me
rethink the way I fried eggs. There it’s common to fry eggs
not in a thin layer of fat, but in a shallow pool of it. Cooks
would fill the pan with a half inch or so of olive oil and heat
it up to deep-frying temperatures, then tilt the pan so the fat
collected on one side, drop in the eggs, and baste them with
the hot fat as they cooked. The eggs cooked quite rapidly
from all sides, the whites quickly setting and transforming
into a delicately lacy, lightly frizzled shell around the still-
liquid yolk. What if I were to adapt part of this technique to
my fried eggs at home?
By heating up a few tablespoons of oil in a skillet (I use
nonstick or a good cast-iron pan), I can get a similar effect
by then adding my eggs and using a spoon to baste the
whites with the hot oil. The whites puff and crisp, setting
rapidly, while leaving the yolk just barely heated through.
It’s my new favorite way to eat fried eggs, especially when I
go for it and use the fancy-pants olive oil.