Crispy fried eggs

"Anything topped with a crispy, runny fried egg is a winner in my eyes!!" Jamie Oliver

Above is my inspiration for today Spaghetti pangrattato with crispy eggs which was featured in Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen newsletter today. An example of a dish you can cook from stuff you've got around all the time. I would love to make it sometime but of course it won't be happening in this house because David hates fried eggs. Which is rather sad, because I ate them all the time as a kid, almost every morning for breakfast - often on top of fried bread. Sometimes they were crispy, sometimes they weren't depending, probably, on how wide awake my mother was when she was cooking them. We also had fried eggs with chips for dinner sometimes when the budget was getting tighter. Which I wrote about last year. Sometimes they were indeed crispy, although I can't quite remember whether I liked them this way or not.

Anyway The Smitten Kitchen recipe which also featured another favourite - pangrattato - which I ought to tackle some other time - made me start looking at crispy fried eggs.

First off I found J. Kenji López-Alt doing his thing on the Serious Eats website with his mini treatise on Crispy fried eggs. And here is where I found the first intimations of the big controversy about how to cook fried eggs. "One of the first foods people learn how to cook.", says Kenji - although I'm not sure about that because it involves cracking an egg open which is a tricky thing for a child, and hot oil is involved as well. So no I don't think so.

However, he did point out that people can get very hot under the collar about how you should cook fried eggs - there seem to be a million ways. He quoted, for example, Marco Pierre White, whose restaurant fried egg is shown below atop a duck hash - very non crispy - having a rant about it:

"Visualize that fried egg on the plate. Do you want it to be burned around the edges? Do you want to see craters on the egg white?... The answer to [these] questions should be no. Yet the majority of people still crack an egg and drop it into searingly hot oil or fat and continue to cook it on high heat.... And the result...is an inedible destruction of that great ingredient—the egg. Maybe that's how you like it, in which case carry on serving your disgusting food." Marco Pierre White

Felicity Cloake too doesn't like them crispy which provoked this rant on on a website called Eat Noodles Love Noodles:

"I still can't bloody believe Felicity Cloake likened crispy egg white to a hairball! But really, what is the point of frying an egg if you don't want a crispy egg white? If you're going to fry an egg slowly on a low heat, you might as well not bother; poach it instead."

With which sentiment Kenji agreed. But I digress somewhat.

Pretty soon into my investigations, and even though I began with a sort of Italian recipe, it soon became obvious that a crispy fried egg is really an Asian thing. And I have to say that one of the most glorious looking versions was found on the Marion's Kitchen website - Crispy fried egg (Kai Dao) Which is where I learnt that the Thais seem to be the ones who do it the most.

The Thais shallow fry their eggs, making sure the oil is hot before you put the egg in, and then basting the white - not the yolk with the oil, until done to your satisfaction. Kenji shows you how as well during his treatise - there is a short video.

Others deep fry their eggs, as shown here in this rather beautiful example of Deep fried eggs from a website called My Most Delicious Things. Here the white has surrounded the egg - rather like a poached egg. And when you think about it I guess it's a very similar process. For a poached egg the liquid is water for these deep fried ones, the liquid is oil. Oil of your choice seems to be the way. These are beautiful but it has to be said, not terribly crispy. Just a touch although I guess if you wanted them crispier you could just cook them longer. I suspect, however, that with this method the yolk is likely to cook quicker than it does with a shallow fry.

When it came to deep frying the trail led in a different direction to people who deep-fried boiled eggs - sometimes crumbed before frying, and even deep-fried poached eggs. Not really where this post was going however. I even ignored an Ottolenghi recipe.

I also suspect that the Asians are not really into the deep frying thing. They prefer to shallow fry. I found three more examples of interest - Hangover noodles and crispy eggs from Thomasina Miers in The Guardian which was really a crispy egg on top of a noodle dish; Crispy fried duck egg salad (Yam Khai Dao) from Adam Liaw/SBS which looked rather more as if the eggs were the raison d'être of the dish rather than just being plonked on top of something else and Kylie Kwong's adaptation of her aunt's recipe, which looked and sounded utterly delicious - Lucky's fried eggs with herb salsa and caramel spiced soy sauce

Ottolenghi had a go with his Turmeric fried eggs with tamarind dressing, which are a somewhat bright yellow, Jamie, in spite of that quote at the top of the page, leaves you to decide how crispy you want your eggs to be, and Nigel only likes eggs when they are hidden in cakes, soufflés and other such things. They otherwise make him retch.

And what should the perfect crispy fried egg be like? Well I found this description in The Guardian I think, from a chef called Frank Prisinzano:

“The eggs should almost explode in the hot oil, the white should soufflé around the yolk” ... the bottom should form a crispy crust hard enough that you can remove the egg from a normal pan with just a little scraping and shimmying. You should eat it immediately, like a steak, showered with sea salt, pepper flakes, herbs or spices of your choosing."

I began in Italy however, well in America but with an Italian vibe and Deb Perelman's spaghetti. In her article she referenced Rhonda's spaghetti with fried eggs and pangrattato for one - Rhonda35/Food52

which she says inspired her, and which frankly is very similar. However, I thought that there was possibly some classic Italian dish that involved crispy fried eggs, so I went searching.

And didn't really find anything, even though I checked out the enormous databases of both Taste and delicious. I found some that suggested that the recipe involved a crispy fried egg, but honestly either the egg was definitely not crispy or it was so buried as to leave me wondering whether there was an egg in there at all. Or else it was just perched on top, which is a touch uninteresting. However, I did find this Parmesan broth with rag pasta from Donna Hay and even though she also has just perched the egg on top, at least it looks crispy. And it's a bit different.

Then I got waylaid again because I found, a 'viral sensation' - feta fried eggs, pasta.

In Taste I found these Tuscan feta fried eggs. At first I was excited and went down the rabbit hole of feta fried eggs, only to discover that the crispiness is from the fried feta not the eggs. In fact I did wonder a tiny bit when I first saw this photograph because the whites, let alone the yolks, did not look very crispy. Indeed they looked barely cooked.

One last word on the topic, which I guess is just one of those little curiosities you come across every now and then. Jamie's comment of the winning nature of topping anything with a crispy fried egg is indeed a valid one, and lots of people do it, but then the egg is sort of just a garnish, although the yolk would add an extra taste and the white a crunchy texture.

Or you can do the reverse and top your crispy fried eggs with other stuff. Crispy chilli oil is a favourite here. Or, perhaps most satisfyingly you can combine the two - as Deb Perelman has done with the original recipe which inspired this post, and which, actually, I think, looks the most tempting. I might try it one day and give David some bacon to top his spaghetti with instead of an egg.

YEARS GONE BY

March 25

2024 - The Laughing Cow has the last laugh

2023 - Nothing

2022 - A quote - the quote being "Hell it's only food. Just enjoy it." From Jill Dupleix

2021 - Elizabeth David goes academic - a first recipe

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Olde England

2018 - The rich/poor gap - always and forever there

2017 - Baklava