My dad used to say that anybody could cook an egg, and I suppose anybody can cook an egg, if your criterion is simply “not raw.” But in fact, eggs are one of the most difficult things to get right. Eggs are delicate. They’re eggs. They’re unformed matter waiting to be turned into greatness, either in the form of a chicken, or a perfectly cooked egg. This takes some finesse.
A properly fried egg, according to people who care about foods being made “properly” (i.e., the French), is one in which the white is cooked evenly from the yolk outward, so the resulting egg is completely without any gradations of color or texture: it looks like a cartoon drawing of an egg. This isn’t how I like my fried eggs. I like my fried eggs with a thin, lacy, crispy edge around the outside of the white. Lucky for me, such an egg is much easier to achieve. I like to fry my eggs one at a time. They take only a couple of minutes to cook, and it’s the only way I can be sure to get a crispy edge all the way around, rather than the whites bleeding together and my having to cut them apart.
To learn to fry eggs in the proper French manner, you’ll have to go elsewhere. For a crisp, lacy-edged, olive oil–fried egg, read on.
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil or butter in a small, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until it’s hot but not smoking, about 2 minutes. Crack 1 egg into the oil, sprinkle it with a pinch of salt and a few turns of pepper, and fry until the white is just set and the edges are golden brown, about 2 minutes for runny yolks, 2½ minutes for medium-cooked yolks.
After boning up on fried eggs, poached eggs are a no-brainer. The delicate little glimmers in your hungry eyes are cooked in gently simmering water, not thrown violently into a hard pan of hot oil. The one trick to making poached eggs is to crack the eggs into a strainer; the wateriest part of the whites falls through the strainer, so the whites you’re left with form a neat little package around the yolks. (All this to prevent the wispy whites that float away from the whites in the water; purely an aesthetic thing.)
To poach eggs without making it more difficult than it needs to be, fill a medium skillet 1 to 2 inches deep with water. Add a big glug of white vinegar and bring the liquid to a simmer over high heat. Reduce the heat until the water is quivering, but not bubbling. Gently crack one egg into a strainer and let whatever whites that want to drip out. Gently slide the egg from the strainer to the water. Wait 10 to 20 seconds so the egg has a chance to set, then repeat, adding a second, and then the third and fourth eggs, each time letting one egg set before adding another. Poach the eggs until the whites are set, 3 to 4 minutes. Using a slotted spoon or flat strainer, lift the eggs out of the water. Blot them on a paper towel or clean dishtowel before sending them on to their destined grain bowl, or wherever they are headed. Poached eggs, surprisingly, hold up really well. Store the poached eggs in a container with ice water, which stops the cooking process and keeps them moist. Drain them and heat them in simmering water for 30 seconds to warm through before serving.
First, a glossary.
A soft-boiled egg is the sort of thing you eat for breakfast, with a spoon. You may spoon it straight out of the shell, or you can cut the shells open and scoop the eggs out of the shells into a bowl. To peel soft-boiled eggs, first make sure they’re completely chilled, then gently crack them all over the surface of the egg and put them back in the ice bath for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove them and very gently peel.
A medium-cooked egg is one that has been cooked so the yolk has just solidified. In fact, the very center of the egg is still wet looking, but not so wet that it will drip. This is the perfect egg for adding to salads or to keep around the house to peel, salt, and snack on.
A hard-boiled egg is cooked all the way through. However, contrary to popular belief, hard-boiling eggs doesn’t mean cooking the eggs in hot water while you wash the dishes, check your e-mails, and do a few downward dogs while you’re at it because it doesn’t really matter how long the eggs are cooked since they’re going to be hard boiled anyway. Hard-boiled eggs should be boiled until they are cooked through, and not a nanosecond longer. The yolk on a properly hard-boiled egg is a uniform yellow throughout. There is no good reason for the gray ring around the yolk of a hard-boiled egg. An egg with a gray ring around the yolk is what I might call a “murdered egg.”
I make hard-boiled eggs in three instances: when I am making egg salad; when I am making deviled eggs; and when I am making medium- or soft-cooked eggs and I forget to set a timer.
To make perfect soft-, medium-, or hard-boiled eggs: Start with one more egg than you want in the end. This is your testing and snacking egg. Fill a pot big enough to hold the number of eggs you are cooking with water and bring the water to a boil over high heat. Carefully add the eggs to the water without cracking them (I put a few eggs in a spider or strainer and lower them into the water). Cook the eggs (still over high heat) for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the eggs sit in hot water for 4 minutes more for soft-boiled eggs; 5 minutes for medium-boiled eggs; and 6 minutes for hard-boiled eggs.
Meanwhile, fill a large bowl with a lot of ice and a little water. When your egg-cooking time is up, lift the eggs out of the hot water and put them in the ice bath to cool completely. Peel the eggs, pat them dry, and move on.
Don’t buy crumbled feta. Buy feta packed in water, which is available at any grocery store, and is infinitely creamier and moister than crumbled feta. How hard is it to crumble feta, I ask. Give it a whirl—you might even find that you enjoy touching your food.