How Fried Eggs are Made in 10 Countries | Epicurious

You're about to see 10 different chefs From 10 different countries Make fried eggs A fried egg Quintessential American breakfast is bacon and eggs. Frying eggs is all about time, control, heat, fat, how you make them, how you crack them. There's a system for everything. I'm putting it on medium heat, not too low, not too high. We're cracking them in here first so that the yolk doesn't break and that the shell doesn't get in the pan. And then you're going to melt your butter, but not brown your butter. And then you're going to gently pour the two eggs right in the pan. I like the ceramic pan because it doesn't stick. I want to bring this down a little bit because I see it's moving a little fast. Then I want to season my eggs. This is highly seasoned from high up. You can see that the edge is getting a little bit crispy. The ceramic pan makes them really nice and loose. And then I'm going to lower that heat a little bit more. The theory behind the heat is that I want to kind of start them off where I get the edges a little crispy and I get those whites moving. And then I want to lower the flame so the rest of the whites cook right around here. You want to kind of get that albumen all cooked. It's the white of the egg and the yolk is going to cook from underneath. I don't like basting it because then you take the yolk and you cover it and then it gets opaque. I like the egg to hit certain parts of the pan. I don't like them in one place. You see now that's really where I want this almost perfect. Now you can see how I got that little crispy edge on the bottom. I like really like seeing the yolk. Beautiful, fully cooked white, little crispy bottom, seasoned properly. Excellent. Egg-cellent. Two perfect fried eggs. So in Chinese cooking, sometimes when we say you need a hot wok, generous oil, high heat cooking is actually a great way to prevent your eggs being overcooked. We only cook it for a few seconds. So the egg yolk will be really still running. I'm heating the wok and I'm going to add some oil. We want to wait until the oil is very hot. So I like to wait until the oil is hot enough that you just see one wisp of the smoke. Otherwise, it'll become too hot. So you'll see the blister of the eggs because of the moisture and the protein in the eggs. When it meets the oil, the water in the egg white converts into steam. That's why it bubbles. The whole process takes about 10 to 20 seconds. Egg white has a really crispy texture. And then the taste will become a little bit kind of like a nutty, little nutty crispy flavor. The Chinese name of this egg actually means the eggs resemble the blooming lotus flower. A little bit of soy sauce, finely chopped scallions, congee, and then pickled mustard. Perfect crispy egg white with creamy egg yolk. So good. My fried eggs is called an oeuf miroir, egg mirror in English. A thin pellicle that is part of the egg white that's going to cover the yolk and make it shiny. It's going to look like a mirror. So clarified butter is I melt down the butter to take away the white milk, we call it, inside the butter. That's what actually burns in the pan. So I take it away so my butter is clean. It won't burn. So here I choose a medium temperature. We don't want to rush because eggs cook fast. More temperature, more dry they get. It's going to cook in, I would say, three minutes. I have some beautiful farm eggs. You can just fry the eggs in the pan. That works too. I'm just fancy. So I'm going to add my two rings. We crack one egg in each ring. You just want a little bit of salt. We don't want to cook the yolks with the salt. Pepper right on top. So now I'm going to put the eggs in the oven. To finish cooking the egg white, having that shiny pellicle on top of the yolks. Nice, you can see on top of the yolk, this egg white, very shiny, thin pellicle. So the yolk is still very soft. It's not cooked. Two eggs for lunch is perfect for me. I got enough. Perfect. Delicious. Bon appetit. I'm going to make medamayaki, Japanese-style fried egg. Medama is translated to English as eyeballs. Once you cook an egg, it's going to look like an eyeball. Medamayaki is a simple dish starting with the bacon. We're going to use the bacon fat. I started with a cold pan and I'll season it so that the fat will be lendered. Using meat products is, that's something that's not game meat, is very new to a Japanese culture from 1920s. So this is what makes it yoshoku. Yoshoku is translated to English as Japanese western food. Put the eggs on top. Now I'm going to pour some hot water. So steam is going to cook the entire egg from outside. So this one I'm looking for at the bottom, little crispy, and the top very soft and as close to raw as possible. Japanese cooking is all about the vibrancy of a color. Every single dish has a certain color that's expected. Egg dish is going to be one of those things. It's going to have a hue of yellow, white, and brown. And you're going to have a green on the side. Salt, pepper. If you're going to eat Japanese fried egg, you should eat with soy sauce. This one is, to me, it's a perfect medamayaki. I like to eat the whole egg in one bite. This is the proper way. So the fried egg I'm making today, it's huevos en hojasanta. This is the hojasanta. It's a leaf endemic to Oaxaca. And I'm going to cook the eggs on top of the comal. They're going to be cooked on top of the leaf. The comal, it's one of the staples of Mexican cuisine. It's made of clay. It has, like, pores. And once you put it on a heat, it expands. So when you cook it and you put the cow on top, it covers all the surface and makes, like, a smooth surface for your comal. This is the original nonstick pan. It's a very healthy way because it doesn't have any fat or any oils. The leaf adds a lot of beautiful flavor to the dish. It has its own profile. I don't know how to compare it to other leaf. A little bit of salt. The texture of this egg stays soft. The crispy part here is the leaf. I'm rotating also the leaf so it gets cooked evenly. When it's done, I want to see the white part of the egg being cooked like here. Our fresh tortilla, hojasanta with the eggs on top. Add some queso fresco and some salsa with chile morita. You hear the crispiness of the hoja? It's very good. If you have a fried egg in Nigeria, you get it a little different from the fried egg in America. We don't do sunny side up egg anywhere in the country. Trust me, I can guarantee you that. Most Nigerians will tell you when you come to food, they want it well done. We don't go to a restaurant and order medium rare steak. It has to be well done or medium well or something like that. Okay, the first thing I do when I'm frying my egg, I like to steam my vegetables first. Onions, scorched bonnet. Very spicy. Grape tomatoes. When you broke your head earlier before you start frying your egg and you leave it for like 10 minutes, 7 minutes, it allows the egg to be fluffy. Do you know why? I refuse to be a food scientist. I'm a chef. It's my techniques, which I learned from one of my ex-girlfriends. And one of the secrets, allow the oil to boil. Not too much so that the egg will not turn black. But boil very well. This is where the flavor comes from, from the vegetable. So if you know my technique, trust me, it's going to be fluffy. I don't even want it to be brown. I want it white. Some people like to use just a drop of oil. More oil will not kill you instantly. So this is it. It's done. Lord almighty. It's really very good. Okay, so today I'm going to make a very simple egg dish called sujuklu yumurta in Turkish, which means eggs with sujuk. This is the sausage made of beef and then mutton fat or sheep fat. The sausage is so flavorful and it has lots of salt and lots of pepper in it. This is definitely the bacon and egg, the Turkish version. As you see, there's a lot of fat coming out of this delicious, delicious smelling sausage. Go a little higher. These eggs aren't going to get so crispy. It's not fried like Chinese people do in a wok or something. We're using the fat of the sausage. So we're not going to get so much texture. We just want a nice sunny side up egg. We love runny eggs in Turkey. I actually just lowered the temperature a little bit. Okay, I think our eggs are done. Everything stays kind of soft. I'm really not looking for anything crispy. The goal is for us to just make sure the whites are cooked, our sausage is cooked and the yolks are runny. As you might notice, there is no plates here. This dish always comes in the pot that it's cooked in. And this is how traditionally it's eaten in Turkish families. Everything comes to the middle of the table and shared family style. It's such a rich flavor. Really unbelievable. Delicious. The dish that I decided to do is called keema pav anda. Keema means chicken mince. Anda means egg. Pav is bread. They're basically like little tiny buns. So this version has the bread and on top of it we put cooked minced chicken, kind of like a sloppy joe. Top it with a fried egg and it's a great breakfast. So I'm going to use ghee for my eggs. Ghee is basically clarified butter. All the milk solids are removed and it's basically pure fat. The ghee has to be white butter. So it's just like when you take heavy cream and like you start whipping it, the first white solid color that you get that is white butter. Eggs are not vegetarian in India. We can eat butter, be vegetarian. Milk, cheese, paneer, all vegetarian. But eggs are not vegetarian because they carry life according to us. One thing about doing great fried eggs for any Indian is that the oil or the ghee has to be like really nice and hot. And when I put the eggs in there, the white has to get like really, really nice and crunchy and brown in color. Lower the flame and let the whites kind of cook. I think ghee is great for cooking eggs. One, it smells delicious, has a higher burning point. Unlike butter where it starts burning and starts having that taste. So do you see how the white is done really well now? Not moving. That's it. Then I'm going to pop the egg on top. I like to break this and get a little bit of yolk on my bread. Multiple layers of textures and flavors. So good. The pot that I'm using is a tagine pot, which is the way that we back home cook everything. Nigerian people, we love butter. That's for sure. I can do butter all day. Start medium low. Keep it covered because it's clay pot. So it gets warmer. Everything will be cooked at the same temperature. All right, so I'm going to start cracking some eggs. We don't want the butter to burn. So I'm adding some salt, some pepper, some secret spice. We have the cumin, which I love the cumin. And this is when the magic happens. I close this and I let it cook. For me, I like the clay pot because it just keeps the whole flavor together. And even like usually like fried egg, like if you do it the French way, you have to flip it. And with this, you don't have to flip it. It just steams over. It cooks over. Once I see that the whole top is almost cooked, I just put it higher. The color with the spices. So good. You can hear it now. I think it's almost there. Some cilantro. Wow. This is so good. And look at the bottom. It's perfectly cooked. I also make my own harissa. It's red pepper. It's a spicy sauce. It's really smart to use a tagine pot because the food will stay warm. Once you turn it all off, it's been like still cooking for another like 5 or 10 minutes. When I stopped the cooking, I was at over easy. And now I'm like completely over medium without any fire. Perfectly cooked around it. No plate. You don't need plate. So good. It was so delicious. This is the perfect fried eggs. Bolon is a dish that's very popular in Ecuador. You could have it for breakfast. You could have it for lunch. Or you could even have it for dinner. Bolon is a green plantain smashed with cheese, pork belly. It always comes with two fried eggs. I personally like the egg that the white is cooked. The yolk still running. We're going to use a nonstick pan. We're going to cook with regular oil, but we're going to put a little bit of lard. Now, lard is very common in Ecuador. The flavor is intense. And with the bolon, it goes perfect because we actually use pork belly. So this is using the lard from that pork. We're going to try to do like a medium, a little bit of oil. If you use only lard, it's going to burn. Oil gives it more resistance. So now I'm going to go ahead and put the egg. Once the white starts cooking around the edges, we're going to baste it with the lard and the oil. Some people prefer the crusted edges around the egg. I personally don't. Then as you can see, it's almost done. And then you can lower the heat a little bit. You want to separate the eggs. And there you go. What we have here, we have bolon. We have chicharron and cheese. And we have extra cheese on top. We have two sunny side eggs, a little salt and pepper, cooked in lard. And here we have some pickled onions, lime juice, salt, pepper, and a little bit of diced tomatoes. The way you eat this dish is you want to combine everything together. You're tasting the lard. You're tasting the chicharron, the creaminess of the cheese. You're getting everything. It's delicious. Oh my gosh, so good. Delicious. That's a really good bite. It's very good.