How To Cook Eggs

I started cooking short order breakfast at my parents restaurant when I was fifteen and have learned to make perfect eggs to order. I have refined my egg cooking techniques over the years, cranking out thousands of eggs for customers. I have recieved many compliments. I believe that most people who order eggs over easy, don't want any slime around the yolks yet want most of the yoke runny and dippable.

Some like the yokes cooked thoroughly, and others prefer them in other ways too. I decided to make this lense (my fifth) to help people learn how to make all the various styles of eggs that are served by restaurants.

1. It is important that you have a good egg pan or griddle, I prefer the pans sold by the foodservice companies that are 6 inches at the bottom and have a strong non-stick surface. It's important that your pan or griddle has a heat resistant handle cover also. As long as your pan or griddle is made of a heavier metal and not thin and cheap, you will have good results. You can find a good egg pan or griddle at your local department store, but make sure it is a good thickness and of high quality. I have a griddle that sets over two burners at home, and I love it for all kinds of stuff. Flipping eggs in a pan, tossing them up and back and nailing the landing is my preferred way. It's difficult to learn to do without messing up the eggs, but if done correctly results in a perfect circle of perfectly cooked eggs. Pleasing to the eye.

2. Through the whole process the heat will remain at a low, to medium low setting.

3. It is important that one is informed of all the health risk and handling procedures for cooking eggs. As in cross-contamination preventative measures.

Before I get started telling you how to cook eggs, you must know that I practice safe procedures when I cook, and I would hope everybody else would do the same.

For the person at home I would recommend getting a small bucket or container and filling it with hot water. Then add one cap-full of bleach to the water. Believe me, this is plenty and any more will make your kitchen smell of bleach. Not to mention that a little too much bleach in the digestive system can cause diarreah. Bleach kills everything, and the mix lasts for a couple hours.

A clean hand towel should be soaking in this sanitzer bucket. Use it to wipe surfaces, remove debri, wipe equipment and so forth. Then always put the towel back in. Not hanging over the edge or on the counter, ALWAYS keep your towel in your hand or in the bucket completely submerged. Safe, thats how I roll. Ask any chef they'll tell you the exact same!

It is important to contain raw eggs and not to get them on anything else. Be sure not to cross contaminate. If any of your eggs are damaged throw them out. Eggs can be kept in the fridge in a scrambled state for only 24 hrs. then they must be discarded. Thats what my health department agent said, and I have learned that through saftey classes. Scrambled eggs in a carton contain preservatives and as long as they are kept cold, they will be good until the expiring date.

Eggs in the shell should be stored in the fridge as we all know, but make sure your refrigerator is between 34 and 40 degrees. A cheap thermometer can be purchased for the fridge for just a couple bucks. All cold food must be kept at this temp. range to prevent spoiling or bacterial growth. Is your fridge cold enough?

Eggs should be stored on the bottom shelf of the fridge so if they break they will not drip and contaminate the other stuff below it. In restaurants eggs are treated as if they were a meat product.

Make sure all cuts and scrapes are sealed with a oversize band-aid. A pair of foodservice gloves should be used if you have open wounds on your hands. Bacteria from chicken eggs causes minor infections in cuts more rapidly. Always be sure to wash your hands after handling raw cracked open eggs. Use a good bacterial soap. I recommend dial gold with moisturizer.

Handwashing is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of germs and diseases.

Here's how we do it in the restaurant biz. You should know this is a very effective way, and you should wash your hands this way at home too, when cooking!

Get a piece of paper towel ready for drying your hands.

Get the water as hot as your hands can stand without serious discomfort.

Rinse your hands getting them wet all over. We will be washing the entire wrist also, so get that hot and wet too.

Apply anti-bacterial soap liberally to your hands, rubbing them together firmly. Pay attention to detail and make sure you scrub all the different parts of the hands and wrists.

You must wash your hands like this for a minimum of 20 seconds.

Grab the handy nail brush after the 20 seconds and scrub nails for an additional 15 seconds. (work)

Rinse thoroughly, but don't shut off the water. The handles are dirty, and you could contaminate your fingers again.

Dry your hands with the paper towel.

Then wad up the paper towel and use it too shut off the water.

Toss the paper towel in the trash.

Put on surgical type gloves. (work)

Go cook something.

When handling raw meat and eggs, repeat washing in between and after. Make sure you wash your cutting board and utensils to avoid cross contamination.

1. A good egg pan or griddle as described above.

2. The small burner on your electric stove set to medium-low. I prefer a gas stove of course because the heat is now, and always using gas stoves has made me biased I suppose. All the restaurants use gas. The gas should be set to low as to where the flames coming out around the gas fixture are only about 1/2 inch high.

3. Vegetable oil. I like the butter flavored grill oil.

4. For eggs on the griddle you will need a flat thin plastic spatula. The grill in a restaurant is not non-stick so we use a thin metal spatula. I like to get my spatula a little hot by pressing it to the grill. This lets it slide like butter under the eggs, making them easy to flip. :)

A good egg spatula can be found at most retail shopping stores. The spatulas I offer below are ideal. Theres even a long restaurant spatula like I use at work on the grill.

Flipping eggs in a pan requires a technique that takes a little practice, but after a while you get used to it and it becomes a natural motion. First thing about flipping eggs in a pan is that you need a good nonstick 7 inch round pan. It would be about 5 - 5 1/2 inches at the bottom and the sides must slope up to the edge. Pans with a 90 degree angled corner around the bottom/side won't work for this technique. You can pick up one by visiting the Amazon links on this page, but make sure it is heavy and well made for best egg cooking results.

Once you have an ideal pan chosen for cooking and flipping eggs, you will need some vegetable oil. About 1 tablespoon. Restaurants buy grill oil and often it is butter flavored.

Put your pan on the stove on low heat. Add 1 Tbsp Vegtable oil. Spread the oil around by tipping the pan around until oil covers entire surface.

Crack open an egg and holding it close to your pan, so it doesn't go splat when it comes out, carefully lay the contents of the egg onto the pan surface. Repeat this for the second egg, (yes, wer'e cooking two!). They should lay about an inch apart.

Let the eggs cook slowly until the bottoms appear a little white, then with your spatula carefully rip apart the thick part of the clear whites and let them spread out.

Continue to slowly cook the eggs until at least 2/3 of the clear liquid around the yolks has cooked and turned white.

Take a small rubber spatula and place it in between the edge of the whites and the pan. Move it around the outside making sure the eggs are loose from the pan around the edges. You can jiggle the pan to break them loose all the way. A quick little flick of the pan forward and back may make them slide freely around in the pan.

OK ,once you have the eggs so you can slide them around in the pan feely and in tact, you are ready to flip them.

Lift the pan off the burner slightly. Tilt it forward handle up and jiggle until the eggs slide forward to the front edge of the egg pan.

Then with a motion that slightly tosses the eggs up and back torwards you, using your wrist too, you can flip the eggs completly over. This motion tosses the back of the eggs torward you and up slightly. They land flipped over. It's almost a circular motion of the hand and wrist. If flipped with just enough force to get them all the way over, the landing back into the pan will be soft ensuring the yolks don"t break. For the restaurant look we flip them back over before sliding them onto a plate.

It's the same for sautee' cooking you may have seen on TV. They toss ingredients up and back torwards them to flip over the ingredients in the pan.

When you get that down, then you can work on refining it.

The landing your eggs have has a lot to do with if your egg yolks will break, or not. A soft landing is best and when the eggs are in mid air and starting to come down, I slowly lower my pan with the eggs. This technique allows the eggs to land softly and not smack the pan when they hit causing the yolks to break.

Practice makes perfect. Try cooking and flipping the same eggs over and over until you get the hang of it. Practicing with a piece of toast to get the basic idea is ok, but nothing can substitute the real thing.

Set your burners to a low-medium setting.

Set your griddle over the burner(s) for about two minutes.

Add to the griddle 1 Tblsp vegetable oil for two or three eggs. Spread around a little with the spatula.

Carefully crack your eggs and open up the shell over the oil, holding it close so it doesn't drop out too far from above and splat. Make sure you put them together leaving a 1 inch space between them.

The eggs shouldn't be cooking rapidly, they need to cook slowly. If they are cooking noisily then turn your heat down a little.

You will see a thin outer egg white and a thicker egg white around the yolk. This is what I do to help insure the whites get done thoroughly and there is no slimy-ness when finished. I let the eggs cook until the bottom of them turns white, then I take my spatula and on the thick part of the whites around the yoke, I tear them with the corner of the spatula and let them spread out.

If I continue to cook the eggs until the whites are completly done without flipping them they would be cooked sunny side up and would be done.

--------------------------------Over-lite eggs through Over hard eggs--------------------------------

For over light eggs the whites will be 3/4 cooked and then flipped for about 10-15 seconds. They're done. Yolk is warmed but completely runny.

For over easy eggs the steps are the same as above just cook them 30 seconds after flipping, they're done. Yokes are still quite runny and whites are definetly 100% done.

Over-medium eggs same as above just cook longer after flipping, about 1 min. These eggs still have some dippable yolk, but its thicker, and cooked right they should have a fair amount of cooked yoke under the runny part.

Over-medium well eggs are cooked like above, just a liitle longer. These eggs have no runny yolk, but the yoke is still soft and tender.

Over-well eggs are cooked like above, but even longer until the yolk is hard. Some considerable browning has occured on the whites.

Over-hard eggs are commonly used for sandwiches also. We shall crack these eggs open onto the grill like as defined earlier, and when we rip the thick parts of the whites open to spread, we also break the yolks and spread them out a little also.
over-hard eggs should cook 2/3 of the way before flipping, then when the yolks are firm they are done.

All over eggs in restaurants should be flipped back over onto plate when done, with the yolks pointing up. They look much better with the original side up.