Jac likes to cook up a big breakfast on Sunday mornings.
This was last Sunday’s fry-up. Pork chipolatas, tomatoes, button mushrooms and eggs. She cooked the mushrooms with butter and a couple of whole garlic cloves.
Jac’s plate, with her egg over easy. You may have noticed she’s removed the skin from her tomatoes. She can’t stand cooked tomato skin. :)
My plate, with two fried eggs, sunny side up. As usual, Jac gave me the cooked garlic cloves, as she knows how much I love them. She’d cooked my eggs carefully and to perfection – on low heat until the egg whites were set, leaving the yolks bright and plump and temptingly bursty.
I added a little freshly cracked black pepper to the eggs and tomato, squirted barbecue sauce onto the sausages and dove in.
How to cook an egg sunny side up
A few people have asked me this recently. These are general instructions, not a recipe as such.
- The secret is low, controlled heat. Use the lowest heat setting on your stove.
- Use a well-lubricated pan. I don’t mean drown the egg in oil; just make sure you’ve covered surface of the pan evenly so the egg won’t stick to the pan. We like to use spray-on olive oil, but any vegetable oil will be fine.
- Be patient. Let it cook. Don’t disturb or touch it. Resist the temptation to speed things up by turning the heat up. At the lowest heat setting the egg will cook evenly. The egg white just needs its time to set. Remember, always low heat.
- Be gentle when handling the egg, especially when sliding the spatula under the cooked egg and then lifting it out of the pan onto the plate. Don’t burst that yolk in the process!
I’m sure if you google it you’ll find lots of tips too.
I'm TFP, a food blogger from Perth, Western Australia.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Today we didnt have our usual Sunday fry-out. Instead I went to the neighbourhood oriental shop and get 4 readywrap (bungkus) nasi lemak and giant currypuff. Cant bear it any longer, need my nasi lemak. :)
Hi Flower,
Yum! I love the nasi lemak asian supermarkets sell. So many places have them these days, which is good. And giant curry puff is one of my favourite snacks. Haven’t had one for a while. Now I have a craving! :-P
hi here, a tip to share: try adding some water in the pan after the egg is set, the yolk stays perfect & the egg white doesnt get too burnt at the edges. Cheers!
angie,
Cool, thanks -I hadn’t heard that tip before.
Yummy…so delicious..you good
very suspicious… I count 9 sausages in the pan and only see 3 each on the plates… Dare I predict their appearence in a bento compartment to follow?
Bryan,
You got it! :)
I am an American with an Australian wife of 15 years, me being the head cook an chief bottle washer. I had perfected the soft boiled egg but not the sunny side up my 9 year old dual citizen daughter appreciates, always opting for the “over easy” solution. Jac’s slow cook low heat method is perfect! I put it in a medium skillet, with a bit of olive oil, then put the lid on, then down to low, turn on the boil for the soft egg – when the boil starts I hit the toast. When the toast is done, the boiled egg comes out and the sunny side one is perfect!
Thank you, TFP and Jac, for your kind consideration of the rest of us that enjoy, and more often prepare, our food!
ps – my daughter LOVES your kitty drawings! I have to put them on her hard boiled eggs now . . .
Hi Darren,
That’s great, I’m pleased you found these tips useful. Jac was chuffed to hear it too (especially since I followed her around with a note pad while I picked her brains for her wisdom!). Heehee, I’m thrilled your daughter likes the drawings! There will be more kitty drawings on future notes! :)
I just put a lid over the eggs when Im cooking them sunny side up! A trick I got from my dad watching him cook up sunday breakie when I was younger!
Ok so, low heat, lots of time … got it…
I had taken to having easy over because nobody ever gets sunny side up right, and I hate what I call “egg snot” :-) I always end up scraping the icky runny white off and then it stares at me from the side of the plate pulsating. Ok it doesn’t pulsate, but you know what I mean.
I think I like my eggs like you have yours. Of course sometimes there’s nothing like an overdone easy over with crispy bits on it!
Here we don’t tend to use the terms easy over and sunny side up. Instead we use stupid terms like soft, medium or hard. Generally only referring to the yolk. Actually the terms aren’t that stupid, but the waitrons ask how you want it and then it always ends up being hard anyway…
Craig,
I like sunny side up and scrambled – unfortunately both can be done very badly when eating out – overdone sunny side up, yolk already broken, white still too snotty; scrambled eggs can be way overdone. My favourite eggs are scrambled eggs when I’ve cooked them myself and sunny side up eggs when Jac’s cooked them. :) We do talk about soft and hard yolks here – not sure what I would get if I asked for a medium yolk.
Yeah, here, in general soft/medium/hard seems to refer to the whole egg. So if you ask for soft you’re likely to get a snotty egg. Which is probably where medium came from. It tends to mean, set white, soft yolk! :-)
Interesting. I usually ask for soft and am happy with the result. When I don’t remember to ask, that’s when it’s hard and a total waste. :)