Fried Eggs
The time-honored way of frying eggs with ham or bacon may be varied by using olive oil or butter. If ham or bacon is used, remove the slices to a hot platter as soon as the ham is done or the bacon delicately crisped, and break the eggs gently into the hot fat. With a spoon dip some of the boiling fat over the top of the eggs while they are cooking, and as soon as cooked sufficiently lift out with a pancake-turner.
This is the basting method for fried eggs, sometimes called sunny-side up basted or oeufs miroir. The whole technique rests on spooning hot fat over the yolks so the tops set without flipping.
- The hingeKeep the fat hot enough to spoon but not smoking. If it browns the whites into lace before the yolk films over, pull the pan off the burner between spoonfuls.
- How much fatBacon or ham drippings from two or three slices is about right for two eggs in a 8-10 inch pan. If you use butter or oil instead, allow 2 to 3 tablespoons so there is enough depth to gather in the spoon.
- Butter alternativeButter alone will brown and speck before the eggs finish. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of oil added, holds up better at basting heat.
- TimingTwo to three minutes total over medium heat gives set whites and a liquid yolk under a thin opaque veil. Four minutes or more sets the yolk through.
- Yolk safetyA basted yolk stays runny. If serving someone pregnant, elderly, or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs or cook until the yolk is firm.
- Break the eggs firstCrack each egg into a small cup and slide it in from the cup rim. This keeps shell out and lets the whites go into the pan without spreading into one another.
- YieldTwo eggs per person is a reasonable allowance, with one to two slices of bacon or a single thin ham slice alongside.
Frying eggs in the fat left from breakfast meat is thrift as much as flavor. Basting rather than turning gives what French kitchens call oeufs miroir, for the glossy film the hot fat leaves over the yolk -- though that term is more usually applied to eggs set gently without turning, often in the oven, than to pan-basting. The suggestion of olive oil may be a small marker of date: by the early twentieth century some compiled American household books had begun to treat olive oil as a cooking fat rather than only a salad or medicinal item, and it was still expensive enough that offering it as a variation, not the default, would make sense.