Is it a problem that they go into enormous white pancakes? It has never occurred to me that might be a bad thing. Should I be egg-shamed?

You probably didn't actually want egg-frying advice, but what you need is fresher eggs, so the whites are less runny. Also, more butter in the pan, and medium-lowish heat, not very high. When you've got old eggs, they still taste fine, and there's no problem with eating them, but nothing's going to keep the whites from spreading all over the pan.

If we're talking about how to cook eggs then I wanna fight someone about poached eggs. Runny yolks are nice but you can get that with fried eggs, with the added bonus of not being soggy and looking like pond scum. I look up how to poach eggs on the internet and every single one is like "1) select an egg that was laid between 64 and 73 hours ago. 2) allow the loose egg whites to drain through a pinprick in the broad side of the egg (approx. 2 hours) 3) heat water with your sous vide (if you do not have a sous vide: see steps 34-39 for alternatives) to 198 degrees Fahrenheit...."

Screw you, "chefs." Here's my recipe for runny yolked eggs: "1) crack egg into hot pan. 2) take egg off pan when it's done."

I can't fry eggs and I don't care.

I can, however, poach them. I'm willing to trade crispy fried-ness for successfully gooey yolks any time.

Yo, fuck eggs. When I was in middle school I tried to make brownies from scratch - the recipe from my mom's old Betty Crocker cookbook - and somehow managed to COOK THE EGG IN THE BATTER BEFORE IT BAKED IN THE REST OF THE BROWNIE. So there were big gross chunks of cooked egg white in my otherwise beautiful brownies. I threw them out, defeated, and stuck to the Ghirardelli mix from then on.

Lately I've just been boiling seven-minute eggs instead. If nothing else, the cleanup is easier. Downside: when the egg cracks going into the water and then it spits albumen out to congeal in the boiling water and collect along the edges of the pot. Why.

*whispers* but try adding a teaspoon of water to the pan before you put the lid on, and then turn the heat down a bit.

I dunno, Mallory, maybe you should shell out for an egg ring - I hear they make truly eggceptional fried eggs. No more scrambling to contain those runny whites!

This post reminded me that I have a heart-shaped egg ring thing that I haven't used in months because the last time, I ended up with two round blobs of egg despite pouring them directly into the heart shape at the very beginning of the cooking process.

It also reminded me that I once ended up on the Egg Farmers of Ontario website and they have a FAQ which includes "Can I have more than one egg a day?" and "How many eggs can I eat in a week?" Children, the man has not yet been born who could tell me how many eggs I can or cannot eat in a given period of time. I'LL EAT AS MANY AS I WANT, OKAY, EGG FARMERS. You of all people do not have any interest whatsoever in limiting egg consumption.

I can fry a perfectly acceptable egg (spoiler alert, the suggestions other people are NOT MAKING are pretty good), but I do not fry eggs for myself, because I cannot abide egg yolks.

It's fine if the yolks are all mushed up within the rest of the egg (like in a scramble or an omelet). It's fine if they're removed altogether, as long as the white is not boiled. But a hard, gross, dry, pasty egg yolk is only the second worst thing in my culinary world, the very worst thing is a RUNNY egg yolk, because at least if it is solid I can remove it easily from a dish or my mouth, but a runny egg yolk is insidious.

I mean, my affection for overcooked omelets has everything to do with "that's how my mom made them" (cooked on the stove top until what other people would call "done", and then topped with provolone, or mozz, and maybe a bit of ham product, and then put under the broiler to be finished). But I have no idea why I am as opposed to egg yolks, on principle, as I am. My other food distastes have mellowed with age-- I'm more likely to eat a sandwich, I even enjoy a few types of mustard, etc. But the egg yolk thing only gets worse, to the point where I can't really comfortably watch OTHER people eating them anymore, which is frankly just embarrassing.

Quick, someone gift Mallory this tiny egg frying pan: http://www.amazon.com/Joie-Mini-Nonstick-Egg-Fry/...

SO TINY. There's nowhere for the egg white to go!

Despite in general being a pretty good home cook who is quite knowledgeable for a layperson about food science , I cannot get things like fried eggs, crepes, injera, cakes/patties/croquettes of any kind -- basically anything cooked in a nonstick pan with a small amount of fat. They always stick to the nonstick pan, they always tear/break/fail spectacularly, and I hate it.

What I need tips for is how best to fry up all the commenters who are giving unsolicited egg advice

I'm going to try your method---but I'm going to butter or oil the coffee cup first, because using a cup to corral the whites is BRILLIANT. I crack eggs into a cup anyway because I hate shells and once I got a bad egg (UNBELIEVABLE SMELL) so I have to inspect them before they go in the pan. Thank you!

Mostly I cook eggs in a teeny tiny doll-sized pan of boiling water that has a little saucer on top that you put butter in to melt and then the egg cooks in the butter and you eat it on toast. But I like fried eggs with sausage except they get all thin and too crunchy...

The difference between a perfect fried egg and a grizzled mess is about three milliseconds for me, so once I discovered baked eggs I have never looked back.

1. This was posted AN HOUR AGO and no one has made a Gaston reference? There was a comment FIFTY-TWO MINUTES AGO re: acceptable quantities of eggs to consume and no one even jumped on that. [shakes head in disappointment]

2. I have until very recently been horrible at cooking eggs and I was given a piece of advice that totally worked and I am withholding it and I feel good & smug about that.

Now I really want fried eggs (on toast) and am stuck in an eggless workplace and won't be home for HOURS.

"Make a vortex in the water"? I'm picturing Stargate with breakfast foods flying out. What the ever-loving hell?

ok, no advice, got it...

man egg frying is easy though. Like just, so, so easy. there is literally only one thing you are doing "wrong" (as other commenters have noted spider hair is delicious #fixyourtaste). it is causing me physical pain not to just scream that one thing from the top of my lungs.

I get it though, there is like so much shame around cooking shit it can be totally suffocating when you're trying to master even a little thing.

I once cracked a dozen eggs into a 14 inch skillet and flipped the entire dozen egg sheet with a single deft flick of my wrist and did not break a single yolk.

#not-humble-in-the-slightest-brag

Guys I always thought the difference between fried and over-easy eggs was the absence of that lacy edge. Am I ... am I wrong? Have I been misidentfying eggs my whole life?

BACON IS STILL REAL ISN'T IT? IT'S NOT SECRETLY HAM OR SOMETHING?

Yup, I can't really fry eggs at all but that doesn't stop me from trying. Lately I've taken to cracking two into a smallish pan and then letting the whites of both of them combine to fill the whole bottom of that pan. Then when I think they're done I literally cut down the middle with a spatula, which results in two half-circle shaped eggs. Sometimes the yolks even end up relatively centered! Of course this still doesn't solve the problem of completely overcooking the yolk/undercooking the white.

Everybody is having so much trouble frying eggs because I invented frying eggs just last month, of course is hard because it is new for you. although I am amazed how familiar you all seem with the technique seeing as I only invented it last month like I say and had not told anybody about it yet. I bought a tiny useless four-inch nonstick pan and was about to scramble an egg in it when I thought to myself that any scrambling would remove the egg from the tiny pan and set it on fire probably. so I stood in thought a moment and by the time I was finished thinking the egg had become fried. you know it is done when the smoke detector goes off. then you take the tiny pan off the flame, pull the smoke detector out of the ceiling so it quiets, come back to the stove and put salt on the egg.

(those are NOT INSTRUCTIONS, I am just describing my invention, which I forgot to patent so what is the point of keeping it secret any longer)

Omelets. They absorb almost any kind of leftover, except for pancakes, and I'm only saying that because I've never tried. Once you get the timing right, you can turn the heat off and let them finish cooking without supervision, which is sort of magical. They singlehandedly vindicate the amount of time I spent stripping and reseasoning the cast iron skillet I cook them in. Kraft has a shredded habanero cheese product that basically means that it doesn't matter what else you put in there--pencil shavings, leftover screws from your latest flatpack furniture assembly project, something the cat dragged in, whatever, it's all good.

It was my work study job to fry eggs at school and I made 37,500 ish of them. I am the deity of fried eggs.
I don't want to give advice I just want to write an epic poem on how I am the god of fried eggs since I don't believe this position has been occupied by anyone else. About midway through the poem I will realize that I may be better at frying eggs than anything else I have ever done and the second half will less self congratulatory . My pantheon will include a god of making perfect rice.

(workers at Denny's have surely made more .....shhhhh don't ruin my dreams!)

I have tried those "put a ring of sweet pepper/onion/etc" in the pan, and I have tried eggy in a basket, but somehow nothing ever contains the white. There's always this bit of egg white that makes a run for it under the edge of its container before the hot pan manages to cook it.

Another way to not make eggs that I learned this weekend:
Buy the fancy fancy, pastured eggs where the people at the farmer's market have videos of the chickens on their phones and they tell you what herbs and bugs the chickens are eating this week. (If chickens can move around freely, they can hide where they lay their eggs. The eggs are fabulous when fresh, but extra vigilance about freshness is required.)
Do not smell the eggs when breaking them into the little cups for the egg poacher. Somehow. Somehow avoid inhaling in the vicinity of the eggs for the entire cooking time.
Depending on how cooked you like your poached eggs, stop cooking them either 1 minute or 3 minutes too soon. Give the one where the yolk hasn't thickened and the white is still transparent to your daughter-in-law because she likes her steak rare, and this is the same.
Frown at your much-more cooked egg and say "this is so undercooked, I don't know if I'll eat it." Do this several times.
Remark on the interesting smell at the brunch table. Wonder whether it's diesel or something. When your daughter-in-law says "It's sulphur. It's the eggs.", describe how there are videos of happy chickens at the farmer's market stand, so it can't be the eggs.
Remind your daughter-in-law that eggs are part of the meal because her metabolism means that the traditional family brunch of fruit, juice, sugared tea, bread, and jam results in a migraine, so now there are eggs.
Watch her take a bite of the egg.
When she says "I'm pretty sure it's spoiled", tell her about the fucking chickens. Again. Watch her take a second bite. Sulk when she refuses to take a third.
Complain that someone put a piece of perfectly good bread in the compost just because the bread is soaked in spoiled egg.

Brunch, you guys. Also my husband ran me through the procedure for explaining that his mother has served spoiled food, because OF COURSE there's a policy for that, there's a policy for everything.

Now I have this old local (New England) television PSA about eggs stuck in my head. Thanks, Toastrons. <sad face>
I will put the egg jingle lyrics in the comments to avoid infecting others.

I worked in a golf club kitchen in England and it was the first time I'd seen a professional fry eggs.

The pan was so deep in oil he could spoon it repeatedly over the top of the eggs, thus nullifying the jelly-oozy white issue but unfortunately also nullifying my desire to ever fry eggs again.