Master Your Cooking Fundamentals with Four Different Egg Recipes
When I first got deep into cooking as a hobby, a mentor of mine pushed me to nail the fundamentals of food, even going as far as suggesting I avoid using spices until I can make amazing food with just salt and oil. I took my mentor’s advice, and the first thing I started working on was eggs.
Why? Because eggs are incredibly cheap, versatile, and easy to screw up. Which meant I wouldn’t break the bank attempting them over and over again, I had several techniques to work on, and if I did anything wrong, it would be very obvious. Once I knew how to make eggs, the results really showed.
It took months. In fact, I didn’t learn the final key to great scrambled eggs until about a year ago. But that journey taught me a lot about heat control, salt timing, and even the proper way to hold and move a pan to get your food to move around exactly the way you want it to. I also learned that a lot of cooking requires constant attention, focus, and patience. These are all invaluable skills with almost every dish you make. And maybe the best part is when I make eggs, I barely have any mess to clean up—my pan stays shiny and has no leftover bits of egg clinging on.
So what are the basic egg skills, and how can you master them? Just look at the recipes below, which I’ve written in an instructional format.
4 Fundamental Egg Recipes for Mastering Culinary Technique
These five egg recipes will push you to practice different techniques in the kitchen. Once you've nailed each of these recipes, you'll have a much better foundation in cooking food on a proper schedule, layering salt, selecting cooking fat, determining proper cooking temperature, residual cooking techniques, culinary motor skills like whisking, flipping, tossing and stirring, and more.
Ingredients:Poached Eggs
1 fresh egg
salt
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar (optional)
Fried Eggs
1-3 eggs
butter or olive oil
salt
Boiled Eggs
1-12 eggs
ice
Scrambled Eggs
2-4 eggs
1-2 tablespoons butter
salt
Directions:
Poached Eggs:
Poached eggs are gently cooked by simmering in water. The cooking process involves slipping whole, cracked eggs into simmering water and cooking until the egg whites are set but the yolks remain runny. The result is a tender, silky egg with a runny yolk enclosed in a delicate, firm egg white. These eggs are perfect on toast, and are a classic on English muffins. You want a nice, porous starch to soak up that runny egg yolk.
One note: this recipe must be made with fresh eggs. Fresh eggs have firmer egg whites that coagulate well in the water. The older an egg gets, the more its proteins break down. If it's too old, the egg will just dissolve into a stringy mess in the water. The first time I made poached eggs, I ended up with just a cooked yolk.
Fill a small sauce pan with water and bring it to a gentle simmer. You want the water steaming, but not quite to a rolling boil.
Optional: pour a tablespoon of vinegar into the water. This can encourage coagulation and prevent the whites from separating into a stringy mess, but it's not necessary if you have fresh eggs.
Use a spoon to stir the water until you have a gentle and steady whirpool.
Crack an egg into the center of the whirpool.
Cook the egg for three minutes, until the whites are set but the yolk is still runny. You can go for a few more minutes to set the yolk more if you don't like a fully liquid yolk.
Remove the egg from the water with a slotted spoon and sprinkle it with salt. Serve immediately over porous bread like an English muffin.
Fried Eggs:
There are many varieties of fried egg, like sunny side up, over easy, olive oil, etc. The point is to cook the egg whole in a frying pan with oil. I'll give you two different versions.
Low and slow: set a pan on the stove over low to medium-low heat. Melt some butter in the pan. Crack an egg into the pan and let it cook. As it becomes translucent, use a spoon to grab some of the butter and baste it over the egg. Continue basting until the top of the egg is cooked to your liking. The end result will be a very soft, tender egg that is perfectly white.
High and fast: set a pan on the stove over medium to medium-high heat. Once the pan is hot, add some olive oil to it. Crack an egg ino the pan and let it cook. As it cooks, use a spoon to grab some of the oil and baste it over the egg. You'll want to avoid basting the egg yolk and only baste the egg whites. Once the top of the egg is fully cooked, remove it from the heat. The end result will be a good, tender egg with crispy, crunchy edges, and a nice runny yolk. This egg has a lot of different texture that is really pleasurable, and I'll often eschew the traditional toast and just scoop everything up with a fork.
Either way you cook your egg, remove it from the heat and sprinkle it with salt before enjoying. This egg is generally considered a breakfast food in America, but it is perfectly serviceable over rice, pasta with marinara sauce, burgers, and many other non-breakfast meals. As a guest in someone's house, I had fried eggs for lunch and dinner all the time while I lived in Chile.
Boiled Eggs:
Boiled eggs are the perfect example of recipe misinformation that gets spread all over the internet. A quick google search will reveal a thousand different ways to make the recipe, some with tons of salt in the water, some with fancy gadgets that take up space and aren't actually necessary. Making proper boiled eggs is the perfect way to learn how to cut through the crap. It's also a great way to learn precision and consistency, because unlike the other recipes, you can't watch this one as it cooks. Fortunately, it's actually quite simple.
Place your eggs in a pan and completely cover them with cold water.
Bring the water to a boil.
As soon as the water starts boiling, remove the pan from the heat and set a timer for 11 minutes.
While the timer is running, fill a bowl with ice water.
When the 11 minute timer is up, drain the eggs and place them in the ice water. If you have no ice, then run cold water over the eggs for several minutes.
Scrambled Eggs:
I've seen more botched egg scrambles than any other recipe in my life (though chicken breast is a close second). Nothing is more frustrating than ruining a batch of eggs that will be dry and rubbery, and leaves behind a frying pan caked in burned on egg bits. What blows my mind is the number of people who think this is normal and have grown accustomed to eating bad eggs. Try a better way, and it'll change your life.
Put a pan over the stove on medium-high heat. You want to be able to put a droplet of water on the surface of the pan and watch it sizzle and dance.
While the pan heats up, whisk some eggs in a bowl. Don't add ANYTHING to them. Salt leeches the water out. Milk or cream don't make them fluffy. Just trust the eggs.
When the pan is hot, melt your butter into it. Once the butter is melted, drop in your eggs and remove the pan from the heat.
If you've done this all right, the eggs won't even stick to the pan. Just use a rubber spatula to move them around as the eggs create gorgeous, thick curds. You want high heat to prevent stickage, but you want to immediately remove the eggs from the heat to prevent overcooking.
You want the eggs to develop a good amount of body, but remove them from the heat before they're fully done. Once you put them on a plate, the residual heat will finish cooking the eggs. At this point, add salt, pepper, cheese, and anything else you want. The end result is eggs that are tender and moist and absolutely delicious.
Poached eggs are gently cooked by simmering in water. The cooking process involves slipping whole, cracked eggs into simmering water and cooking until the egg whites are set but the yolks remain runny. The result is a tender, silky egg with a runny yolk enclosed in a delicate, firm egg white. These eggs are perfect on toast, and are a classic on English muffins. You want a nice, porous starch to soak up that runny egg yolk.
One note: this recipe must be made with fresh eggs. Fresh eggs have firmer egg whites that coagulate well in the water. The older an egg gets, the more its proteins break down. If it's too old, the egg will just dissolve into a stringy mess in the water. The first time I made poached eggs, I ended up with just a cooked yolk.
Fill a small sauce pan with water and bring it to a gentle simmer. You want the water steaming, but not quite to a rolling boil.
Optional: pour a tablespoon of vinegar into the water. This can encourage coagulation and prevent the whites from separating into a stringy mess, but it's not necessary if you have fresh eggs.
Use a spoon to stir the water until you have a gentle and steady whirpool.
Crack an egg into the center of the whirpool.
Cook the egg for three minutes, until the whites are set but the yolk is still runny. You can go for a few more minutes to set the yolk more if you don't like a fully liquid yolk.
Remove the egg from the water with a slotted spoon and sprinkle it with salt. Serve immediately over porous bread like an English muffin.
Fried Eggs:
There are many varieties of fried egg, like sunny side up, over easy, olive oil, etc. The point is to cook the egg whole in a frying pan with oil. I'll give you two different versions.
Low and slow: set a pan on the stove over low to medium-low heat. Melt some butter in the pan. Crack an egg into the pan and let it cook. As it becomes translucent, use a spoon to grab some of the butter and baste it over the egg. Continue basting until the top of the egg is cooked to your liking. The end result will be a very soft, tender egg that is perfectly white.
High and fast: set a pan on the stove over medium to medium-high heat. Once the pan is hot, add some olive oil to it. Crack an egg ino the pan and let it cook. As it cooks, use a spoon to grab some of the oil and baste it over the egg. You'll want to avoid basting the egg yolk and only baste the egg whites. Once the top of the egg is fully cooked, remove it from the heat. The end result will be a good, tender egg with crispy, crunchy edges, and a nice runny yolk. This egg has a lot of different texture that is really pleasurable, and I'll often eschew the traditional toast and just scoop everything up with a fork.
Either way you cook your egg, remove it from the heat and sprinkle it with salt before enjoying. This egg is generally considered a breakfast food in America, but it is perfectly serviceable over rice, pasta with marinara sauce, burgers, and many other non-breakfast meals. As a guest in someone's house, I had fried eggs for lunch and dinner all the time while I lived in Chile.
Boiled Eggs:
Boiled eggs are the perfect example of recipe misinformation that gets spread all over the internet. A quick google search will reveal a thousand different ways to make the recipe, some with tons of salt in the water, some with fancy gadgets that take up space and aren't actually necessary. Making proper boiled eggs is the perfect way to learn how to cut through the crap. It's also a great way to learn precision and consistency, because unlike the other recipes, you can't watch this one as it cooks. Fortunately, it's actually quite simple.
Place your eggs in a pan and completely cover them with cold water.
Bring the water to a boil.
As soon as the water starts boiling, remove the pan from the heat and set a timer for 11 minutes.
While the timer is running, fill a bowl with ice water.
When the 11 minute timer is up, drain the eggs and place them in the ice water. If you have no ice, then run cold water over the eggs for several minutes.
Scrambled Eggs:
I've seen more botched egg scrambles than any other recipe in my life (though chicken breast is a close second). Nothing is more frustrating than ruining a batch of eggs that will be dry and rubbery, and leaves behind a frying pan caked in burned on egg bits. What blows my mind is the number of people who think this is normal and have grown accustomed to eating bad eggs. Try a better way, and it'll change your life.
Put a pan over the stove on medium-high heat. You want to be able to put a droplet of water on the surface of the pan and watch it sizzle and dance.
While the pan heats up, whisk some eggs in a bowl. Don't add ANYTHING to them. Salt leeches the water out. Milk or cream don't make them fluffy. Just trust the eggs.
When the pan is hot, melt your butter into it. Once the butter is melted, drop in your eggs and remove the pan from the heat.
If you've done this all right, the eggs won't even stick to the pan. Just use a rubber spatula to move them around as the eggs create gorgeous, thick curds. You want high heat to prevent stickage, but you want to immediately remove the eggs from the heat to prevent overcooking.
You want the eggs to develop a good amount of body, but remove them from the heat before they're fully done. Once you put them on a plate, the residual heat will finish cooking the eggs. At this point, add salt, pepper, cheese, and anything else you want. The end result is eggs that are tender and moist and absolutely delicious.
Recipe formatted with the Cook'n Recipe Software from DVO Enterprises.
Matthew Christensen
Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2023
Email the author! matthew@dvo.com
