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Cooking eggs
Eggs are one of the easier things to cook - what way are you trying to cook them?
Rolled Japanese style, aka tamagoyaki. That is really difficult.
Over easy is as easy as the name though.
Okay, sure, there are ways to cook them that are harder, but the vast majority of the ways people eat eggs are pretty simple. Basted is a way to cook them that comes out a lot like poached, but it's more foolproof - it's my wife's favorite.
Scrambled. I have managed to fail that one, it did not scrambled or cook.
Someone else gave elaborate instructions for scrambling that would work well. I usually just melt some butter over medium heat, crack the egg into it, wait like 30 to 60 seconds, stir it up with a spatula, wait another minute or two, then turn/stir the hunks so that any runny parts are against the pan and give it maybe another minute.
Well I had a heated pan on high and I cracked an egg into it... and then I kept having a raw egg floating around in the pan. After poking at it for some time it started cooking and after more poking it did scramble, so I did succeed in the end but I also managed to fail the cooking part of it.
You don't want the pan too hot, and you need a fat. Otherwise you were probably about right.
Thank you
I feel you, but the truth is that they're easy to cook. It's just that they're also easy to cook badly.
Get pan heating. Medium high. If there's a number scale from 1 to 10, go about 5 or 6.
Plenty of lubricant (oil, butter, whatever), ready to go. One pat of butter to the side
Crack eggs in a bowl.
Add pepper to taste.
Scramble eggs in bowl with fork.
When pan is hot, which is when you can hold your hand about six inches over the pan and feel it, add lubricant of choice. Just enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
Give eggs one last stir with fork, then pour in.
Count to six slowly. Then gently move the eggs around with. A spatula, spoon, or whatever is handy and won't burn.
Once you've got chunks of eggs, stop. Count to six them move them around again.
Add in extra pat of butter. Let it start to melt, then gently move the chunks around until most of the liquid is now a jiggly mass with a tiny amount of liquid making the surface shiny.
Cut off the heat. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt or two. Put it all on a plate if it's just for one person, in a bowl or individual plates for a bigger table.
That's it. Bare minimum scramble. You can get fancier, but that's a choice.
The reason most eggs people make suck is too much heat for too long. They get rubbery. Lower heat, gentle scrambling, then let the heat that's in the eggs finish the last bit of cooking on the plate or serving bowl. You'll get fucking excellent eggs. Might take a few tries to really nail things to perfection, but the methodology will work to make yummy eggs before that.
Seriously, eggs don't need to be in the pan long. A minute or so for a big batch as long as you're moving the curds that form is plenty most of the time. When it isn't, it'll be because it's a huge batch rather than just big.
Same principle applies to over easy, over hard, and sunny side up, but flipping those is a skill that takes practice. But use lower heat and you'll fuck up less. Trust me, if you leave things less done than you think is done, there is plenty of heat there to finish the job and they'll be safe to eat even if not pasteurized. I promise. Carry over cooking is a thing.
One of the most foolproof ways to cook eggs, in my opinion, is basted. Probably easier than scrambled even.
- Heat butter in a pan over medium heat until the bubbles are subsiding.
- Crack eggs into pan, spaced as far apart as possible.
- When the bottoms are looking mostly white, add about 1/3 cup of water around them.
- Reduce heat to medium low and cover (a glass lid is very helpful here). The steam is going to cook the tops while the pan cooks the bottoms. You don't have to do anything but watch them.
- When the top of the yolks look hazy white, they're done. You can touch the whites with a fork to make sure they aren't running.
- I like to take them out with a spatula and set the spatula on a paper towel for a second to soak up any water before putting them on the plate.
- Add salt and pepper if you want.
They come out kind of like over-medium or poached.
Putting the lid on to finish sunny side up works even without adding water. If you don't have a lid for your pan a piece of baking paper over the top of the pan works.
Cooking lemons
We're approaching lemon meringue, which is one of the most difficult difficult lemon difficult baked goods