- 2 days ago
In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto shares 30 hacks for your eggs. From scrambled eggs (creamy vs fluffy) to fried, poached, and hard-boiled eggs, these essential egg hacks will upgrade your cooking instantly. Learn how to crack eggs properly, remove eggshells, get crispy fried egg edges, poach eggs like a pro, peel hard-boiled eggs easily, and more.
Kitchen furnished by IKEA
The Best Scrambled Eggs You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ODDKHRVkA
The Best Fried Eggs You'll Ever Make | Epicurious 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W1dpRkthrI&t=52s
The Secret to Perfect Boiled Eggs (Soft, Jammy, Hard) | Epicurious 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcXzPF4-LFw&t=319s
Kitchen furnished by IKEA
The Best Scrambled Eggs You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ODDKHRVkA
The Best Fried Eggs You'll Ever Make | Epicurious 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W1dpRkthrI&t=52s
The Secret to Perfect Boiled Eggs (Soft, Jammy, Hard) | Epicurious 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcXzPF4-LFw&t=319s
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Today I'm gonna show you egg hacks.
00:01I learned most of these techniques on the job
00:03working in professional kitchens.
00:05A lot of these techniques are the ones
00:06that I teach to my students.
00:08And you can use them every single time you cook.
00:13Normally when I teach about eggs,
00:15I start with scrambled eggs.
00:16I always opt to crack on a flat surface
00:19and then go into a bowl.
00:21So you have a nice indentation there,
00:22but you can see that all the shells
00:24kind of stay attached to this inner membrane.
00:27So they're less apt to fall into your cracked egg.
00:30If you crack an egg on the side of the bowl,
00:32you do get a nice sharp cut,
00:35but you can see the shards aren't really attached as much.
00:38When you crack on the side of the bowl,
00:39you're getting a shattering effect,
00:41not just a cracking effect.
00:43You get shells on your finger,
00:45on the side of the bowl, in the bowl.
00:47You don't want that in your food.
00:48There's always a chance that you get some egg shell
00:50into your eggs.
00:51What I find is that shell normally attracts shell
00:55to the egg.
00:56So you get it in there
00:57and you can just kind of get shell attracting shell.
01:00And to me, that's the best way to get egg shell
01:02out of your cracked eggs.
01:04When you put your fingers in there, it's repelling it.
01:06When it comes to scrambled eggs,
01:08there's the age old battle between fluffy and creamy.
01:12I personally really like creamy eggs.
01:14That's why I like to use butter.
01:16But there's other people in the world that like fluffy eggs.
01:18You can use water, milk, or seltzer to make them fluffier.
01:22I'm going to show you both ways.
01:23We're going to start off by making the buttery eggs.
01:25I'm going to crack three eggs into my bowl.
01:28So I'm going to get a little butter to this bowl.
01:29Make sure you get in there and get some of those milk solids in there too.
01:32So not only do we get fat, we get flavor.
01:35So let's whisk these up.
01:36I tend to use a fork or a whisk for this.
01:39Pretty much get the same result.
01:41When you use butter, it makes everything silkier and creamier.
01:43And the egg absorbs the butter.
01:45It just gives it that like really nice luscious mouthfeel.
01:48I know there's a lot of people out there that like fluffy eggs.
01:50And that's totally cool.
01:52As a chef, I'll cook it the way you want it.
01:54Now we're going to add seltzer to these.
01:56You can add milk or water, but seltzer has bubbles.
01:59Bubbles will help with that fluffiness.
02:01I'm going to add a couple of tablespoons of seltzer.
02:03Right? You can see it gets a little fizzy.
02:05And then we're just going to get in there with the fork and give it a little whisk.
02:07When I whisk my eggs, I like to get it so that they're fully incorporated.
02:12I don't want strands of whites and yolks.
02:15This one has a lot more bubbles, has a little more air to it.
02:18When I make the fluffy eggs with the seltzer, I want to add the seltzer, whisk the eggs,
02:23and cook it right away.
02:24So you can obviously see there's a huge difference here.
02:27The butter eggs are a little more on the darker side.
02:29They don't have as many bubbles in it.
02:31And the seltzer eggs have a lot of bubbles.
02:34It's a little more on the liquidy side.
02:35So we talked enough about scrambling them.
02:37Let's see what they look like cooked.
02:39If you want to learn how I scrambled eggs, we did a video on this channel.
02:42Go check it out.
02:43In front of me, I have both scrambled eggs.
02:46This is the one that has the seltzer in it, a little paler, definitely lighter and fluffier.
02:52It's good.
02:53No doubt.
02:54But again, I like these eggs.
02:56If you look at these, they're creamier, darker in color.
02:59They have a little more shine to them, a lot more dense than the fluffy eggs.
03:02And they usually have a little bit better flavor.
03:06Yeah.
03:07Butter just makes everything better.
03:08Use some butter, please.
03:09Does anyone ever cook for a crowd?
03:12I do.
03:12I cook for a crowd all the time.
03:14I learned this method when I was a cook.
03:16Especially when you're a young cook, you work a lot of brunches.
03:19So in front of me, I have a strainer.
03:20And look at the strainer.
03:21The strainer has larger holes.
03:24You don't want this to be a fine mess sieve.
03:26You want it to have decent sized holes.
03:28You don't have to worry about getting shells in there.
03:30And you can do two eggs at a time.
03:32I'm going to show you.
03:33I learned this from my dad.
03:35So we go, crack your eggs, you get in there, you pull them apart, double eggs.
03:41I'm cracking them and then using that hinge to open the eggs up.
03:44At this point, we get our whisk and we can beat our eggs.
03:50Now watch.
03:50Watch what's happening.
03:52Not only are we beating our eggs and whisking them, we're straining out any shells that might
03:57be in there.
04:07You ask any person what a fried egg is and they're going to give you a different answer.
04:12In my mind, if something's fried, it gets brown.
04:16Fried egg can be sunny side up.
04:17It could be over easy.
04:19It could be over hard, but brown edges or browning is what makes it fried.
04:24So the first fried egg I'm going to make is sunny side up,
04:27where we leave the yolk intact and just cook the egg from underneath.
04:31In front of me, I have a stainless steel pan.
04:33Stainless steel cast iron work really well because they hold on to the heat.
04:37I would stay away from things like aluminum pans.
04:40The heat dissipates once that egg hits the pan and the chances of it sticking are much higher.
04:44We did do a video with a nonstick pan.
04:46You can always check that out.
04:48You don't necessarily need a nonstick pan.
04:49You just got to make sure your pan is hot enough.
04:51First step, turn on the flame.
04:54My pan is cold, so I'm going to get it nice and hot.
04:56So I have it on high heat.
04:57We're not going to fry the egg on high heat.
05:00I'm going to go to kind of a medium high.
05:01But because the pan is cold, I want to get it hot.
05:04Otherwise, it sticks every single time.
05:06A lot of people like to use the water test.
05:09Pan's not really hot.
05:10I add it in and what's happening?
05:11It's starting to bubble, but it takes a couple of seconds for it to bubble.
05:15When your pan gets hot enough, the water should start to evaporate immediately.
05:19So pop quiz.
05:20Which egg is the best for a sunny side up egg?
05:23A brown or a white?
05:26Answers please.
05:29Listen, the shell color does not matter.
05:32The egg itself is the same.
05:34I know that there is kind of like this idea out there that brown eggs are healthier than white
05:38eggs.
05:39It's the same egg, just a different type of head.
05:41Our pan is getting hot.
05:43And if I add water now, it sizzles and dances around.
05:47We're good to go.
05:48I'm going to lower my heat a little.
05:49So before I add my fat, I'm going to crack my egg into a vessel because if there's any
05:55shell, I want to be sure to get the shell out here before I add my egg to the pan.
06:04Swirl that butter around.
06:09Now I start to see a little smoke, not a lot of smoke, just a little, and I can add
06:14my egg to the pan.
06:19I like to season my egg while it is liquid because the salt will stick to the liquid.
06:26Once the egg solidifies, the salt is going to bounce off of it.
06:28This is what I want to see.
06:30I want to see my egg getting brown edges and depending on what you want from your yolk,
06:35let it cook to that temperature.
06:37This is a fist spatula.
06:38It's nice and thin.
06:39It gets under the egg really well.
06:41As it cooked, it's going to free itself off from the pan.
06:43I had a sous chef tell me once when I was cooking things,
06:46leave it alone, let it be, and the pan will let go of the egg.
06:51You see, it didn't stick.
06:53Now I can swirl it around.
06:54If you give it enough time, it's going to free itself up.
06:57I'm good with the browning.
06:58I'm just going to go on lower heat so the center of my egg starts to cook.
07:02I'm just waiting for this white here to solidify a little more.
07:05If you're a little worried about this translucent white here,
07:08you can always put a lid on and let it steam for like half a minute,
07:13and that translucent white will go away.
07:14I personally like my eggs flipped over just for that reason,
07:18but if you're a little worried about that translucent and not solidified egg,
07:21put a lid on it.
07:22That's fine.
07:22The steam from the egg will cook it.
07:24The white is nice and set,
07:25and I have these really beautiful crispy edges.
07:28If I ever want an egg with just like perfectly white edges,
07:30I usually do use a nonstick for that.
07:32If I was going to eat sunny side up eggs, this is how I would want it.
07:35Now we're going to fry an egg over easy,
07:37and I'm going to use a nonstick pan for this.
07:40First thing I want to do is turn my pan on.
07:42Not all the way, like medium high.
07:43And sometimes you get an egg here that has a couple of spots on it.
07:46That doesn't mean the egg is bad.
07:47It's just a part of what an egg is.
07:49It's natural.
07:50Whole butter has milk solids.
07:53That's going to help flavor our egg.
07:54Now the butter doesn't need to be totally melted here.
07:57It could be still a little solid in the middle and salt and pepper.
08:01Swirl it around so I get some of that butter on the other side of my egg.
08:05And I'm going to let it cook on this side just so it gets a little bit of brown on
08:08this side.
08:09Get a liquidy outside and then a firmer inside.
08:11You want that firmer inside to start setting before you flip.
08:15Because if you try and flip before that, it's a complete mess.
08:17If you look at the egg right now, you can see that that white part on the inside is starting
08:22to
08:22solidify.
08:23I'm going to lower my heat.
08:24If you try and flip it here, it's a real problem.
08:26Get under the yolk and give it a flip.
08:28So that's going to kind of like help flip it over.
08:30At this point, I can shut it off.
08:32The white will set with the heat of the pan.
08:35If you give it a poke and it's nice and soft, that means you have a soft cooked egg.
08:39A little bit of browning, a nice soft liquidy yolk.
08:43That is a beautiful over easy fried egg.
08:45At this point, if you think that it's a little undercooked,
08:47just put it back in the pan and cook it up to whatever temperature you want.
08:54A poached egg is when you cook an egg in hot liquid.
08:56Not necessarily boiling, just at a simmer.
08:58We're going to gently cook that egg so it has a very nice smooth white and a nice liquid yolk.
09:03You see poached eggs all over brunch menus everywhere.
09:06Eggs Benedict poached eggs are front and center.
09:08I have my water on the stove.
09:10It's boiling.
09:11I'm going to just add some vinegar.
09:13That's just white distilled vinegar and salt.
09:15That goes in the pan and I'm going to lower it from the boil.
09:17Lower it to a simmer so it's lightly bubbling because if you have it bubbling a lot,
09:21the egg is going to move around a lot and it's not really going to set all that well.
09:24Touch it to the water and drop it in.
09:26I do have some wispy whites floating around in there.
09:29I'm not worried about those because those will eventually I can cut away.
09:32But my egg has a really nice shape to it at this point.
09:35You don't want to mess with it too much.
09:37The only thing I'm going to do right now is just try and free it up in the bottom a
09:41little
09:41so it can float around freely.
09:43And I'm going to give it about two minutes.
09:45You can overcook this where the yolk gets hard.
09:47But if you stick with that like two to two and a half minute range,
09:50you're going to be good to go.
09:52The vinegar helps the white coagulate quicker.
09:54If there was no vinegar in the water,
09:56those wispy whites would be floating all around in the water.
09:59The combination of the vinegar and the hot water,
10:01the white sets really quickly.
10:03The spoon that I have here is a slotted spoon.
10:06It has holes in it.
10:07This is really important for this because when we take the egg out,
10:10we want the water to drain.
10:11You don't want a wet, soggy English muffin with your eggs benedict.
10:15So what you want to look for is that when you pull this egg up,
10:17the white is getting set and there's no translucent white.
10:21You want it to be opaque.
10:22And I think we're getting there.
10:23I'm going to give it another 20 seconds in the water.
10:25But at this point, I think we're good to go.
10:27I can pull this out and I'm going to let it drain.
10:30Try and get all the water off.
10:31And I have a kitchen towel here.
10:32You can easily just get some paper towels.
10:34Try and get all the water off.
10:35I have a little bit of that white there that I don't want on my plate.
10:38I just cut that onto my kitchen towel with the side of the spoon.
10:42Because I want this to be like set really nice.
10:45And you'll see that I have a really nice, perfect poached egg.
10:53The other method I want to show you is something that I teach my students.
10:56I teach middle schoolers how to cook.
10:58So I get my egg, crack it on a surface, get rid of the top shell, put it in my
11:05hand,
11:06and let the yolk separate from the white.
11:09You see how the white falls out?
11:11Basically, the white is just falling through the cracks in my hand.
11:16So the other method I like to teach my students is using the shells.
11:19Let the white fall and then go back and forth between the shell, being careful not to break
11:27the yolk.
11:27It's a little cleaner, it's not as messy, a little better for the kids.
11:32So go back and forth.
11:33The only thing that I have a problem with this professionally is a lot of times there's like
11:37a sharp edge on the shell and sometimes that catches the yolk.
11:40And I want to try and keep these whites free of any yolk.
11:44So another method I want to show you is the bulk method.
11:47Now I would use this method whenever I have to do a dozen or more eggs.
11:50And you'll see this more common in restaurants.
11:52I have two bowls, one bowl for my whites with a resting rack on top and another bowl for my
11:57yolks.
11:58And all you really got to do is crack your eggs onto the rack and let the whites fall through.
12:04It might take a minute or two for them to fall through.
12:06So you can kind of step away if you have to after you crack them.
12:10Let all the whites go through, crack them, and then give them a few minutes to do their thing.
12:15But I would definitely do this method if I had to do a lot of separating.
12:19So now we're just going to let these rest.
12:21Give them a little coaxing.
12:22The key here is to not break the yolks.
12:28Hard boiled eggs in general are something that almost everyone does in their life.
12:33And as a chef, I've made a lot of hard boiled eggs.
12:35So I did make a video here on Epicurious about hard boiled eggs.
12:39Go check that out.
12:39So with hard boiled eggs, I'm starting off with checking to see the age of my eggs.
12:44And I know this sounds kind of crazy, but let me run you through it really quick.
12:48When you get an egg, the shells are porous.
12:50Air gets in and eventually there's a little bit of an air pocket here and the air pocket grows.
12:55If the eggs are just a little bit older, like two weeks old,
12:58you'll have a little bit more of an air pocket in there.
13:00A good way to test how fresh your eggs are is that you put them in some water.
13:03So what I'm looking for here is the egg to float.
13:07If an egg floats, generally it has a little more air in it.
13:10But luckily, look at this, nothing but the freshest for me.
13:15I've taken the eggs, I've boiled them.
13:17I've chilled them slightly so that I can handle them.
13:19So I'm not burning my fingers.
13:21But peeling hard boiled eggs is a lot easier while they're still warm.
13:24I like to peel them under water because the membrane that sticks to the egg,
13:29if you can get water in between it, they peel a lot easier.
13:31So I take the egg, crack it on the top and bottom,
13:35and I'm just going to put it in water and I'll do about three eggs.
13:39The egg that kind of smashes the easiest usually has a little air pocket.
13:43You can see it's a little flat there.
13:44Just put it under the water and carefully peel away.
13:47See that little skin, that little membrane?
13:49If you can get water under that, chances are your egg is going to peel a lot neater and cleaner.
13:55Now this is going to be a little more difficult the fresher your eggs are.
13:57This is going to be more for when you are doing something like a deviled egg
14:01or something for presentation value.
14:04These are cold because that membrane is going to shrink back onto the egg.
14:08And if you need them to be colder, peel them and then you can ice them down after that.
14:13So there you go, a beautiful hard boiled egg.
14:16So I have some hard boiled eggs in front of me and I want to make some egg salad,
14:19but I want to do it quickly.
14:20One of the best ways I find is using a cooling rack and pushing your hard boiled eggs through
14:25and you're good to go.
14:26Look how fast that goes.
14:28Chopped to the perfect size, flat hand on top, push through.
14:32I think I learned this when I was working in restaurants.
14:34We used this more like when I would cook like staff meal or something like that
14:37and you had to get it done quickly.
14:39You can do this with avocados too.
14:41You really can't get much quicker than that.
14:43Eggs get chopped almost perfectly every single time.
14:46A couple other ways to get your eggs chopped or mashed.
14:49Get a potato masher and just push down and give them a good squeeze, right?
14:53This is a little bit on the chunkier side.
14:56It's not going to be as fine.
14:58And then there's another method where you can get your potato ricer.
15:01You just drop an egg in there, squeeze through.
15:06You're going to get a very fine egg salad from this.
15:10Put it through your ricer.
15:11Everyone has their own preference of how they like their eggs in their egg salad.
15:14We got kind of medium, slightly chunky, really fine.
15:18Whatever method you want to use for your eggs salad.
15:21One thing that I learned early on as a cook is how to sort eggs.
15:24Hard boiled versus fresh eggs.
15:27Occasionally, someone mixes in some hard boiled eggs with fresh eggs.
15:30And I know it sounds crazy, but it's happened a few times.
15:33If you take a fresh egg and try and spin it like a top, it doesn't spin.
15:38The yolk is sloshing around.
15:39But if you take a hard boiled egg and spin it, they spin like a top.
15:45Just remember, at the end of the day, eggs don't need to be scary.
15:48They are a simple food.
15:49They're easy to cook.
15:50They're super enjoyable.
15:52Take these tips and tricks and get in the kitchen.
15:57If you have any egg tips or tricks that I missed, tell us in the comments.
16:00We'd like to hear from you.
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