Make Perfect Eggs Every Time With Sohla | Cooking 101

I once went to an aunt's house and she made me a fried egg but she didn't base it, there's nothing I hate more than undercooked egg whites and she was very mean and made me eat it all and then I didn't eat

eggs

. for years she took me a while to recover, we're getting she doesn't know who I'm talking about, like that FS guy, don't ever think it's them. Hi, I'm Sol El at the New York Times Cooking Studio and this is the first episode of a seven-episode series where I'm going to teach you a bunch of culinary basics so you can be better in the kitchen.

Welcome to my

cooking

school. but it's free no Deb today we are going to talk about

eggs

and I I am going to show you all the ways to

make

the best

perfect

eggs, we are going to

make

fried, we are going to make fata scrambled boiled Sunny, all kinds of basic egg techniques that you need to enjoy of breakfast, lunch and dinner, so I went to the store and bought a few different types of eggs. When you look at the egg section in stores there are now many options, so first of all, eggs come in different sizes, from peewee to jumbo, whichever you're going to do.

What we see in most grocery stores is medium large and extra large and then there are many other labels and the fact is that most of them don't mean much, but it's good to know where they come from. It is so natural that it is a marketing term that means nothing, all the eggs are natural organic eggs, which means that the hens have been fed organic feed and do not contain antibiotics or hormones, and then there are a whole series of terms that They tell you a little about what chickens are like. living as conventionally as an affordable egg, those chickens are often in battery cages, they are given a lot of antibiotics, so to level up we run out of cages, that means the chickens don't live in tight cages, but it doesn't mean either. 'If they have access to the outdoors or if they have a lot of room to move around, it just means they are not in cages.

Free range means chickens have continuous access to the outdoors, but how much space do they really have and how often are they there? Outdoor is not clear as it is not a fully regulated term. Pasture raised means they spend most of their life outdoors, but again, it's not a fully regulated term when you see a cardboard box labeled Humaneity Certified or Animal Welfare Approved, that's when you know. that a third party has been there to really check and see that the standard of living of the chickens is high, then that's when you can make sure that they really are pasture-raised, they're really outside, that they're actually eating larvae, but another stuff.

To keep in mind that certified human pastured organic egg is very expensive, so do your best. You can go ahead with this knowledge when you go shopping for your eggs. So what is the difference between a white egg and a brown egg or even this beautiful blue egg? it's really just the genetics of the chicken, it doesn't affect the taste, it's not a reflection of what they were fed or how they lived and like we're in a store right now where all the eggs are brown because it's just the egg that people What you like right now is just the new egg but honestly, it doesn't matter if your eggs are white, brown or blue.

In the US we store our eggs in the refrigerator and in most of the world you store them at room temperature, which I know. like it's a controversial thing, it really baffles a lot of people, but the reason we keep our eggs here in the refrigerator is because because they're washed, the eggs naturally have a membrane on the outside that protects them. The egg shells themselves are actually porous. I know it looks solid, but it's actually porous because its porous bacteria can penetrate it once the egg cuticle is washed, so if you get your egg somewhere else in the world, chances are the cuticle hasn't been washed. and you can. store it at room temperature.

All of our eggs here are washed, so it's best to store them in the refrigerator; However, eggs that are stored in the refrigerator last longer, so even if you get an unwashed egg, it might be a good idea to store it in the refrigerator just to increase the shelf life between the shell and the egg, there is another membrane. Knowing that you have that membrane can be helpful when you boil eggs because if you dip it in boiling water and then in ice water, it relaxes and contracts. it makes it a little easier to peel the egg so it's nice to know it's there, it doesn't affect anything you're not going to eat, it comes off immediately when you peel the egg and then you have the yolk. which has a lot of fat and vitamins and then you have the white.

The main thing you should know about white is that white is not a consistent mass, it has alternating layers of thick and thin white, that's just to give it more cushioning. Know when things are pushing to protect that chick and also protect the yolk and keep it nice and centered. So when you go to beat an egg, it actually takes about a minute to mix the whites well, especially the fresher the egg. At the highest ratio of thick white, most of the vitamins and nutrients in an egg are actually in the yolk, while the white is like a protective shield for the chick, so it's like you have a chick right now. and was surrounded by amniotic fluid, so White's amniotic fluid is almost like it protects him, cushions him, but also provides him with protein and water as he grows.

It's a very beautiful thing when you think about it, how it is designed to have

every

thing you need for life. what a great way to start the day with a couple of eggs. Let's start with a simple fluffy scrambled egg. The heat will be a little higher and you will stir it a little less in the next mixture, which will be very creamy we are going to go to low heat whisking constantly and you get a custard-like texture, so it's really interesting how just by changing the temperature you can get a totally different texture because the eggs are amazing.

I always like to break my eggs. On a flat surface like the countertop, I find that when I tap it against the edge of the bowl I'm very likely to lose a bit of shell on the eggs. Now I like to salt my eggs ahead of

time

. Old French chefs love to say. Don't salt the eggs ahead of

time

because they think it will dry them out, but actually what's happening is that it seems to be turning watery because it breaks up the egg white a little. It changes a little the way the light reflects it, but chemically in its essence.

It will make your eggs more tender. In fact, you can salt them up to 15 minutes in advance for a creamier mixture. I'm using Diamond Crystal Kosher, which is a fluffier salt, so it may seem like I'm using a lot, but it's actually less. Salt salt and sprinkle it evenly over each egg. Beating eggs actually takes a little longer than you think. Take your time to break it down. You can see I stirred it for a moment and there are clumps of white. float around that's going to result in kind of a dry scramble in places okay so it took a minute and it's whipped really well if you want them to be extra fluffy you can add a teaspoon of milk per egg but I'm going to Today I used only butter for these eggs, we want them to be fluffy, so we are going to cook them over medium heat.

I'm using a non-stick pan here, it just makes a little more power. I know my pan is hot because my butter is nice and foamy and I'm going to add my eggs. Don't move them too much. We're just going to do a soft fold, the edges stiffen faster than the middle and you just fold them. It happens pretty quickly and will continue to cook with the residual heat. You take it off while it's still a little wet. Finish with a little pepper. Now we're going to make a really luxurious, creamy restaurant-style mixture. over low heat, whisking constantly and it will give us a custard-like texture, so the fluffy scramble will be like the

every

day scramble and this will be more like Sunday breakfast.

It takes a little more time, a little more care, so here we are. We are going to start in the same way by seasoning our eggs and we are going to beat them well. Now we are going to use a sauer. This is my favorite pot. I brought it from home. The good thing is that it has sloping sides. You don't have to use this pot, you can use a regular saucepan, but you don't want to use nonstick because we're going to be whisking here constantly and a nonstick can't handle the whisking action with metal because there are no corners. you can actually get in there with the whisk if you have a regular saucepan no problem just make sure you pay close attention and sticking two eggs in the corners isn't much so you can lose the whole egg in the corner and have like there's no left nothing to eat so we're going to go to a simmer here starting the same way with a little bit of butter and we're going to wait until they get nice and foamy eggs and now we're going to beat them all the time, so this takes a little more time, but it's Sunday, you have time.

The main thing at this point is that you want to keep it moving and you're going to keep whisking until you see a little curd, it's kind of suspended in something like that. creamy situation and I know that some people when they see these eggs they think they are undercooked. I promise you that they are fully cooked, the texture is different because of the constant stirring, so you can see that the eggs are getting thicker and a little foamy. Whisking is also like adding a little bit of air to it, which gives it that creamy vibe as you get closer, you have to stir a little more vigorously because it will want to stick to the sides.

I'm taking it off the heat so it doesn't. It doesn't overcook, you add a little bit of butter at the end to give it richness and it also adds a little bit of salt to the

cooking

and then you have to get it out of the pan pretty quickly because it's such a small amount of eggs that you lose it. Quick creamy is one of those things where it seems like it takes a long time and then boom, it happens really fast. I'm going to finish this with a little bit of pepper and that's our little creamy curd that you can level up and finish with some fresh crmp so here we have our two types of scramble, same ingredients, different technique here we have a quick scramble that can be forked, the weekday scramble and then here this is like a scramble with a spoon, a creamy custard that you don't even have to chew this is actually my favorite egg the egg dipped in oil with edges crispy I don't think there's anything better than this for a crispy egg you need to heat it up quickly and that's the key to getting the crispy edges while staying like a molten yolk because we need to get that hot.

I don't like using a nonstick because nonstick isn't really designed to get that hot. My favorite is to use a cast iron. Every time you use a cast iron, give it a minute to heat up over medium heat. Cast irons retain heat well but they don't actually heat very evenly so they take a little while to get going but once they get there they are ready to roll, you know it's there when you see like clumps of smoke comes out of the edge and then once that happens we need to move pretty quickly we're going to base this egg so we need a big spoon to help us base this is my favorite spoon it's my favorite tool it has a very big head big and a very squat handle so it's very good for basting, we're basically going to tilt the pan and then pick up some of the fat that's pulling on the edge and pour it over the egg and that helps the top cook through.

Same pace as the bottom I'm going to crack my eggs into a separate container because by cracking them directly into the pan you can splash a little bit of oil and are more likely to get shells in there. We have our wisps of smoke. We know our pants are hot now that we are. I'm going to move quickly I have a towel because your cast iron is hot a couple of tablespoons of oil and then our eggs are going to go in leave it close to the surface of the pan so the yolks don't break a little salt increase the Heat over high heat medium high and we'll let it cool for a minute, we'll let the whites set and then we'll start our base so we'll tilt and scoop out the base to get the fat you want. use something with a higher smoke point so definitely don't use whole butter here, whole butter will burn as soon as it hits the pan that's fine so no need to spray much you can see that the white on the The top has set and cooked completely and we're getting a nice brown and frizz around the edges and it's helpful to have a slotted fish spatula like this one because you can drain the oil as you scoop it out if you don't have one like this one. give it a little tap on a paper towel before landing on the plate, just make sure the eggs release from the pan so you don't break the yolks, so tilt it a little to drain off that grease and let's go to our plate. oh, crispy, crispy, a little pepper and we have the best egg, my favorite egg, this is your egg for dinner, we have our nice crispy crispy edges, yolkvery nice molten, you can see that it's still very nice and melted, but there's none of that snotty liquid. white on top because we gave it a little bit of base, it's a good way to get used to this high temperature cooking, that's the good thing about eggs, you can really get to know your pan, your burner, your equipment and what the smoke point of the oil. what a hot pan looks like and even if you make a mistake you're still going to have breakfast, okay, we're going to make Sunny Side Egg, we don't want our eggs to be colored, but we want the whites to be fully cooked, the yolk nice and running, that is.

The goal here is the same. I'm going to split it into a separate container just to make sure there are no shells on it and that my yolks are nice and not broken, you don't have to do it this way if you feel confident, just go to the pan now, we're back to non-stick, here a little of butter and we are. We're going to let this melt until it gets nice and foamy. We're going to go with medium low because we want it to be nice and soft and again we're going to drop it pretty close to the pan so it doesn't.

Let's not break the yolks and season lightly. You can also let the eggs cook gently as is, but I would like to cover it to make it go a little faster. It will probably only take 1 to 2 minutes. Keep an Eye, it really depends on how cold your eggs were to begin with and how fresh they were, so a fresher egg with a thicker white takes a little longer to cook so you can see it already happening. Wow, I'll just keep it. We'll go until the white is completely opaque and set, but the yolk is still sunny.

Hey? We are getting closer. You can see the transformation every time you lift the lid, so if you take a look, this egg is so-so. there, but there's still a little bit of white here that's not cooked, so I'm going to put it right over the heat just to give it a little bit more. This is a really good method for when you cook a lot of eggs because there is no need to turn it, we just put a lid on it, we turn it over, okay, we did it, we have our Sunny Side egg so you can see that our yolk is still It's very nice and sunny, but the egg whites are completely curdled, it's very soft, you don't want to break it. your yolk, so I prefer to just pepper it out a little bit because we had a higher proportion of that thin white that cooked a little bit, you can tell because it bubbles a little bit, but the thicker white is

perfect

, let's eat.

All this, so now we are going to make the easy egg, so the only difference between Sunny and Over Easy is OV easy, which has like a white film on the yolk and you get it by simply cooking it a little longer. deck or in a restaurant you usually give it a quick spin. I'm going to show you how to do it with the lid because you're not in a hurry so this method takes a little longer but you're less likely to break the eggs and it's a lot easier when you're making a big pan with like eight eggs so I put my butter on, let it get nice and foamy, similarly I'm melting it on medium high heat and then I'll drop it to medium low when I put my eggs in, you can cover this and let it roll or I'm going to add as a splash of water, this helps it cook a little faster and I won't add much, maybe like a teaspoon.

There is already a good amount of steam produced when the egg is soaked, this is a little easier and is great because you get all the textures of a Sunnyside egg, like the very soft white and the runny yolk, but there you are guaranteed not to have any undercooked white, oh look at that, we're over easy, so this is our easiest egg, same thing, we're just going to gently slide it out so you can see there's a little bit of a bubble coming out of the water, but that's how it was. cooks pretty quickly and you just want to make sure you don't end up with that water on your plate, here we go and a little bit of energy so you can see that the white is fully cooked, we have a very nice film on top, but if you give it a little push, it's like Wiggly, it moves, it's like pudding in there, that's exactly what you want, so here's our easy over easy over hard egg, so this is probably the easiest egg because we're just trying to cook everything the same way. and starting the same way.

The goal here is a fully cooked yolk and completely set whites. This is the best egg, I think, for a breakfast sandwich. I mean, I love a runny yolk, but it gets messy on a sandwich. I'm going to heat it over medium high heat just to melt the Butter that we're trying to cook through the white and the yolk, but this is not a very browning egg, so we make our bubbling butter lower the heat and Add a little salt to the eggs if you want this to happen very quickly. You can open the Y and place it like a kind of marble, like a McDonald's breakfast sandwich or you can just wait until the whites are almost set and then we'll give it a little turn and it'll be a little less cooked. which for a sunny day, now is a good time to flip because our whites are all in one and we flip and it doesn't matter if the eggs break because they will cook completely since we are going to make them too hard.

We're going to cook this until the yolks feel completely set so they don't turn into pudding. Vibrations, it will be firmer, a little pepper and we have our eggs too hard, whether they are easy or medium or too hard it's like just poking the yolk and feeling how soft it is when it's too easy it should be like liquid when it's a a medium level is more like custard and now that it's too hard it's firm and ready now let's boil some eggs pretty easily there are just a few things to keep in mind to make sure the eggs cook consistently and that They peel evenly.

We're going to start with the eggs straight out of the refrigerator, all these cooking times. It works best with cold eggs and large sized eggs, so if you have an extra large egg, a medium egg, or a room temperature egg, you may need to adjust the cooking times to make it work for your egg, the key to let the shell come off. cleanly it's like these drastic temperature changes, so we're going to put cold eggs in boiling water and then in an ice bath. You really want to think about how many eggs you are boiling to determine the size of the pot of water. you want to make sure you have enough water so that when you add the cold eggs to the pot the temperature doesn't drop too low and then the second thing is you want to have an ice bath large enough for the amount of eggs you want.

If you are cooking with an ice bath, it is very important to make sure you have enough ice so that when you add the hot eggs it doesn't immediately melt and become lukewarm every time you make an ice bath. good rule of thumb fill your container with ice and then add water like i see some people it's like they are making a drink it's mostly water in a few cubes that's not going to do anything you need a lot of ice go to the wine cellar get a bag of ice it will be worth the pity, it's useful to have something like this to help place all the eggs at once, be very careful when placing the eggs so they don't break at the bottom of the pan and I want to show you the eggs at different temperatures, so we'll take them out every two minutes so you can see the difference between a very soft 3 minute egg and the ones we're going to rise completely.

To like 15, this is a really simple technique, but you have to keep an eye on it because you don't want it to boil so hard that the eggs start to pop and you end up losing a bunch of egg white, but you also don't want it to be still, so we'll keep an eye on it. and I have my skimmer ready to evacuate so this will be our 3 minute egg that we will dip in the water to stop the cooking you want to leave it here for about a minute the next egg will be our 5 minute egg one of my favorites let it cool now let's go Let's take our 7 minute egg so this one I'm going to peel As soon as I put it in cold water I'm going to gently crack it with the back of my spoon to help the water get between the shell and the egg that's all I need to do. you need to get started. 9 minutes is like the best egg. egg salad sandwich because it has a little bit of jam in the center, but you get that soft, completely hardened outer layer, so I just give it a quick matte so it's cool enough to handle and then I pound it and pound it again put in now that "Let's take our 11 minute egg.

This I think is the perfect deviled egg. The yolk will be fully cooked, so it will be ready to mash it with mayonnaise and such. Oops! It was a little hot and then the last thing we did." We're just going to let it go, let it go for a long time, and show you what happens when you overcook an egg to peel them. We'll start at the blunt end and this is our 15 minute egg and because it was cooked for too long, this one smells a lot like egg when you cook the egg whites for too long, they really develop this fart smell, it just smells like butt, Now you can see the membrane that the shell adheres to, but the actual egg is not, so you can peel it easily.

Well, we have our hard-boiled eggs and we are going to break them so that we can see how the different cooking times affect the inside so that the 3 and 5 minutes these are going to be very soft these are eggs that are eaten without the shell 3 minute egg we have a melted yolk and a barely cooked white almost like undercooked white this is ready to dip the 5 minute egg we have a little more The curdled white still has a completely melted yolk, but the white is a little more cooked, it is less liquid and then 7 minutes, I think this is one of the best eggs out there, it's nice and Jammy is totally set, but we still have a nice melted yolk by the 9 minutes it's nice and soft, the yolk hasn't gotten in there chalky, but everything is fully cooked. 11 minutes we have a little chalkiness around the edges, a nice soft core and then 15 minutes for me, this is an overcooked egg, but still not so bad that the white has turned green.

This is also a very good egg for crumbled egg. If you prefer a more cooked yolk and we're not getting to that overcooked stage, it's a perfectly acceptable egg, but it's just getting started. put some egg on so let's poach some eggs now it's not as hard as I think a lot of people think it's just about controlling the temperature so I don't use vinegar or anything in my water there are some people who say that helps that the outside coagulates faster. I haven't found that there is a significant difference when I use vinegar and when I don't, but the most important thing is that when I use vinegar I can taste it and I don't like the taste of it.

I prefer to use just water, we want to see soft bubbles, if it is too vigorous it will like to push everything around and all the egg white will fall out of the yolk when poaching, it is actually very important to strain the white fine if you don't strain the white fine, sometimes you can end up with a pocket of water inside your poached EG, which is really gross and look at all that, that would have been a wispy mess in the water. just take this out here and it will wrap the white around the yolk and we'll give it a quick twist and that will center the yolk, you don't want it to sit on the bottom because then it'll go away. to cook unevenly, so keep turning and it takes about 3 minutes.

Yes, welcome, so the surface is okay, so let's give it a little push that feels wavy, but right here where the white feels a little too runny, we want to do that. I'm sure our targets are ready, so this needs like 15 more seconds, it's so close, bronny targets are always gross, there's never a moment where I think, oh, I'm really longing for a bronny target, now let's give it another shot, like this which I think is the first. a good hit here, a nice soft cast center over here feels nice and ready and firm. I'm going to drop this right here so it can drain a little bit.

This one feels ready too, so here we have our poached eggs, no special tricks, just water. temperature control and eggs, if you are poaching for many people, you can drop them directly into ice water and then when you are about to serve the food, just heat it in a gentle bath and you can keep it in the ice water for about 2 hours, so if you're going to make a big brunch with eggs Benedict, always cook the eggs ahead of time to make your life easier, so I showed you a bunch of things that eggs can do on their own.

It's amazing, but we have more eggs that are so good with so many different ingredients. I'm going to show you how to make a frittata with whatever you have in the refrigerator. Clean the frittata. It's a great way to take leftovers and give them new life. a good way to, oh look I have a shell, it's a teaching moment, the best way to get it out is to use the shell, the shell really wants to stick to the shell, so use the shell to get the shell out, lots of fata recipes dan You have a measured amount of salt because you don't want to season and season youreggs.

You've cooked a lot of eggs now because you made all the food, so you know how much salt you want in an egg, so translate that. To prepare an egg, this is how I do it, so if I'm making something with 30 eggs, I sit there and count how many eggs that is, so I'll beat them and we'll let it sit while we prepare the rest of our ingredients and that will give it time to the salt to do its job and make sure these eggs are really rich and creamy. At this point, you can add a little cream. like leveling up, I'm giving you the basics, but take it as far as your refrigerator will allow you, so if you want to add a little cream here, do it with a little sour cream, so for the fat you can use oil or butter Because we're cooking at a moderate lower temperature, you don't have to worry about the butter burning, but I decided to go a little crazy and am going to use bacon grease to start developing the flavor early.

For your mixins, you can be very creative, use frozen vegetables, use cooked things, but the main thing you need to think about is how long something needs to cook and that will determine what order you added to the pan. I have like almost all of them. quick cooking stuff and then we're going to heat up some cooked Faro um some crumbled bacon and some scallions now I'm going to add my tomatoes now with each ingredient that you're adding you want to think about whether it needs a little salt or not I want to add a layer of that seasoning so that the cherry tomatoes a little bit of salt don't go crazy because the bacon fat already has a little bit of salt in it.

Now I'm going to add some cooked Faro beans, they're really fun in a fata, they add a nice chewy texture, we've got some cooked bacon and I'm going to add pepper at this point if you're worried about ending up with a soft frittata once everything is piping hot, just try it if it tastes good. Well, you're going in a good direction, so everything is very hot and sizzling. You can hear that the sound in the pan has changed from a wet sound to more of a high-pitched sizzling sound and that's how you know the moisture has cooked. it heated up nicely and now is a good time to add our eggs so we're going to turn this temperature down to medium low and I'm going to add my scallions and my eggs so we're going to start by stirring them to make sure everything is evenly distributed and then we're going to I'm going to do this folding motion because the edges are going to cook faster than the center, so here we're doing most of the cooking on the stove and I'm just going to finish it on the grill to put the top on and put the cheese on, This method is a little faster than if you put it all in the oven, but you can also just put it in the oven.

Okay, so we have this like Here's a loose mixture, so I'm going to stop moving it just to speed it up a little bit. I'm going to cover it. I can never find my lids so most of the time I use a sheet tray, that's fine, so uncover and you're good to go. Look, it's still a little wet on top, but the edges and bottom are nice and done, so now we're going to cover it with cheese and throw it on the grill. Cheese is key and you can use as much or as little cheese as you can. you want this to be 4 oz now we're going to put it on the broiler, keep a close eye on it, it's going to go by quickly, like 1 to 2 minutes, we want to see a little bit of cheese bubbling and then we're ready to go. the cheese on the edges turned out really nice and crispy, like a Detroit style pizza, so thanks for learning about eggs with me.

I hope you go and break some eggs with your new egg knowledge. I think everyone did great today, we had a great time. Good timing and you're going to sell eggs with eggs. There are more of these to come so stay tuned and if you want any of these recipes you can find them at nyt cooking.com or in the description below.