I Tried the Viral Fried Egg Hack and My Breakfasts Will Never Be the Same
Have you ever found yourself wondering how restaurants get their eggs perfectly round to match the English muffin or bagel they are being served on? For years I found myself wondering this, and of course it came down to social media to provide me the answers to such deep and widely debated questions.
It’s no secret that the internet is a wealth of knowledge where you can find creative workarounds to plenty of puzzling kitchen anomalies, but it wasn’t until recently that I actually found a truly unique trick for getting perfectly round fried eggs. After recently discovering Kale Junkie on Instagram, it was not long after that I came across her hack for round fried eggs. Her method uses an onion to create a ring that the egg is then cooked inside of, and I couldn’t help being impressed.
I may be new here, but this was definitely my first time seeing an onion ring being used in such a way, so I was naturally intrigued by the hack. I decided I would try it out the next time I made an egg sandwich and boy was I not let down by the undeniable effectiveness of this very easy trick.
How to Make Round Eggs
Start as you usually would, heating your skillet over medium heat and applying a bit of oil to the surface. Take an onion, slice it in half, and then cut one half into rings to get your onion rings. If you are making an egg sandwich, use the onion ring size that fits your bread of choice and place the ring directly into the center of your prepared skillet. Crack an egg and gently plop it right inside of the onion ring.
Let the egg cook for about 4 to 5 minutes or until no clear egg whites remain. Once the egg is removed from the pan and placed carefully onto your sandwich, you can either leave the onion ring on it or simply peel it from the perimeter of the egg and discard. Now it’s time to devour the delicious breakfast you just created.
My Honest Opinion of the Round Egg Hack
I absolutely love the ingenuity of this hack. Those of us who love onions will have absolutely nothing bad to say about it unless we find ourselves in a situation where there is not an onion handy. However, I can see using this trick the next time I am preparing breakfast for my family, and I can already imagine certain family members marveling over the perfect roundness of their eggs. Generally, I don’t prefer my eggs and onions to mix, so I loved how easily the onion ring peeled right off.
Now, if I could play devil’s advocate for a moment and remind everyone of a popular camping tool, the single egg frying pan. This is an incredible tool for both outdoor and indoor kitchens that can be purchased at a wide range of prices, but also for as little as $7.99 on Amazon. In my opinion, it would be far more beneficial to invest in one of these frying pans as soon as possible. You won’t need to rely on having an onion handy every time you crave perfectly round eggs and you can still add the onion in the case you do have one. To me, a single egg frying pan is the ultimate round egg hack, and for that reason, I might just have to push back on the onion hack.
2 Tips When Using the Round Egg Hack
Flip it if you want to. For this experiment, I used the sunny side up method for preparing the egg, as it was shown in Kale Junkie’s video. If you’d like to get a good fry going on both sides of the egg, however, you can flip the egg and onion together just as you normally would with a spatula.
Eating the onion is optional. Those who are like me and prefer to keep their eggs onionless, removing the onion is as simple as just peeling it away from the egg whites. It will come free with a tiny little tug and still leave your egg looking perfectly round for the photo op.
This post originally appeared on The Kitchn. See it there: I Tried the Viral Fried Egg Hack and My Breakfasts Will Never Be the Same
