30 Egg Hacks Every Home Cook Should Know

Today I'm gonna show you egg hacks.

I learned most of these techniques

on the job working in professional kitchens.

A lot of these techniques are the ones

that I teach to my students,

and you can use them every single time you cook.

[hands clapping]

Normally when I teach about eggs,

I start with scrambled eggs.

I always opt to crack on a flat surface

and then go into a bowl.

So you have a nice indentation there,

but you can see that all the shells kind of stay attached

to this inner membrane,

so they're less apt to fall into your cracked egg.

If you crack an egg on the side of the bowl,

you do get a nice sharp cut,

but you can see the shards aren't really attached as much.

When you crack on the side of the bowl,

you're getting a shattering effect,

not just a cracking effect.

You get shells on your finger,

on the side of the bowl, in the bowl.

You don't want that in your food.

There's always a chance

that you get some egg shell into your eggs.

What I find is that shell normally attracts shell

to the egg, so you get it in there,

and you can just kind of get shell attracting shell,

and, to me, that's the best way

to get eggshell out of your cracked eggs.

When you put your fingers in there, it's repelling it.

When it comes to scrambled eggs,

there's the age-old battle between fluffy and creamy.

I personally really like creamy eggs,

that's why I like to use butter,

but there's other people in the world that like fluffy eggs.

You can use water, milk, or seltzer to make them fluffier.

I'm gonna show you both ways.

We're gonna start off by making the buttery eggs.

I'm gonna crack three eggs into my bowl.

So I'm getting a little butter to this bowl.

Make sure you get in there

and get some of those milk solids in there too,

so not only do we get fat, we get flavor.

So let's whisk these up.

I tend to use a fork or a whisk for this.

Pretty much get the same result.

When you use butter,

it makes everything silkier and creamier,

and the egg absorbs the butter.

It just gives it that, like, really nice luscious mouthfeel.

I know there's a lot of people out there

that like fluffy eggs, and that's totally cool.

As a chef, I'll cook it the way you want it.

Now, we're gonna add seltzer to these.

You can add milk or water, but seltzer has bubbles.

Bubbles will help with that fluffiness.

You only need to add

a couple of tablespoons of seltzer, right?

You can see it gets a little fizzy,

and then we're just gonna get in there with the fork

and give it a little whisk.

When I whisk my eggs,

I like to get it so that they're fully incorporated.

I don't want strands of whites and yolks.

This one has a lot more bubbles,

has a little more air to it.

When I make the fluffy eggs with the seltzer,

I wanna add the seltzer, whisk the eggs,

and cook it right away.

So you can obviously see there's a huge difference here.

The butter eggs are a little more on the darker side,

they don't have as many bubbles in it,

and the seltzer eggs have a lot of bubbles,

it's a little more on the liquidy side.

So we talked enough about scrambling them,

let's see what they look like cooked.

If you wanna learn how I scrambled eggs,

we did a video on this channel.

Go check it out.

In front of me, I have both scrambled eggs.

This is the one that has the seltzer in it,

a little paler, definitely lighter and fluffier.

It's good, no doubt.

But again, I like these eggs.

If you look at these, they're creamier, darker in color,

they have a little more shine to them,

a lot more dense than the fluffy eggs,

and they usually have a little bit better flavor.

Yeah. Butter just makes everything better.

Use some butter, please.

Does anyone ever cook for a crowd?

I do. I cook for a crowd all the time.

I learned this method when I was a cook.

Especially when you're a young cook,

you work a lot of brunches.

So in front of me I have a strainer,

and look at the strainer.

The strainer has larger holes.

You don't want this to be a fine mesh sieve,

you want it to have decent size holes.

You don't have to worry about getting shells in here.

And you can do two eggs at a time, I'm gonna show you.

I learned this from my dad.

So we go, crack your eggs, you get in there,

you pull them apart, double eggs.

I'm cracking them and then using that hinge

to open the eggs up.

So at this point, we get our whisk,

and we can beat our eggs.

Now watch, watch what's happening.

Not only beating our eggs and whisking them,

we're straining out any shells that might be in there.

Look at those eggs.

Perfectly scrambled and strained.

Not a shell in sight. [hands clapping]

You ask any person what a fried egg is,

and they're going to give you a different answer.

In my mind, if something's fried, it gets brown.

Fried egg can be sunny side up,

it could be over-easy, it could be over-hard,

but brown edges or browning is what makes it fried.

So the first fried egg I'm gonna make is sunny-side-up,

where we leave the yolk intact

and just cook the egg from underneath.

In front of me, I have a stainless steel pan.

Stainless steel, cast iron work really well,

'cause they hold onto the heat.

I would stay away from things like aluminum pans,

the heat dissipates once that egg hits the pan,

and the chances of it sticking are much higher.

We did do a video with a non-stick pan,

you can always check that out.

You don't necessarily need a non-stick pan,

you just gotta make sure your pan is hot enough.

First step, turn on the flame.

My pan is cold, so I'm gonna get it nice and hot,

so I have it on high heat.

We're not gonna fry the egg on high heat,

I'm gonna go to kind of a medium high,

but because the pan is cold, I wanna get it hot,

otherwise it sticks every single time.

A lot of people like to use the water test.

Pan's not really hot.

I add it in and what's happened?

It's starting to bubble,

but it takes a couple of seconds for it to bubble.

When your pan gets hot enough,

the water should start to evaporate immediately.

So pop quiz.

Which egg is the best for a sunny-side-up egg?

A brown or a white?

Answers, please.

Listen, the shell color does not matter,

the egg itself is the same.

I know that there's kind of like this idea out there

that brown eggs are healthier than white eggs.

It's the same egg, just a different type of hen.

Our pan is getting hot, and if I add water now,

it sizzles and dances around, we're good to go.

I'm gonna lower my heat a little.

So before I add my fat,

I'm gonna crack my egg into a vessel,

because if there's any shell,

I wanna be sure to get the shell out here

before I add my egg to the pan.

[butter sizzling]

Swirl that butter around.

For this egg, I probably added about a tablespoon,

a tablespoon and a half of butter.

Now I start to see a little smoke.

Not a lot of smoke, just a little,

and I can add my egg to the pan.

[butter sizzling]

I like to season my egg while it is liquid,

because the salt will stick to the liquid.

Once the egg solidifies, the salt's gonna bounce off of it.

This is what I wanna see,

I wanna see my egg getting brown edges,

and, depending on what you want from your yolk,

let it cook to that temperature.

This is a fish spatula.

It's nice and thin, it gets under the egg really well.

As it cooks, it's gonna free itself off from the pan.

I had a sous chef tell me once when I was cooking things,

Leave it alone.

Let it be and the pan will let go of the egg.

You see? It didn't stick.

Now I can swirl it around.

If you give it enough time, it's gonna free itself up.

I'm good with the browning.

I'm just gonna go on lower heat

so the center of my egg starts to cook.

I'm just waiting for this white here

to solidify a little more.

If you're a little worried about

this translucent white here,

you can always put a lid on

and let it steam for, like, half a minute,

and that translucent white will go away.

I personally like my eggs flipped over just for that reason,

but if you're a little worried about that translucent

and not solidified egg, put a lid on it.

That's fine. The steam from the egg will cook it.

The white is nice and set,

and I have these really beautiful, crispy edges.

If I ever want an egg with just, like, perfectly white eggs,

I usually do use a non-stick for that.

If I was gonna eat sunny-side-up eggs,

this is how I would want it.

Now we're gonna fry an egg over-easy,

and I'm going to use a non-stick pan for this.

First thing I wanna do is turn my pan on,

not all the way, like, medium high,

and sometimes you get an egg here

that has a couple of spots on it.

That doesn't mean the egg is bad,

it's just a part of what an egg is, it's natural.

Whole butter has milk solids.

That's gonna help flavor our egg.

Now the butter doesn't need to be totally melted here,

it could be still a little solid in the middle.

Add salt and pepper.

Swirl it around so I get some of that butter

on the other side of my egg.

And I'm gonna let it cook on this side,

just so that it gets a little bit of brown on this side,

liquidy outside and then a firmer inside.

You want that firmer inside

to start setting before you flip,

because if you try and flip before that,

it's a complete mess.

If you look at the egg right now,

you can see that that white part on the inside

is starting to solidify.

I'm gonna lower my heat.

If you try and flip it here, it's a real problem.

Get under the yolk and give it a flip.

So that's gonna kinda like help flip it over.

At this point, I can shut it off.

The white will set with the heat of the pan.

If you give it a poke and it's nice and soft,

that means you have a soft-cooked egg.

A little bit of browning, a nice soft liquidy yolk.

Isn't that beautiful? Over-easy fried egg.

At this point, if you think that it's a little undercooked,

just put it back in the pan

and cook it up to whatever temperature you want.

[hands clapping]

A poached egg is when you cook an egg in hot liquid.

Not necessarily boiling, just at a simmer.

We're gonna gently cook that egg

so it has a very nice, smooth white, and a nice liquid yolk.

You see poached eggs all over brunch menus everywhere.

Eggs Benedict. Poached eggs are front and center.

I have my water on the stove. It's boiling.

I'm gonna just add some vinegar.

That's just white distilled vinegar, and salt.

That goes in the pan, and I'm gonna lower it from the boil.

Lower it to a simmer so it's lightly bubbling,

because if you have it bubbling a lot,

the egg's gonna move around a lot

and it's not really gonna set all that well.

Touch it to the water and drop it in.

I do have some wispy whites floating around in there.

I'm not worried about those because those will eventually,

I can cut away,

but my egg has a really nice shape to it at this point.

You don't wanna mess with it too much,

the only thing I'm gonna do right now

is just try and free it up from the bottom a little

so it can float around freely,

and I'm gonna give it about two minutes.

You can overcook this, where the yolk gets hard,

but if you stick with that, like,

two to two and a half minute range,

you're gonna be good to go.

The vinegar helps the white coagulate quicker.

If there was no vinegar in the water,

those wispy whites

would be floating all around in the water.

The combination of the vinegar and the hot water,

the white sets really quickly.

The spoon that I have here is a slotted spoon.

It has holes in it.

This is really important for this because,

when we take the egg out, we want the water to drain,

you don't want a wet,

soggy English muffin with your Eggs Benedict.

So what you wanna look for

is that when you pull this egg up,

the white is getting set and there's no translucent white.

You want it to be opaque, and I think we're getting there.

I'm gonna give it another 20 seconds in the water.

Well, at this point, I think we're good to go.

I can pull this out and I'm gonna let it drain,

try and get all the water off,

and I have a kitchen towel here.

You can easily just get some paper towels.

Try and get all the water off.

I have a little bit of that white there

that I don't want on my plate.

I just cut that onto my kitchen towel

with the side of the spoon,

because I want this to be, like, set really nice,

and you'll see that I have a really nice,

perfect poached egg.

[hands clapping]

The other method I wanna show you

is something that I teach my students,

I teach middle schoolers how to cook.

So I get my egg, crack it on a surface,

get rid of the top shell, put it in my hand,

and let the yolk separate from the white.

You see how the white falls out?

Basically, the white is just falling

through the cracks in my hand.

So the other method I like to teach my students

is using the shells.

Let the white fall,

and then go back and forth between the shell,

being careful not to break the yolk.

It's a little cleaner, it's not as messy,

a little better for the kids to go back and forth.

The only thing that I have a problem

with this professionally is,

a lot of times there's like a sharp edge on the shell,

and sometimes that catches the yolk,

and I wanna try and keep these whites free of any yolk.

So another method I wanna show you is the bulk method.

Now, I would use this method

whenever I have to do a dozen or more eggs,

and you'll see this more common in restaurants.

I have two bowls, one bowl for my whites,

with a resting rack on top, and another bowl for my yolks.

And all you really gotta do is crack your eggs onto the rack

and let the whites fall through.

It might take a minute or two for them to fall through,

so you can kinda step away if you have to.

After you crack them, let all the whites go through.

Crack them,

and then give them a few minutes to do their thing,

but I would definitely do this method

if I had to do a lot of separating.

So now we're just gonna let these rest,

give them a little coaxing.

The key here is to not break the yolks.

[hands clapping]

Hard-boiled eggs in general are something

that almost everyone does in their life,

and as a chef, I've made a lot of hard-boiled eggs.

So I did make a video here in Epicurious

about hard-boiled eggs.

Go check that out.

So with hard-boiled eggs,

I'm starting off with checking to see the age of my eggs,

and I know this sounds kinda crazy,

but let me run you through it really quick.

When you get an egg, the shells are porous.

Air gets in and eventually there's a little bit

of an air pocket here and the air pocket grows.

If the eggs are just a little bit older, like two weeks old,

you'll have a little bit more of an air pocket in there.

Good way to test how fresh your eggs are

is that you put them in some water.

So what I'm looking for here is the egg to float.

If an egg floats, generally it has a little more air in it.

But luckily, look at this.

Nothing but the freshest for me.

I've taken the eggs, I've boiled them,

I've chilled them slightly so that I can handle them,

so I'm not burning my fingers,

but peeling hard-boiled eggs

is a lot easier while they're still warm.

I like to peel them under water

because the membrane that sticks to the egg,

if you can get water in between it, they peel a lot easier.

So I take the egg [egg banging],

crack it on the top and bottom [egg banging]

and I'm just gonna put it in water,

and I'll do about three eggs.

The egg that, like, kinda smashes the easiest

usually has a little air pocket,

you can see it's a little flat there.

Just put it under the water and carefully peel away.

See that little skin, that little membrane?

If you can get water under that,

chances are your egg is gonna peel a lot neater and cleaner.

Now this is gonna be a little more difficult

the fresher your eggs are.

This is gonna be more for when you are doing something like

a deviled egg or something for presentation value.

These are cold

because that membrane's gonna shrink back onto the egg,

and if you need them to be colder, peel them,

and then you can ice them down after that.

So there you go. A beautiful, hard-boiled egg.

So I have some hard-boiled eggs in front of me,

and I wanna make some egg salad, but I wanna do it quickly.

One of the best ways I find is using a cooling rack

and pushing your hard-boiled eggs through,

and you're good to go.

Look how fast that goes. Chopped to the perfect size.

Flat hand on top, push through.

I think I learned this when I was working in restaurants.

We used this more, like, when I would cook, like,

staff meal or something like that,

and you had to get it done quickly.

You can do this with avocados too.

You really can't get much quicker than that.

Eggs get chopped almost perfectly every single time.

A couple other ways to get your eggs chopped or mashed,

get a potato masher and just push down

and give them a good squeeze, right?

This is a little bit on the chunkier side,

it's not gonna be as fine.

And then there's another method

where you can get your potato ricer.

You just drop an egg in there. Squeeze through.

But you're gonna get a very fine egg salad from this.

Put it through your ricer.

Everyone has their own preference

of how they like their eggs in their egg salad.

We got kinda medium, slightly chunky, really fine.

Whatever method you wanna use for your egg salad.

One thing that I learned early on as a cook

is how to sort eggs.

Hard-boiled versus fresh eggs.

Occasionally someone mixes in some hard-boiled eggs

with fresh eggs, and I know it sounds crazy,

but it's happened a few times.

If you take a fresh egg

and try and spin it like a top, it doesn't spin.

The yolk is sloshing around.

But if you take a hard-boiled egg and spin it,

they spin like a top.

Just remember, at the end of the day,

eggs don't need to be scary.

They are a simple food, they're easy to cook,

they're super enjoyable.

Take these tips and tricks and get in the kitchen.

If you have any egg tips or tricks that I missed,

tell us in the comments.

We'd like to hear from you.