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10 Chefs From 10 Countries Make Fried Eggs

Sunnyside up? Well done? We all make our fried eggs a certain way, but how does this differ around the world? We gathered 10 chefs from across the globe to cook up their country’s version of fried eggs.

Released on 04/23/2025

Transcript

[upbeat music]

You're about to see-

You're about to see-

You're about to see-

10 different chefs-

From 10 different countries-

Make fried eggs.

Fried egg.

[upbeat music]

The quintessential American breakfast is bacon and eggs.

Frying eggs is all about time, control,

heat, fat, how you make 'em,

how you crack 'em.

There's a system for everything.

I'm putting it on medium heat,

not too low, not too high.

We're cracking them in here first

so that the yolk doesn't break

and that the shell doesn't get in the pan.

[butter sizzles]

And then you're gonna melt your butter,

but not brown your butter.

And then you're gonna gently pour

the two eggs right in the pan.

[eggs sizzle]

I like the ceramic pan because it doesn't stick.

I wanna bring this down a little bit

cuz I see it's moving a little fast.

And then I wanna season my eggs.

This is highly seasoned from high up.

You could see that the edge is getting a little bit crispy.

The ceramic pan makes them really nice and loose.

And then I'm gonna lower that heat a little bit more.

The theory behind the heat is that I want to kind of

start them off where I get the edges a little crispy

and I get those whites moving

and then I wanna lower the flame

so the rest of the whites cook right around here.

You want to kind of get that albumin all cooked.

It's the white of the egg

and the yolk is gonna cook from underneath.

I don't like basting it because then you take the yolk

and you cover it and then it gets opaque.

I like the egg to hit certain parts of the pan.

I don't like them in one place,

but you see now that's really

where I want this almost perfect.

Now you could see how I got that

little crispy edge on the bottom.

I like really like seeing the yolk.

Beautiful, fully cooked white,

little crispy bottom, seasoned properly.

Excellent, eggcellent.

Two perfect fried eggs.

So in Chinese cooking sometimes when we say

you need a hot wok, generous oil,

high heat cooking is actually a great way

to prevent your eggs being overcooked.

We only cook it for a few seconds

so the egg yolk will be really still runny.

I'm heating the wok and I'm going to add some oil.

We wanna wait until the oil is very hot,

so I like to wait until the oil is hot enough

that you just see one whisp of the smoke,

otherwise it'll become too hot.

[eggs sizzles]

So you'll see the blister of the eggs

because of the moisture and the protein in the eggs

when it meets the oil,

the water in the egg white converts into steam,

that's why it bubbles.

The whole process takes about 10 to 20 seconds.

Egg white has a really crispy texture

and then the taste will become a little bit

kind of like a nutty, little nutty, crispy flavor.

The Chinese name of this egg actually means

the eggs resemble the blooming lotus flour.

A little bit of soy sauce,

finely chopped scallions, congee,

and then pickled mustard.

Perfect crispy egg white

with creamy egg yolk.

So good.

My fried eggs is called Oeufs Miroir,

egg mirror in English.

A thin particle that is part of the egg white

that's gonna cover the yolk and make it shiny

is gonna look like a mirror.

So clarified butter is I melt down the butter

to take away the white milk we call it inside the butter.

That's what actually burn in the pan.

So I take it away so my butter is clean, it won't burn.

So here I choose a medium temperature.

We don't wanna rush because eggs cook fast,

more temperature, more dry they get.

Is gonna cook in I would say three minutes.

I have some beautiful farm eggs.

You can just crack the eggs in the pan, that works too.

I'm just fancy, so I'm gonna add my two rings.

I crack one eggs in each ring.

You just want a little bit of salt.

We don't want to cook the yolks

with the salt pepper right on top.

So now I'm gonna put the eggs in the oven

to finish cooking the egg white

having that shiny particle on top of the yolks.

Nice you can see on top of the yolk

these egg white, very shiny thin particular.

So the yolk is still very soft, huh?

It's not cooked.

Two eggs for lunch is perfect for me.

Again, enough.

Perfect, delicious.

Bon appetite.

[bright music]

I'm going to make medamayaki.

Japanese style fried egg.

Medama is translated to English as eyeballs.

Once you cook egg, it's gonna look like a eyeball.

Medamayaki is a simple dish starting with the bacon,

we're gonna use the bacon fat.

I start it with a cold pan

and I'll season it so that the fat will be rendered.

Using meat products is that's something that's not game meat

is very new to a Japanese culture from 1920s.

So this is what makes it yoshoku.

Yoshoku is translated to English

as Japanized western food with the eggs on top.

Now I'm gonna pour some hot water.

So steam is gonna cook the entire egg from outside.

So this one I'm looking for at the bottom,

little crispy and a top very soft

and as close to raw as possible.

Japanese cooking is all about the vibrancy of color.

Every single dish has a certain color that's expected.

Egg dish is gonna be one of those things.

It's gonna have a hue of yellow, white, and a brown.

And you're gonna have a greens on the side.

Salt, pepper.

If you're gonna eat Japanese fried egg,

you should eat with soy sauce.

This one is to me it's a perfect Medomayaki

and I like to eat the whole egg in one bite.

This is the proper way.

Delicious.

So the fried egg I'm making today it's huevos hoja santa.

This is the hoja santa.

It's a leaf endemic to Oaxaca.

And I'm gonna cook the eggs on top of the komal

that are gonna be cooked on top of the leaf.

The Komal, it's one of the staples of Mexican cuisine.

It's made of clay it has like pores

and once you put it on a heat it expand.

So when you cure it and you put the cal on top,

it covers all the surface.

It makes like a smooth surface for your Kamal.

This is the original non-stick pan.

It's a very healthy way

because it doesn't have any fat or any oils.

The leaf adds a lot of beautiful flavor to the dish.

It has its own profile.

I don't know how to compare it to other leaf.

Little bit of salt.

The texture of this egg stays soft.

The crispy part here is the leaf.

I'm rotating also the leaf

so it gets cooked evenly when it's done.

I wanna see the white part of the egg

being cooked like here.

Our fresh tortilla hoja santa with eggs on top.

Add some queso fresco and some salsa with chile morita.

You hear the crispiness of the oja.

It's very good.

[bright music]

If you have a fried egg in Nigeria,

you get a little different

from the fried egg in the America.

We don't do sunny side up egg anywhere in the country.

Trust me, I can guarantee you that.

Most Nigerian will tell you when you come to food,

they want it well done.

You don't go to a restaurant order medium rare steak.

It has to be well done or medium well

or something like that.

Okay, the first thing I do when I'm frying my egg,

I like to steam my vegetable first.

Onions, scotch bonnet, very spicy.

Grape tomatoes.

When you broke your egg earlier

before you start frying your egg

and you leave it for like 10 minutes, seven minutes,

you allow the egg to to be fluffy.

[Participant] Do you know why?

I refuse to be a food scientist, I'm a chef.

It's my techniques, which I learned from

one of my ex-girlfriends.

[laughs]

And one of the secrets allow the oil to boil.

Not too much so that we know the egg will not turn black,

but boil very well.

This is where the flavor come from,

from the vegetable.

So if you know my technique,

trust me, it's going to be fluffy.

I don't even want it to be brown, I want it white.

Some people like to use just a drop of oil.

More oil will not kill you instantly.

So this is it, it's done.

Mm, Lord almighty.

It is really very good.

Okay, so today I'm going to make

a very simple egg dish called sujuk yumuta in Turkish,

which means eggs with sujuk.

This is the sausage made of beef

and then mutton fat or sheep fat.

The sausage is so flavorful

and it has lots of salt and lots of pepper in it.

This is definitely the bacon and egg, a Turkish version.

As you see, there's a lot of fat coming out

of this delicious, delicious smelling sausage.

Go a little higher.

These eggs aren't gonna get so crispy.

It's not fried like Chinese people do in a wok or something.

We're using the fat of the sausage,

so we are not gonna get so much texture.

We just want a nice sunny side up egg.

We love running eggs in Turkey.

I actually just lowered the temperature a little bit.

Okay, I think our eggs are done.

Everything stays kind of soft.

I'm really not looking for anything crispy.

The goal is for us to just make sure the whites are cooked.

Our sausage is cooked and the yolks are runny.

As you might notice, there is no plates here.

This dish always comes in the pot that it's cooked in.

And this is how traditionally

it's eaten in Turkish families.

Everything comes to the middle of the table

and shared family style.

It's such a rich flavor,

really unbelievable, delicious.

The dish that I decided to do is called kima pow unda.

Kimah means chicken mince.

Unda means egg.

Pow is bread.

They're basically like little tiny buns.

So this version has the bread

and on top of it we put cooked minced chicken,

kind of like a Sloppy Joe.

Top it with a fried egg and it's a great breakfast.

So I'm going to use ghee for my eggs.

Ghee is basically clarified butter.

All the milk solids are removed and it's basically pure fat.

The ghee has to be white butter.

So it's just like when you take heavy cream

and like you start whipping it.

The first white solid color that you get,

that is white butter.

Eggs are not vegetarian in India.

We can eat butter, be vegetarian,

milk, cheese, paneer, all vegetarian,

but eggs are not vegetarian

because they carry life according to us.

One thing about doing great fried eggs for any Indian

is that the oil or the ghee

has to be like really nice and hot.

And when I put the eggs in there,

the white has to get like really, really nice and crunchy

and brown in color, lower the flame

and let the whites kind of cook.

I think ghee's great for cooking eggs.

One, it smells delicious,

has a higher burning point unlike butter

where it starts burning and starts having that taste.

So do you see how the white is done really well now?

Not moving, that's it.

And then I'm gonna pop the egg on top.

I like to break this

and get a little bit of yolk on my bread.

Multiple layers of textures and flavors.

So good.

[bright music]

The pot that I'm using is a tagine pot,

which is the way that we back home cook everything.

Algerian people, we love butter, that's for sure.

I can do butter all day.

Start medium low, keep it covered

because it's clay pot so it gets warmer.

Everything will be cooked at the same temperature.

All right, so I'm gonna start cracking some eggs.

We don't want the butter to burn,

so I'm adding some salt, some pepper, some secret spice.

We have the cumin, which I love the cumin.

And this is when the magic happen

is I close this and I let it cook.

For me, I like the clay pot

because it just keep the whole flavor together.

And even like usually like fried egg,

like if you do it the French way,

you have to flip it.

And with this, you don't have to flip it,

it just steam over, it cooks over.

Once I see that the whole top is almost cooked,

I just put it higher.

The color with the spices, so good.

You can hear it now.

I think it's almost there.

Some cilantro.

Wow.

[foreign language]

This is so good.

And look at the bottom.

It's perfectly cooked.

I also make my own harissa.

It's red pepper.

It's a spicy sauce.

It's really smart to use the tagine pot

because the food will stay warm.

Once you turn it all off it's been like still cooking

for another like five or 10 minutes.

When I stopped the cooking,

I was at over easy and now I'm like completely

over medium without any fire.

Perfectly cooked around it.

No plates.

You don't need plate.

So good.

It was so delicious.

This is the perfect fried eggs.

Bolon is a dish that's very popular in Ecuador.

You could have it for breakfast,

you could have it for lunch

or you could even have it for dinner.

Bolon is green plantains smashed with cheese, pork belly.

It always comes with two fried eggs.

I personally like the egg that the white is cooked,

the yolks still running.

So we're gonna use a non-stick pan.

We're gonna cook with regular oil,

but we're gonna put a little bit of lard.

Now lard is very common in Ecuador.

The flavor is intense and with the bolon it goes perfect

because we actually use pork belly.

So this is using the lard from that pork.

We're gonna try to do like a medium.

A little bit of oil.

If you use only lard, it is gonna burn,

oil gives it more resistance.

So I'm gonna go ahead and put the egg.

Once the white starts cooking around the edges,

we're gonna baste it with the lard and the oil.

Some people prefer crusted edges around the egg.

I personally don't.

Then as you can see, it's almost done.

And then you can lower the heat a little bit.

You wanna separate the eggs and there you go.

What we have here, we have bolon,

We have with chicharron and cheese,

and we have extra cheese on top.

We have two sunny side eggs,

little salt and pepper cooked in lard.

And here we have some pickled onions, lime juice,

salt pepper, and a little bit diced tomatoes.

The way you eat this dish is you wanna

combine everything together.

You're tasting the lard,

you're tasting the chicharron,

the creaminess of the cheese.

You're getting everything.

It's delicious.

[bright music]

Oh my god, so good.

Delicious.

Perfect.

That's a really good bite.

It's very good.

[bright music]