Home / Food / Eggs / Fried or boiled?

(25/5/1999)

"How dya want yer eggs - fried o' boiled?"...The dilemma.

Do you go for the satisfying but unhealthy grease factor of the fried egg, or the fiddly and sometimes over-dry boiled egg?

Fried food is not so good for us in general. This is not because it contains fat - certain fats can be very healthy - but because the fat is over-heated in the frying process.

But what's this I hear from the back of the class about poached eggs? As far as I am concerned, poaching eggs is a kind of witchcraft. If you can poach eggs, then you can probably also curdle milk at a hundred paces. I have tried poaching eggs and all I get is a very watery and totally inedible 'egg soup'. Don't get me wrong, I love a good poached egg, and if I find one wobbling improbably on a piece of toast I'll snaffle it right up - I just can't make them. (If anyone out there knows how its done, then please tell me.) Oh, someone just told me how!

So, is it fried or boiled? The correct answer is to boil the egg, and then add the oil.

• Boil up your eggs so they are soft, but not runny.
• Put the eggs in a small bowl and cut them in halves or quarters.
• Pour on a fair old slurp of olive oil (or better yet, walnut oil) and sprinkle with salt and/or interesting herbs.
• Eat with a fork!