Cracking An Egg With One Hand Like A Professional Is All In The Thumb Action
Movie buffs may recall a memorable scene in the Audrey Hepburn movie "Sabrina" where at cooking school in Paris, one of her first lessons was how to crack an egg. The chef instructor bellows, "We must not torment it. We must be merciful and execute it quickly, like with the guillotine. CRACK! With only one hand." (Spoiler: Sabrina couldn't do it.)
As well as perhaps being merciful to the egg, one-handed cracking is a technique coveted by culinary professionals as a way to efficiently get eggs out of their shells, a valuable skill in restaurants and bakeries where lots of eggs are required in a hurry. But besides that, the fact is that cracking an egg quickly and cleanly with one hand ... just looks cool. It's like a magic trick, a move to be done in sight of friends and family to draw their oohs and ahhs!
Considering the current high cost of eggs, no one wants to potentially ruin them with practice cracking. Luckily, "Fearless Baker" author and pastry chef Emily Luchetti shared her one-hand technique with Saveur, showing that flawless egg cracking is easier than it seems. How? Get your thumb warmed up.
A smooth push-pull motion is the trick behind this technique
Chef Emily Luchetti shares in her YouTube video for Saveur that the first step to crack an egg with one hand is to break the eggshell on a flat surface — not on the edge of the bowl. This is advice echoed by Chef José Andrés who says says cracking eggs on a rim pushes shell pieces into the egg, creating a mess and a risk of contamination.
Use one hand to tap the egg on a flat surface to break the shell, then hold the egg in that same hand over a bowl, with one half between the thumb and forefinger and the rest of the fingers wrapped around the other half. Then, use your thumb to push the eggshell away while the rest of the fingers pull in the opposite direction. The shell will open cleanly to release the white and yolk to the bowl. Luchetti also demonstrates this thumb-finger motion in the video without the egg, and it's a move that looks similar to snapping your fingers.
The chef advises practicing one-handed egg cracking into a small container before adding the eggs to the rest of the recipe ingredients, just in case shell bits find their way in. Once you've mastered the technique, call someone into the kitchen to watch as you use your thumb to crack that egg open with a flourish.