The Surprising Amount Of Butter You Should Use To Fry Eggs

Fried eggs can be the classic breakfast option for many of us. But despite how often we might make them, our frying technique might need a bit of tweaking to get perfectly cooked eggs. As The Guardian notes, legendary French chef Fernand Point often concluded what he thought about a chef's skills by observing them frying eggs. No, seriously. As basic as this meal sounds, there's an art to getting it right. For Point, this meant using plenty of butter and going slow instead of rushing the cooking process (via The Delicious Life).

Also, the chef used butter twice: once when melting butter in a pan before pouring the eggs onto it and the second time to melt even more butter separately before pouring it onto the eggs and serving them. That means you should be using enough butter to make your dish as delicious as it possibly can be. Here's how to figure that out.

It's understandable that when you are trying to be healthier and want to avoid using too much fat in your meals, you would consider using less butter than usual while cooking. When it comes to frying eggs, however, skimping on butter is just a bad idea. According to Lifehacker contributor Claire Lower, you should confidently be using a minimum of three tablespoons of butter. Surprised? 

Lower said a little over three tablespoons was enough to coat the bottom of "a smallish nonstick pan" and produce a "foamy, salty bath" for frying two eggs and splashing hot butter onto the egg whites so that they finished cooking before the yolks became solid. Plus, you can brown the butter for a nuttier flavor, which you wouldn't be able to do if you cooked the eggs with an alternative like olive oil. And done! Think about it: you can have a really good breakfast with perfectly fried eggs, toast, and a hot mug of coffee. But remember. You must not be stingy with the amount of butter you use.