Eggs are magical and I’m grateful for them every day. They are incredibly versatile and can go a long way if you know what to do with them. My song of praise, however, is a new-ish tune. I used to consider myself “not really an egg person.”
How to Make a Fried Garlic Fried Egg
In the video, Catalano first slices garlic cloves on a mandoline with the palm of her hand — a technique I was honestly a little hesitant about and therefore skipped. Garlic cloves are small and fumble around easily, so I prefer to steady them on a cutting board, and whip out a good ol’ fashioned chef’s knife for this one.
The trick with this dish is timing. You want the garlic cloves to be crispy, but not burnt, and there’s about a 0.001 second window before perfect turns into perfectly bad. I sliced the garlic very thinly and added them to a cold, nonstick skillet with some neutral oil, and turned on the heat. While the cloves were still mostly pale but just starting to become golden around the edges, I nudged them into a little circle, added my cold egg, and encouraged my crispy garlic slices onto the egg white raft.
I seasoned my egg with salt and pepper and, just as in the video, I covered the pan for a bit with a lid, so the steam would cook the egg white. As I expected, after a few minutes, the egg was cooked, but the garlic had become soft from the steam. I probably could have continued cooking it a few seconds longer, uncovered, just to re-crisp the slices, but I didn’t want to risk burning them or overcooking the yolk. Next time, I’ll remove a few crispy garlic slices and drain them on a paper towel before I add the egg and cover, so I have extra crispy garlic to sprinkle on top.
My Review of the Fried Garlic Fried Egg
Overall, it’s a straightforward dish, but deceptively requires good intuition and all of your attention. It comes together quickly, so it’s not the dish for impulsive multitaskers. I never doubted that it’d be delicious, and sure enough, it was! So if you can concentrate for 6 minutes while you focus on nothing but garlic and eggs, I’d definitely give this one a try.