How To Cook Up A Fried Egg Without A Pan

Fried eggs are delicious, nutritious, and really easy to make. They take minimal ingredients and cooking equipment. Generally, if you have a pan and a spatula, you've got what you need to make fried eggs. As it turns out, you don't even need a pan...or a spatula. So long as you have a ladle, a fried egg breakfast can successfully be achieved. Granted, the type of ladle you use matters. If you're going forward with this challenge, it helps to have a ladle with a wider (as opposed to a deeper) surface, and if it's well-seasoned or greased, it will make the task easier. Oh, and this really will only work over a fire, so if you've got an electric or radiant cooktop, stick with the pan and spatula method.

Start by heating your ladle over a fire; this is a particularly good experiment to do if you are camping or just cooking outdoors. If this is the case, prop your ladle securely so that it can heat up over your coals or flames without you holding it in place. Add some oil, butter, or bacon fat and let it melt. Crack your egg into the ladle and heat until the whites are set, the edges of the egg are crispy, or until the egg is cooked to your liking. Slide the egg out and enjoy. Conversely, you can place your uncooked egg into an unheated ladle, but it will take longer to cook. Feel free to season up your egg however you'd like once it's cracked in the ladle. The finished egg will be the perfect size for an English muffin or biscuit breakfast sandwich.

It's not exactly breaking news that cooking eggs without a pan is possible. After all, you can boil, poach, or scramble them in a pot or microwave. But frying them without a pan — or ladle — can be tricky. However, it's not impossible. It turns out that if you have two paper plates, you can fry an egg in the microwave. Butter or grease one plate, crack your egg on top and cover the plate with the second inverted plate. As the egg cooks in the microwave, the butter will help the edges of the egg whites crisp up while steam builds inside the plates, cooking the thicker part of the whites. We can't say they'll be as good as diner fried eggs, but it'll get the job done.

You can also crack your eggs on a greased baking sheet and bake them in the oven. This is actually a convenient method if you're feeding a crowd since frying eggs in a pan multiple times is a tedious process. Fried eggs in the microwave and oven can result in different textures and levels of doneness. For instance, by the time your egg whites are fully cooked in the oven, your yolks might be fully cooked as well. Still, if you're in a pinch and there's no pan in sight, it's nice to know that you can fry your eggs with something as small as a soup ladle and as large as a cookie sheet.