Bell Pepper Eggs Revisited

Where were you 11 years ago today? Do you remember it? It boggles my mind that many of the high school kids now don't hardly remember 9/11 at all.


You know those meals that you make out of that last vestiges of food you have left in your house? Yeah...that was my lunch a few days ago. We were getting ready to start the 20+ hour trek for Cameron's Grandfather's funeral and didn't want to leave food in the fridge to go bad, so we hadn't bought groceries for a little bit. I was hungry and so I scrounged and found I had bell peppers from the garden, eggs, and zucchini pickles (I know...zucchini pickles sound gross...I was hesitant at first, but these are so good and so easy and they use up the surplus zucchini coming out of everyone's gardens). So...I decided to retest an old friend from a few months ago. 

The Original Pin

http://www.apronstringsblog.com/flower-power-eggs-recipe-sunny-side-up-eggs/

Remember that one? No? Here was my original attempt:

http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2012/04/fried-egg-underflow.html

I had issues with the egg leaking out from under the pepper and it just didn't cook as pretty. Since that episode we've had people e-mail in their tries, which went bout as good as mine.  Here, I'll show you. 

The Pinstrosities

 Kendall said, "I wanted eggs for breakfast and had an extra green pepper from my dinner the night before (also a Pinterest fail.) I decided to boost my self-esteem by making the easiest thing I'd ever pinned on Pinterest. Eggs cracked into rings of peppers. How hard can that be? Well, much harder than I thought.. First of all, the eggs didn't stay neatly inside the peppers like they do in the picture. Second, how the heck do you flip them to cook both sides? Should  I have done the sunny side up thing? I'm obviously not a chef. I cooked one side of the egg and things were going ok. Then I flipped the eggs to cook the other side and everything went to heck. Thank goodness I wasn't cooking for company. They tasted ok but they looked like dog food. Total FAIL."

 I decided that I was going to retry this pin for my lunch, so I went through and reread the instructions on the original site and reread all the comments/suggestions from the last post. I had two methods I wanted to try...and of course the second one is the one that worked. Isn't that how it always goes.  

Try #1

The bell peppers from our garden aren't huge, so I knew a whole egg wasn't going to fit in a regular slice...so I sliced the bell pepper a little thicker than normal. 

I decided to try the hot pan method first, which was a popular suggestion on our last attempt with this. And hotter means faster, right? Hehehe. I can be so impatient. Hey, I was hungry. 

I cracked the egg into a bowl (an orange one of course, what other color would I use?) and then dipped the pepper in the egg white. 

With the pepper dipped in egg it stuck to the hot pan, giving it a sort of seal. It was working so far. I had hoped that the peppers would be tall enough to hold the egg, but they weren't. There was no seepage underneath the pepper, but there was egg overflow. 

I tried slowly spooning the egg into the second pepper...have you ever tried separating egg white? It doesn't spoon so well...and I ended up pouring the whole egg in the pepper by accident. So I had 2 overflow pepper eggs. I removed the overflowed cooked egg white and it all looked like it was going to go perfect. But then it came time to flip the eggs...because the pan was really hot I had to flip them because they'd burn. Well...the whites on top were still uncooked so it just ended up splatting all over the pan. 

I cooked them until it looked done on both sides, detached the outer whites and they looked decent-ish. Not pretty, but not bad. 

I cut into them and there was still uncooked egg white in the middle. Disgusting. I like my yolks runny but the whites HAVE to be cooked. I cut everything up, added a little cheese and poured it back in the pan and ended up having scrambled eggs with pepper pieces. Tasty, but not the desired result.

I ate this while the pan cooled and I could do attempt #2. 

Try #2

This time I cut the peppers to normal thickness (about 1/2" thick). I again broke the egg into the bowl and dipped the pepper in it. 

This try though I had the heat on low. I placed the egged pepper on the pan and let it cook for about a minute. I then slowly spooned out little bits of the egg white into the bottom of the pepper, just enough to get a full seal and a coating. Once I had a full coat in the bottom of the pepper (with no leakage) I spooned in the yolk of the egg (with a small amount of attached egg white). It fit just perfectly in the small pepper. 

I salt and peppered the egg (which I forgot to do the first time) and then I placed a lid on the pan and let it cook on the low heat. I did not flip this egg. On the low heat and with the lid on the pan you can let the egg cook until it is done all the way through. The original website says, "If you like your yolks runny, just cook over low heat until whites are done. If you like your yolks firm, break the yolks and then cook over low heat until both whites and yolks are firm." 

I let the egg cook for a few minutes and when I opened up the lid this is the beautiful egg I found. It worked! Finally. 3rd time's the charm, right? The egg was cooked to perfection and the pepper was just right...not too crunchy but not over done either.

This recipe takes more work with a small pepper than a larger one, but it does work and it makes such a pretty offering. So cook it gently over a low heat and DON'T flip.