This post originally appeared in Genius Recipes on Food52.
We all have our egg routines—the frying method you picked up from your dad, the well-honed minute count on your preferred hard boil, your singular place on the fluffy-to-creamy scramble continuum.
But no matter how much we love and cleave to our eggs just so, they can get awfully boring sometimes, can’t they?
When was the last time you got a brand new egg routine? Not just an experiment, but an egg delivery method that was truly quick, repeatable, and satisfying enough to make it into the rotation (and displace the regulars)?
This is your moment! Memorize this recipe, and it will reshape your mornings, or nights, or right now. It comes from Julia Turshen’s 2016 cookbook Small Victories, so called because each recipe contains a helpful, memorable takeaway that over time build to make you a greater cook.
Bobbi Lin
The small victory here is ostensibly in learning how to make perfect sunny-side up eggs—whites firm and yolks evenly-warmed and free-spilling—simply by flicking a few drops of water into the pan and covering it to capture a bit of steam.
But another victory lies in the fact that it the whole meal takes all of five minutes, and everything for it is probably in your fridge right now. And there’s another small victory in putting to use the lingering herbs you bought for some other thing (and hated the idea of wasting)—or customizing your meal instead with spices or nuts or breadcrumbs, or maybe even better, milk crumbs.
And perhaps the biggest victory is in getting comfortable putting two breakfast standbys together that you might not have before—the cool, bracing pucker of lemon-spiked yogurt, with a sizzling, olive oil-slicked egg unleashed on top. The pairing is very similar to Çilbir, the traditional Turkish breakfast of poached eggs served over garlicky yogurt, with spiced butter often spilled over the top.
Bobbi Lin
Turshen’s version cracks open the joys of Çilbir to even more people—foremost, to newer cooks, who usually learn to fry before they poach. But also to stubborn people like me, who have had every opportunity to perfect their egg poaching and still haven’t, simply because the fried ones are so good.
The recipe might look familiar if you spend time on Instagram, because Turshen’s “yogurt eggs” (as the kids are calling them) have been sunny-side-upping all over social media and blogs all year. “It’s always so fascinating to me which recipes catch on from a cookbook and it always seems to be the simplest ones.” Turshen told me. “I think the fact that they take about 5 minutes is the key.”
Julia Turshen’s Olive Oil-Fried Eggs with Yogurt & Lemon
Serves 1, but easily multiplied
· 1/4 cup (60ml) plain yogurt (Greek or not, your choice)
· 1/2 lemon
· Kosher salt
· Freshly ground black pepper
· 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
· 2 eggs
· 1 tablespoon roughly chopped leafy fresh herbs, such as basil, dill, chervil, chives, and/or parsley
See the full recipe on Food52
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