How A Mason Jar Can Help Make Perfect Fried Eggs

How do you fry an egg? Easy question, right? All you really do is crack an egg into a pan, fry it until the whites get a golden-brown edge, and the yolk sets, and then serve it with bacon and toast. That's all there is to it — so long as you have an egg, a frying pan, and a working oven, you're pretty much all set.

But while the act of frying an egg doesn't require any extra tools or steps, that doesn't mean that you can't improve upon it. For example, if you ever went to McDonald's and ordered an Egg McMuffin, have you ever noticed that the egg resembles more of a patty than your usual fried egg? It tastes like a fried egg, to be sure, but it has the shape of a perfect circle. No runny yolk, no burnt edges, nothing but egg whites and yolk solidified into a thick round patty. How exactly did those McDonald's employees do that? If McDonald's is to be believed, it uses real eggs for its sandwiches, so it's not like this is some kind of fake synthetic egg patty. 

The truth is that McDonald's uses what is known as an "egg ring," or a metal ring, to get those egg patties. These "egg rings" aren't anything too complicated; In fact, you probably have one sitting in your kitchen cabinet or closet right now. So long as you have a mason jar ring, you can easily make perfectly round eggs.

If you have a mason jar, getting the ring from it is very simple. First, unscrew the metal lid from the jar and then remove the metal disc that sits on top of the lid. What you'll be left with is the round metal ring that screws onto the mouth of the jar.

Cooking eggs with this metal ring is also very simple. You should first butter or oil up your frying pan as you usually would, and then sit the metal ring directly into the center of the pan. Once the pan is hot enough, crack your egg into the middle of the ring — some whites may slip out from under the ring, but so long as you have the ring level and you don't move the pan too much, this isn't anything to worry about. Allow your egg to cook inside of the ring as you usually would, removing the ring and then flipping the egg when it's no longer runny. You could also scramble your eggs inside the ring, keeping everything condensed together until it settles into that classic patty shape.

From there, you can serve the egg however you want. You could serve it by itself, or you could make your own breakfast sandwich with English muffins, biscuits, or toast. If you follow the basic steps of frying or scrambling an egg, you should really have no problem using this method when you want egg patties.

Maybe you don't like the idea of eating a perfectly round egg. Maybe you want to eat an egg that's shaped like a cartoon heart, or maybe you want to eat an egg that's shaped like a gingerbread man or a star. Ordinarily, this would be an impossible request, something that would be so ridiculous that you couldn't even imagine how it would work. But with the use of some particularly fun-shaped cookie cutters, that dream can become an easy reality.

If you don't happen to have a mason jar ring, you can just as easily use cookie cutters to achieve your round egg. It's recommended that you use metal cookie cutters rather than any plastic ones, just to keep your cookie cutters from being ruined by the heat of the pan. You could use a standard round cookie cutter if you want a round egg or you could use any cookie cutter you prefer. Want an egg shaped like a Christmas tree? Want your eggs to look like race cars or baby chicks? If you want the shapes for them, it's entirely possible to make an egg into anything you like. 

Whether or not you serve your eggs shaped in a circle or like a Christmas tree is up to you. Just by using a cookie cutter or mason jar ring, you can always add a little something interesting to your daily breakfast.