Deep-Fry Your Scrambled Eggs For A Totally New Twist On Breakfast

Eggs are an incredibly versatile food. As an ingredient, they are critical to your fluffy cakes, chewy cookies, creamy, emulsified custards, and your sweet vanilla soufflé. As a meal, you can enjoy them in many iterations — scrambled, poached, baked, or converted into strata or frittata. And then there's the iconic sunny-side-up fried egg, which became the emoji. But there's a way to cook eggs that probably isn't in your repertoire: Deep-fried scrambled eggs.

Eggs that are both scrambled and deep-fried may sound like the stuff of fantasy, but if you've ever had funnel cake, you can probably imagine what this looks like. It's crispy and savory, customizable, and very delicious. This is a different way to incorporate eggs into your morning meal but is also versatile and craveable enough that you may find yourself making it any time of the day. Deep-frying your scrambled eggs makes them even more rich and decadent.

Deep-fried scrambled eggs have some history, and are a common street food found in parts of Southeast Asia. One way of making them is similar to funnel cake, a carnival favorite that features various toppings. You also typically see eggs getting the deep-fried treatment in the popular Chinese American dish egg foo young. The name translates to "hibiscus egg" due to the way the egg blooms in the oil.

There is some debate about whether egg foo young was first created entirely from egg whites, indicating that it was a delicate dish meant for a more elegant diner. Regardless of the contested history, there's evidence as far back as the late 19th century that egg foo young was being served in the U.S. and has evolved and adapted since then. Today's versions involve deep-frying or pan-frying a mixture of eggs, various fillings, and a binding agent, similar to an omelet.

When deep-frying scrambled eggs you can take your dish in many directions. As egg foo young, it's often served simply with green onions and a gravy that includes savory elements like oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil. It's not uncommon to find pork, shrimp, or a variety of vegetables mixed into the scrambled eggs (think onion, mung beans, cabbage, onions, or carrots). 

But if you're using the funnel cake technique you can also keep it super simple, garnishing your deep-fried scrambled eggs with just green onion and sour cream. (You can even try seasoning your sour cream.) Or, spice things up with a drizzle of Sriracha. You can grab anything from kimchi to caviar to give your fried breakfast a personality and flavor all your own. Once you get the hang of whipping up this lesser-known egg creation, it will quickly become part of your egg oeuvre.