An Egg Cooked in a Hole in a Slice of Bread

[baroness]

It did NOT skip the upper midwest.

A native of Minnesota, I chose to avoid this dish, as I didn't -- and still don't -- like runny eggs.

[Doodad]

It did NOT skip the upper midwest.

A native of Minnesota, I chose to avoid this dish, as I didn't -- and still don't -- like runny eggs.

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I said that as my Ohio wife had never seen nor heard of the thing. But, her Mom is from Charleston, SC so that may explain it.

[Pam R]

Toad in a hole -- that's what it was called on the menu of a restaurant chain here when I was a kid and that's what my parents called it (mom from here, dad from Poland/Saskatchewan).

[JAZ]

My Mom, who grew up in the South, never really made this, but I saw it in the mess halls as an army brat kid called Sunrise Breakfast since it was always sunny side up eggs.

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A native of Minnesota, I chose to avoid this dish, as I didn't -- and still don't -- like runny eggs.

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I'm curious: my Mom always cooked both the bread and the egg on both sides, so it definitely wasn't sunny side up. And although we liked our eggs on the runny side, she would make it with the yolk broken or simply cooked harder if anyone wanted it that way.

Was that unusual? Do most people cook the egg only on one side?

[Fat Guy]

I've never seen it not flipped. It's hard to imagine how that would work. Both sides of the bread need to come in contact with the pan in order to cook/toast/griddle properly.

[Doodad]

I've never seen it not flipped. It's hard to imagine how that would work. Both sides of the bread need to come in contact with the pan in order to cook/toast/griddle properly.

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I have only seen it flipped except in the mess hall. I think that was probably due to economy of scale and they made toast for this and SOS and cooked the egg fast in pretoasted bread if you ordered "whatever you call it."

[nibor]

Ate this as a kid in Michigan. My mom cooked most of the time, but my dad had his specialties. Mostly eastern European stuff, but also this toast/egg thing. We had no name for it but loved it.

[Holly Moore]

Bird in a nest.

[Hard H2O]

We call it a "bullseye".

I allways flip them. I also brown the scrap bread in a bit of butter.

[Fat Guy]

Right, the little round cutout should be cooked in the pan alongside the mother ship. It's a nice little extra.

Also, in our neck of the woods, we made the cutout with a small inverted drinking glass.

[maggiethecat]

This dish was a specialty of my father's -- he grew up in Ontario and served them up to us in Quebec. Name: Egg in a Hat.

[Jaymes]

Toad in a Hole here, too. Hard to say where we're from. Everywhere, I guess. But mainly south and west US.

[menuinprogress]

Egg-in-toast.

[Andrea Dodge]

I loved this when I was growing up--well. I still do. My mom from southern Indiana also called it Egg-in-Toast.

Edited July 10, 2009 by Andrea Dodge (log)

[Fat Guy]

This morning I decided to make egg-in-a-basket (that's what we're calling it in our household, because I think overall it's the most legitimate name except to my ear "a" sounds better than "the") for our nearly-four-year-old son, PJ. As I was preparing to make it, a number of tips and tricks, gathered over the decades, for making egg-in-a-basket came back to me.

1. Egg-in-a-basket comes out much better if you use thickly sliced bread and a relatively small hole. This combination allows the egg to remain soft even though the bread griddles up really well.

2. For irregularly shaped bread, which tends to be better than sandwich bread, a round hole doesn't make sense. You want to cut an oval-ish hole that tracks the shape of the bread.

3. It's best to crack the egg into a small dish and pour from that, for accuracy.

4. The butter needs to be very soft otherwise spreading it on will rip up the bread. This is even more true with egg-in-a-basket than with, say, a grilled-cheese sandwich. Because the hole in the bread makes it much less stable.

[BarbaraY]

When I read the first post my reaction was, " Everybody knows that this is Bulls Eye Eggs". Imagine my surprise that only one other calls it that. It was a camping thing for us.

Always flipped since I find few kids like eggs up.

Edited July 10, 2009 by BarbaraY (log)

[chezcherie]

I've never seen it not flipped. It's hard to imagine how that would work. Both sides of the bread need to come in contact with the pan in order to cook/toast/griddle properly.

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i sometimes flip and sometimes don't. when i don't, i toast one side of the bread in the butter, then flip and add the egg. i then cover the pan for a little bit of the cooking time, to help the egg cook through. works great.

[Doodad]

This morning I decided to make egg-in-a-basket (that's what we're calling it in our household, because I think overall it's the most legitimate name except to my ear "a" sounds better than "the") for our nearly-four-year-old son, PJ. As I was preparing to make it, a number of tips and tricks, gathered over the decades, for making egg-in-a-basket came back to me.

1. Egg-in-a-basket comes out much better if you use thickly sliced bread and a relatively small hole. This combination allows the egg to remain soft even though the bread griddles up really well.

2. For irregularly shaped bread, which tends to be better than sandwich bread, a round hole doesn't make sense. You want to cut an oval-ish hole that tracks the shape of the bread.

3. It's best to crack the egg into a small dish and pour from that, for accuracy.

4. The butter needs to be very soft otherwise spreading it on will rip up the bread. This is even more true with egg-in-a-basket than with, say, a grilled-cheese sandwich. Because the hole in the bread makes it much less stable.

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I used a non sandwich bread as well, but I liked the dichotomy of the perfectly round hole (and egg) and the rough bread. I softened the butter quite a bit to avoid bread damage.

[Jaymes]

Another absolute requirement for Toad in the Hole in the southwest is several good shakes of some sort of hot sauce or salsa, just before serving.

Edited July 10, 2009 by Jaymes (log)

[Jossa]

Toad in the Hole.

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Pig in a blanket. I grew up in NJ, where the diners and other breakfast places call a sausage wrapped in a pancake a pig in a blanket, so I'm not sure where Mom got it from.

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Ha ha! Toad in the hole we call sausages in yorkshire pud and pigs in blankets are cocktail sausages wrapped in streaky bacon.

[Jaymes]

I used a non sandwich bread as well, but I liked the dichotomy of the perfectly round hole (and egg) and the rough bread. 

Us, too. Our tradition is an upside-down juice glass to cut the round hole to put the "toad" into.

[nickrey]

...

4. The butter needs to be very soft otherwise spreading it on will rip up the bread. This is even more true with egg-in-a-basket than with, say, a grilled-cheese sandwich. Because the hole in the bread makes it much less stable.

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I used a non sandwich bread as well, but I liked the dichotomy of the perfectly round hole (and egg) and the rough bread. I softened the butter quite a bit to avoid bread damage.

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Couldn't you butter it first and then make the hole?

[torakris]

I always knew this as 'Texas toast', I was born and raised in Cleveland...

[MelissaH]

Egg-in-a-hole. Hole cut with a drinking glass, and fried up in butter alongside the egg.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, but my mom (who made it for us) is from the NYC area.

What's the proper plural?

MelissaH

[Jaymes]

...

4. The butter needs to be very soft otherwise spreading it on will rip up the bread. This is even more true with egg-in-a-basket than with, say, a grilled-cheese sandwich. Because the hole in the bread makes it much less stable.

←

I used a non sandwich bread as well, but I liked the dichotomy of the perfectly round hole (and egg) and the rough bread. I softened the butter quite a bit to avoid bread damage.

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Couldn't you butter it first and then make the hole?

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We indeed butter the bread first and then make the hole after we put the buttered bread slice into the skillet. That's because we fry the "hole," too. And it needs butter.