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An Egg Cooked in a Hole in a Slice of Bread


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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.

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.

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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).

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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.

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

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?

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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.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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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.

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."

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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.

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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.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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

I don't understand why rappers have to hunch over while they stomp around the stage hollering.  It hurts my back to watch them. On the other hand, I've been thinking that perhaps I should start a rap group here at the Old Folks' Home.  Most of us already walk like that.

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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.

gallery_1_295_50871.jpg

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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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 by BarbaraY (log)
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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.

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.

"Laughter is brightest where food is best."

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Author of The I Love Trader Joe's Cookbook ,The I Love Trader Joe's Party Cookbook and The I Love Trader Joe's Around the World Cookbook

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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.

gallery_1_295_50871.jpg

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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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.

:cool:

Edited by Jaymes (log)

I don't understand why rappers have to hunch over while they stomp around the stage hollering.  It hurts my back to watch them. On the other hand, I've been thinking that perhaps I should start a rap group here at the Old Folks' Home.  Most of us already walk like that.

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Toad in the Hole.

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.

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

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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. 

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

I don't understand why rappers have to hunch over while they stomp around the stage hollering.  It hurts my back to watch them. On the other hand, I've been thinking that perhaps I should start a rap group here at the Old Folks' Home.  Most of us already walk like that.

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...

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.

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

Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"The Internet is full of false information." Plato
My eG Foodblog

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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

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Oswego, NY

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Say this five times fast: "A big blue bucket of blue blueberries."

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...

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.

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

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.

I don't understand why rappers have to hunch over while they stomp around the stage hollering.  It hurts my back to watch them. On the other hand, I've been thinking that perhaps I should start a rap group here at the Old Folks' Home.  Most of us already walk like that.

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