what is the best way to fry an egg?

in butter in a cast iron skillet

I always prefer butter to oil. The fun thing about eggs is the infinite options of cooking them - experiment between frying it "sunny side up" (what we Israelis call "eye egg"), mixing it up before you throw it on to the pan or mixing it while it is in the pan. Experiment with sauted onions, tomatoes, mushrooms etc. Oh, and cheese of course... A fun variation is to make a hole in a slice of bread, place it in the pan, and then brake the egg into the hole and frying it from both sides. My favourite is to have a real salad in my egg - saute lots of different vegetables and then throw in the egg and mix it all up, with a lot of cheese and hot pepper.

Melt butter in iron pan; butter will froth up and then calm down; slip broken egg from dish into pan...the hotter the pan, the crispier around the edges... a lid on top of pan will cook over the gooey parts...flipping egg over risks breaking yolk.

WE grew up w. "egg in the nest;" the egg sitting in the round hole in bread. If you mix egg before throwing it into pan, I would call that "scrambled." Or "omelets.' A cheat is to use salsa.

I just tried some fried eggs with salsa... it was the heat

Not the humidity? BCarlyle, I didn't understand last sentence :-) And I use salsa only w. scrambled, omelets or MW'ed eggs (that is the easiest. Break two eggs in a MW safe-glass dish, add 2 t water and some salsa; cook on high 1 minute or so per egg.

Here's my method: fry the egg however you like (butter, non-stick skillet, etc.), once the bottom of the egg is done, pour a few tablespoons of water into the pan (around the egg), and put a lid on it. The water steams the top, making the egg perfectly done throughout.

in cuba -- chop up about a third of an onion and mix it in a bowl with an egg and a pinch of salt, pour this into a pan that's already really hot will some globs of oil in it -- you'll get a tasty tasty (not too healthy) omelette/pancake thing. another variation is to replace the onion with chopped parsley. mmmmmmmmm

i forgot to mention that this should be done in a small pan if possible - 6inch diameter or so

Not for the health-conscious: On high heat, fry a salt-cured country ham steak in a well-seasoned cast iron pan. Remove ham, fry eggs in remaining drippings, fresh-grind some black pepper on eggs (no salt, there's plenty of salt from the drippings if you used the right ham. Remove egg, add strong coffee or flat coke to remaining egg drippings, thicken with flour or cornmeal if you like, to make gravy for biscuits. Really bad for you, but tasty.

A fried egg is an egg cooked stove-top in a way that keeps the yolk separate form the white. There are two families: the Up and the Over. Sunny-side-up is cooked only on one side(some use oil or lid to cook top). The over family(easy, medium, and hard) are eggs that are flipped and cooked on both sides. There is also the option of frying the egg within toast. Some call this egg in a basket; I believe there are many names for it all equally silly. This, cooked in butter, is heaven(I prefer over-easy so I can dip toast in the molten yolk;)