Episode: 3607
Title: HPR3607: The Best Eggs in the World
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3607/hpr3607.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 02:05:41

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,607 for Tuesday the 31st of May 2022.
Today's show is entitled, The Best Eggs in the World.
It is part of the series' cooking.
It is hosted by Poké, and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
The Emergency Show, The Best Eggs in the World.
This show is from the Emergency Show Pool.
You are hearing this because there was a free slot that was not filled.
Hacker Public Radio is a community effort that will only continue with people like you
submit shows.
If you have not submitted a show this year, then please record an introduction about yourself
and how you got into tech.
Then post it to hackerpublicradio.org forward slash upload.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm Poké, and yet again, I am your host for today.
Today's episode is going to be on hacking together a good breakfast.
My world-famous best eggs in the world to be specific.
I called them the best eggs in the world because no one else has laid claims to eggs any
better.
Their world-famous, because Peter 64 even said they were the greatest eggs in the world.
Thanks Peter 64.
Appreciate that.
This is a really quick and easy way to throw together some really, really tasty eggs.
What I do usually on a Sunday night or a Monday is I will chop up a couple of onions, and
that's enough to make my eggs for the whole week.
A lot of people don't like to chop onions, so I think I've kind of perfected the art
of getting an onion chopped really quickly to get the least amount of tears out of it.
So what I usually do, very important, you get a cutting board, you need a cutting board
if you're going to cut with a sharp knife.
First reason is because anything else is probably going to dull your knife, you don't want
to dull your knife.
Knives are important, and it's important that they're sharp.
The second reason is if your knife is sharp, it's going to cut your onion a lot better,
but it'll cut basically anything else you put under it, it'll cut your counter, and
you don't want to be cutting on a glass dish because it isn't flat, and it's very hard,
it will dull your knife.
So get a cutting board, get a big cutting board, nice and flat.
My cutting board is flat on one side and has a channel on the other for like drippings.
If you're cutting meat, I use the flat side of it, and it is a very sharp knife.
I cut a little bit off of each end of the onion, and then I throw those pieces away.
Then I cut from the white of the onion to the white of the onion, but not all the way
through.
I just kind of cut through one or two layers of the onion, and I peel those layers off
and throw them away.
It's the cleanest way to get those outer onion skins away from your cutting surface so that
you're not getting them in your food.
Next, I will set the onion down on one of those flat ends and cut it completely in half.
Take the halves, lay them on the wide sides, and most onions that are probably say four
inches.
We get the big vidalius.
We get the nice big vidalius onions and about four inches across.
Maybe three inches across.
It's probably about three inches across.
I'll make three cuts in that so that each section is about an inch wide, sorry, two cuts
making three sections, each about an inch wide in each of those halves.
So it's four cuts total after the thing's been cut in half.
When I say that I cut them, I'm cutting in such a way that you have half rings is what
those pieces are made of.
I will take each of those pieces, which is like a semi-circle, half a circle, and I'll
lay it down flat, and I will cut, usually keeping the knife pretty straight, and I'll start
one edge, and I'll kind of rotate that onion slice as I move it through the knife so that
I'm getting pretty consistent little pieces of onion through there.
That works really well for me, and it gets it done really, really fast, and I can throw
those in a tupperware.
One of those disposable zip lock is the brand that we have on those disposable plastic containers
or reusable.
They're cheap enough you can dispose of them, but they're dishwasher safe, whatever.
You know what I'm talking about.
Put it in the plastic bag for like, I don't care.
It's just a good way to get done.
I will use one, you know, the middle pieces of that, or maybe two of the ends, or one
a little bit of the end, worth of onion, each time I make eggs.
And I will throw those into a, what I'm looking at here is I'm going to 10 inch frying pan,
and it is Teflon coated.
I like the Teflon so that nothing sticks in there, you can throw it all in.
So I will have preheated that pan.
My stove top goes from off to low, and if low, we're one, and it goes all the way to high,
high would be nine on mine, so from one to nine is the scale that I'm working with, I always
set mine on three and a half, is where I put it for cooking my eggs.
It's hot enough that you can saute the onions and the mushrooms which I'm getting to, and
it's cool enough so that you're not burning your eggs rubbery.
If you cook your eggs too quickly, they turn rubbery, or really if you're cooking too
slowly, there is a right speed for cooking eggs.
And on my particular oven, it's three and a half.
Try yours at three and a half, if yours goes from one to nine, and adjust, you know, up
and down from there to try.
So I throw those onions in the pan with no lubrication in there, no butter, no grease,
no pan, no nothing.
It's got teflon in there, that's plenty to keep your onions from sticking.
Then I will use about three fresh mushrooms, now you can, you can do your mushrooms any
way you like.
I've had, you know, if it doesn't seem to be any difference in flavor or in noticeable
texture in how I cut my onions, I mean, excuse me, my, well, even my hands, I just cut
them that way because it's quick.
There seems to be no noticeable difference in how I cut the mushrooms, but what I'll usually
do is I'll take three to four large, what do you call them, button mushrooms.
I think the white ones, white button mushrooms, and I'll cut the stems off, and I will not
discard the stem.
The stem, I'll just cut it off so that I can lay the mushroom flat on the cutting board.
And I'll use three or four, depending on how big they are or how much I want to eat
mushrooms that day.
I love mushrooms.
And then I'll either cut it in slices or I'll quarter it, or if it's a huge mushroom,
you can cut it in like six, or even eighths if it's big enough, you don't usually get
them that big though.
And then you throw that in with the onions in the pan.
Now, meanwhile, you can hear your onion sizzling and they're throwing off a nice smell
and it's appetizing you, so you can't wait to eat these things already.
So already they're going to be good just by the appetizing that's going on.
Once they're in the pan, you've got a couple choices.
I prefer a fresh garlic powder or granulated garlic, sometimes it's called.
The powdered garlic is usually a little too powdery.
It's nice, it's nice in the eggs, but it's a hassle to use because the steam makes it
stick to the bottle and makes your whole experience using that little jar of garlic powder,
a pain in the neck.
But the granulated stuff works really nice.
I do not like to use garlic salt if I have the choice because I like to control how
much salt I put on my own.
I don't like that to be a predetermined thing.
And of course you can always add more salt to garlic salt, but you can never add less salt
to garlic salt and the only way to do that would be to add more garlic powder.
So why not just buy garlic powder in the first place because I'm willing to bet you already
have a shake or full of salt that you can use.
So I like to use garlic powder and I like to use salt and I like to use cracked pepper.
And I will put those things over the top of the mushrooms and the onions.
I don't really bother stirring it yet.
And then I put to that size to a sixth of an onion and three or four mushrooms, I usually
add a tablespoon, maybe a tablespoon and a half of real butter.
Real butter is the key here because margarine tastes like crap.
And all of the imitation butter is tastes like crap.
If you're health conscious and you eat that stuff because you think butter is too fattening,
think about the other things that imitation butter carries with it.
It's probably not as healthy as you think.
And if you're that concerned, just use a little bit less butter.
But real butter is important because it tastes really good.
Salty is important, real sugar is important in the kitchen because they taste really good.
And health conscious folks can always eat less of those things rather than substituting
with stuff that isn't perhaps as good for you, even though we think most people seem
to think that they're better and maybe have other physical and physical effects that we're
not thinking about.
Anyway, that's that.
I put a tablespoon and a half of butter on top of there.
And a tablespoon and a half of butter is not real hard to estimate if you're used to
using a real stick of butter because every stick of butter has eight tablespoons in it.
And the package is labeled with lines where the table spoons are.
So if you can just pay a little bit of attention to that and estimate a little bit, it's not
that hard to figure out how much a tablespoon of butter is or a tablespoon and a half if you
want to use that much.
Once I have the butter on top of there, I put the lid on.
I still haven't stirred anything.
I leave the butter right on top of everything and I don't stir anything.
And I go make a pot of coffee, rinse my coffee pot out, rinse my filter out, put the coffee
in, put the water in, start that up, go back to the pan and lift the lid.
If the butter is completely melted and it's disappeared, then you're ready for your next
step.
So with the lid back on, walk away and check your podcasts that morning or check your
email or whatever it is you're doing, give it another minute or so.
It's at that point that the butter is completely melted and it's gone that I will go reach
for the eggs and the cheese.
So what I'll do then is once the butter's gone, then I'll take and stir it up.
And I use two forks every morning.
I use one fork that I stir up, all that stuff with, the sauteed onions and mushrooms
and butter and garlic, and salt and cracked pepper.
I like cracked pepper.
I like pepper from a pepper mill.
It's much better than the powdered stuff.
I'll stir that up with a fork and then I'll use that same fork to crack the eggs.
I don't like cracking eggs on the side of a pan because I'm too messy that way.
You may be good at that.
Go for it.
And I'll put two eggs on top of that stirred up mixture.
Sometimes I'll try to make a little couple of pockets for the eggs to sit in so they
don't roll around too far in there before they're done cooking.
But I'll just, I'll use two eggs, put them on top of the sauteed onions and mushrooms
and I will put the equivalent of a slice and a half of American cheese.
Of whatever cheese I'm using that day on there.
My very favorite cheese to use with my eggs is, it's a sharp cheddar.
Wait, I wish I could ruin the name.
Hoffman's, I believe, Hoffman's ultra-sharp cheddar.
I get it in the deli and it's really funny because it doesn't even taste like cheddar.
It's not sharp at all.
I don't know why they call it ultra-sharp cheddar because it doesn't taste like that.
But it's delicious cheese.
It melts nice, leaves a nice consistency on top of there.
Next is Harvardi.
Harvardi's nice on there or American cheese or whatever you like.
Whatever your favorite cheese is.
Throw your cheese on top of there.
Like I said, I use the equivalent of a slice and a half of American.
Sometimes I'll put shredded cheese on there, but I'll try to use only that much.
And once I lay the cheese on top of the eggs, I put the lid back on the pan.
Throw two slices of toast in the toaster, whatever your favorite toast is.
I kind of like rye or moral rye or bumper nickel.
Those are great.
But even, you know, American white bread is fine, whatever.
So two slices of toast in the toaster oven and start the toaster.
And I wait to start the toaster until after the lid is back on,
because that's almost the perfect amount of time to cook those eggs.
The time it takes to toast, two slices of toast, will have your eggs just slightly undercooked
if you like them, the white fully cooked and the yolk runny.
It'll be just slightly runny white at that point.
And if you leave it in for another maybe 30 to 45 seconds,
the white is going to fully cook, and you're going to have a slightly runny yellow slightly runny yolk.
If you like your yolk cooked more, obviously leave it in longer.
But I can do that.
The toaster will ding, grab the toast, put the butter on it, set it on the side of the plate,
grab the pan.
What I usually do is just shake the pan side to side a little bit between the butter that's in there,
and the teflon and the pan, usually just shaking it a little bit as enough to break all your eggs free,
and you can pour them quickly and easily out of the pan onto your plate.
Next to your toast, where that second fork is lying,
and you are ready, my friend, to go.
And by now your coffee's going to be done too.
So enjoy your breakfast and have a great day.
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