You Should Be Cooking Your Fried Eggs in Cream (Yes, Really)

Eggs and cream have long been known to be best friends, joining together to make silky custards, to enrich cakes, and of course to delight children of all ages in ice cream form. But it turns out the two also play together nicely on their own in breakfast form — no flour or sugar required.

The whole idea of cooking eggs with cream came about when the food blog Ideas in Food tried cooking carrots in cream. The dairy had essentially steamed the vegetable in the liquid before converting to brown butter, and it added flavor and fat to the cooking process. The resulting carrots were rich, tender, and deeply delicious. The blogger, H. Alexander Talbot, wondered what else he could cook in cream that would have similar results. The answer turned out to be eggs!

The recipe (or lack thereof, as it is so simple as to barely need one) is basically just cracking eggs into heavy cream and adding a sprinkle of salt. Over medium heat, the cream boils and eventually caramelizes. The eggs finish cooking right around when the cream becomes mostly butter and butter solids, so they covered the pan for a minute to set the eggs. The result? “The bottom was caramelized. The whites were tender and cream coated. The yolk was firm and runny. The eggs were evenly seasoned.”

Get the recipe: Caramelized Cream Eggs from Ideas in Food

The recipe was picked up by Food52’s Genius Recipes, who added that you can also add flavor to the cream to infuse the dish with herbs, spices, garlic, or citrus zest, as well as reporting that the Ideas in Food folks mentioned all the other things you can use this same technique with: “everything from meats (like pork chops seared in smoked paprika cream, burgers, sausages, hot dogs, ragus, dumpling fillings) to fish (with mustard, soy sauce, or miso) to fruits (apples with star anise and cinnamon).”

Of the many way to cook eggs out there, a lot seem to require some skill — like the tornado omelette — but this one just requires a few ingredients you already probably have and no additional talent, so you might as well give it a try!