What Can I Do?

I haven't cooked at all in days

It's been so long since I've tried

I've been to the kitchen many times

I just don't know what I'm doing wrong

What can I do to make you dinner

What can I do to make your fare

What can I say to make you eat this

What can I do to get you there

-- With apologies to The Coors

I started this blog because I want to learn new dishes, but it seems reasonable to begin what I can already cook. The list isn't that long, but I'll post each dish as I remember it.

I'll start with food I can do without a recipe. Only carnivores from this point on! Here's my go-to breakfast.

Breakfast sandwich

My breakfast sandwich is something like a McDonald's Egg McMuffin, except tastier.

The photo is McDonald's version. A "round egg", lightly fried Canadian bacon with no rind (I can't buy that), a square of American cheese and the plumpest English-like muffin I've ever seen (I don't want to buy those).

The round egg deserves comment. MacDonald's has a special apparatus to cook these. It consists of multiple egg rings, shown in the photo below from this YouTube video. Note the handle that allows them all to be picked up at once.

When all the eggs are cracked and the yolks broken (an important step), a metal pan is inverted over the egg rings. It has a metal jigger-sized cup on top that doubles as a handle and a water reservoir that continually drips water onto the grill below, filling the pan with steam.

Meanwhile, the muffin is toasted lightly on the inside only and the bacon round is warmed up on the grill. The sandwich is assembled in the order shown above, muffin bottom, cheese, egg, bacon, muffin top.

You'll find a number of videos and blogs showing you how to do this at home. This one is from McDonald's.

All the basics are covered here. Fry pan, greased egg ring, break yolk, cover, steam, heat meat, assemble. But it seems to me there are a few bugs in his program.

• Butter instead of oil. Butter the bottom and inside of the egg ring, place ring in pan, melt butter in the ring. You won't have melted butter handy, so use a stick of butter from the fridge, unwrapped on one end. Whip it around the ring, then use it like a magic marker to coat the pan inside the ring.
• Don't touch the ring! You'll see him holding the ring steady with his fingers while he cuts the egg out with a paring knife. Ouch! It's hot!
• Don't touch a non-stick pan with the tip of a sharp knife! Unless you want to throw away the pan. There's a much easier way to do this. Use a plastic spatula to whack the bottom of the egg ring. The ring will lift up on that side; you can hook it with the spatula and lift it off the egg.
• Don't let the egg get cold while you're warming the ham. Grill the ham quickly in a little butter first and let it sit on the muffin top while the egg cooks. If you grill ham too long, it gets tough and leaves gunk in the pan. Grill it just a little, it gets softer and tastier.
• Don't toast the outside of the muffin. It's better to not toast it at all than to make it hard. I have a toaster that will toast just the insides if I tell it the muffin is a bagel, but I skip this step. An English muffin will really crumb up a toaster.
• Don't butter the muffin. Too much butter will just make a puddle on your plate. Cook the egg in butter and there will be plenty of butter flavor.
• Use real cheese. Unless you're in love with that nasty processed stuff, use a mild cheddar or swiss or whatever you like with eggs.
• Round the cheese. It's more important to take the corners off the cheese than the ham, because the ham won't drip on your shirt. You don't need a mold for this; just use the tip of a paring knife to round off the corners.

Now, about the meat. Don't use store-bought Canadian bacon. It has an unchewable rind that is tough to get off neatly; when it is off, the round is too small. Leftover ham is best, because it's better quality ham, but you can buy a small package of presliced ham that is already half-round. Just trim a slice with your paring knife. Eyeball it.

Better yet, use (American) bacon. It will be just as healthy as ham and tastes better. But frying bacon is time-consuming to do every day, so I pre-fry or bake an entire package at a time.

Put aluminum foil in a baking pan or two. Lay out a whole package of bacon on the foil. You can bake at 425F/220C but you'll have to watch like a hawk to get it crisp without burning. I use 300F/150C and start checking after 30 minutes. Remove when slices start to darken. Forget Alton Brown and place on paper towels; mop off the tops with more paper towels to remove pools of grease but don't let the towels sit on the bacon. When cool, bag in a gallon freezer bag and put in the fridge. Freeze what you won't use in a week.

If you don't eat pork or meat, leave it off. An egg and cheese sandwich is still pretty tasty.

I can't stress enough, do what is easiest for you! This is supposed to be a fast breakfast, not a morning chore.

How I make it

When I make breakfast just for myself, I can do this in 10-15 minutes tops, including wash-up. I don't toast the muffin, because that adds an extra 5 minutes and not that much flavor. If I did, I would toast it in a separate pan.

Equipment:

• Small, non-stick fry pan.
• Lid that fits the pan with no overlap (or steam will drip out) and won't touch food. For a small fry pan, a lid that fits a 2-quart saucepan should work.
• Egg ring. I use a cheap black metal one. No handle, nothing sticking up.
• Sharp paring knife.
• Cutting board or surface (for trimming).
• Small plastic spatula.
• Microwave (optional).
• Paper towels.

Ingredients:

• 1 large slice bacon or 2 small slices, pre-cooked, from the bag in the fridge.
• 1 English muffin. Use a real one, like Thomas Original.
• 1 egg, at least Extra Large. I use Jumbo.
• 1 slice mild to medium cheddar cheese.
• 1 stick butter, hard from the fridge. Unwrap one end. Rewrap what you don't use and put back in fridge.
• Salt and pepper.

Do It!

1. Get out a small plate, pan, egg ring, knife and cutting surface. Remove all ingredients from fridge and place on or near cutting board. Put all packages back in the fridge. Heat pan to medium low (4 on my oven dial).
2. Heat the bacon. For microwave, roll up in paper towel and nuke 20 seconds. Otherwise, reheat lightly on both sides in pan; roll up in paper towel. Let it sit to crisp up.
3. Grease up the bottom and inside of the egg ring with butter stick. Doesn't have to be perfect. Drop egg ring into pan and butter generously inside the ring with butter stick.
4. Crack egg and drop inside ring. Use a shell edge to break the yolk. Don't scramble, just break.
5. Add 2-3 tablespoons of water to pan outside the ring. Put lid on pan.
6. Use paring knife to slice the muffin in two over a waste can. Shake it a little and put it on plate.
7. Cut the corners off cheese with paring knife. Put cheese on muffin bottom.
8. When egg is cooked through (it should puff up and not be too wobbly), strike bottom of egg ring with spatula a couple of times until it lifts up. Use the spatula to hook the egg ring and set aside. Use spatula to lift the egg and slide it onto the cheese. Salt and pepper the egg to taste.
9. Break up the bacon to fit and place on top of egg. Add muffin top.
10. If you have a microwave, nuke the whole sandwich on plate for 10 seconds. Otherwise, let the sandwich rest a minute before serving.
11. Repeat steps 2-11 for each additional sandwich.
12. Wash pan, egg ring and knife in soap and water and let air dry. This takes about a minute. Makes the sandwich taste better.

—

Can't see the egg! When is it done?

Depending on the heat, the first egg takes around 3 minutes. Peek and re-cover infrequently; don't let pan go dry. The second egg goes faster; I turn the heat down a half a notch after the first.

The white must be fully cooked on top, but still tender at the bottom. This balancing act is what the steam is for. If the yolk isn't fully cooked, it's not the end of the world—in fact, I think it's tastier—but it can be messy to eat.

Variations:

• I've used plain old loaf bread cut into circles and grilled at the end, like a grilled cheese sandwich. My wife likes it that way.
• I've used bagels. Supermarket bagels need to be toasted or they're too mushy. Real bagels need to be toasted or they're too chewy.
• Ham does gunk up a fry pan. It's simpler to just nuke it on the muffin top for 15 seconds. If you're nuking to melt the cheese quickly, combine the steps.
• A trick I just thought of is to slice a real bagel into three pieces and discard the center. This should take care of the chewy problem and keep the great flavor. (Inspired by the French trick of pulling the soft center out of a baguette to make a thinner, crisper sandwich.)