Fried Eggs: Help Yourself!

Can You Fry an Egg on the Sidewalk If It’s Very Warm Outside?

photo credit Jen

Sort of. But you’d need a little help from something besides the sun. To cook an egg, you need pretty high heat. The white of an egg turns solid between 62 and 65°C. The yolk needs a little higher temperature: between 65 and 70°C.

On a very hot day, the outside temperature might reach 43°C. But even then, a sidewalk wouldn’t get hot enough to cook an egg. Concrete - the material usually used to make sidewalks - gets hot in the sun. But it doesn’t get that hot. 

Still, there are some tricks you can use to cook an egg on a sidewalk. Materials such as metal and glass conduct heat. That means heat moves through them—and they get hotter. You could hold a piece of glass or metal over your egg. Try a magnifying glass or a mirror. If you hold the glass at the right angle, you can catch some of the sun’s heat and conduct it over your egg.

The question is - considering how dirty a sidewalk can be, would you eat it?

Did You Know?

Oatman, Arizona, hosts a sidewalk egg-frying contest every Fourth of July. The only rule is that you can’t use any heat other than that of the sun to fry your egg. People fry plenty of eggs that day. But they get help from mirrors, magnifying glasses, and even solar-powered (sun-powered) ovens.

[source: Does It Really Take Seven Years to Digest Swallowed Gum?: And Other Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask (Is That a Fact?)]