Frying an egg on the sidewalk? Better to skip that one

From July 27, 2008:

I have heard it said: “It is hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk.” My question is: How hot does it actually have to be to cook an egg on the sidewalk, and is it better to use a small pan or a piece of aluminum foil?

A few years ago, one of my masters came skulking around my cubicle — those were in the days when I wore pants and shirts and shoes and actually went into work at the Dark Tower every day — and suggested that I try to do that frying-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk thing.

Fortunately for me, I had a stapler and some sheets of paper at hand, and I showed him how the stapler worked and gave him the paper and he went off happy and lost interest in the egg venture. For a long time after, I would walk by his cubicle and there he would sit with the stapler and a stack of paper.

Anyway, I’m thinking that if it is hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, it is too hot to be outside trying to fry an egg.

Here’s the deal: You need a surface temperature of around 158 degrees or so to warp the proteins in a raw egg enough to turn them into a cooked egg.

It has something to do with denaturing proteins, whatever that means.

And even if you could fry an egg on the sidewalk, who would want to eat it? Euww.

Now, I’m not saying that if you sprayed some of that Pam stuff on some aluminum foil, with the edges curled up, and put it out on the sidewalk in the direct sunlight, and cracked an egg on it that the egg wouldn’t cook.

But I am thinking it might take awhile.

I don’t know for sure, but you might be better off trying to fry an egg on the hood of your car, although you might want some extra insulation under the aluminum foil.

Otherwise, your spouse, parents, significant other, friend or neighbor might be a bit annoyed about the damage, if any, to the paint job caused by your short-order cooking.