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When I make a sunny side egg, I notice that the yolk can be sunny side up and ready to eat, yet sometimes there is what seems to be a "ring" of egg white around the perimeter of the yolk and also a small coating of egg yolk surrounding the egg.

Is it okay to eat that or do I have to make sure that the egg white liquid turns solid first? One of the issues with that is that it makes the yolk cook longer and gets harder. I just want to make sure what is safe to eat.

Anastasia Zendaya
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Arn
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    Not an answer, but you can baste the eggs to prevent this. Carefully splash some oil from the pan onto the top of the eggs, cooking the hard to reach bits of the white. – Dave Jul 12 '21 at 18:08
  • Btw., the amount of egg white clinging to the yolk is an indicator of freshness. The more the fresher. – Stephie Jul 12 '21 at 18:09

2 Answers2

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You can eat eggs raw, so long as you're not pregnant or in an at-risk health group.

Fry them however you like them.

UK chickens are vaccinated against salmonella. Elsewhere, less so. Apparently the US doesn't do it at all, hence their tougher handling regulations.
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/01/poultry-vaccinations-credited-for-uks-big-drop-in-salmonella/
sorry, wrong link - fixed

The UK's National Health Service goes so far as to say

There have been improved food safety controls in recent years. So infants, children, pregnant women and elderly people can now safely eat raw or lightly cooked hen eggs, or foods containing them. Make sure that the eggs you buy have a British Lion stamp mark.

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/eggs-nutrition/

There was a furore in the late 80's when a British politician, Edwina Currie, falsely claimed salmonella was a high risk in eggs. After that all died down [which took quite a while;) safety was increased still further.
Historical précis from the BBC -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/3/newsid_2519000/2519451.stm Old, non-https link. Should be safe enough from Auntie Beeb

Tetsujin
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"Is it ok to eat" is a personal question that can't be objectively answered.

What we can say is that eating soft whites or yolks is not considered safe by the FDA or the CDC:

Cook eggs until both the yolk and the white are firm. Scrambled eggs should not be runny.

FDA - What You Need to Know About Egg Safety

Cook eggs until both the yolk and white are firm. Egg dishes should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160°F (71°C) or hotter.

CDC - Salmonella and Eggs

In 2008, the CDC estimated that about 574,000 Americans per year acquire some sort of foodborne illness as a result of consuming eggs. Of this number, about 4,000 are hospitalized and 7 die. As a point of comparison, consuming meat leads to about 2 million illnesses, 13,000 hospitalizations and 420 deaths.

CDC - Attribution of Foodborne Illness in the United States

Juhasz
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    Nobody follows this advice. Cooking eggs until the yolk is hard ruins the experience for most people, millions of people eat runny yolked eggs in the states every day and it's extremely rare for someone to get sick off of them. – GdD Jul 12 '21 at 17:54
  • @GdD, I've added more data to help clarify the incidence of egg-related foodborne illness. For what it's worth, I eat extremely runny eggs and raw eggs fairly regularly. I am not attempting to answer the question, "should I eat runny eggs," but instead "are runny eggs safe?" - "safe" used in this meaning: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/food-safety/info. – Juhasz Jul 12 '21 at 20:53
  • @GdD this doesn't matter. On our site, we assume that whenever somebody asks about food safety, they are asking about official guidelines. We can either answer citing those, or close the question. What we cannot do is turn it into a discussion of people's personal opinion of what is safe. – rumtscho Jul 13 '21 at 05:33