How far in advance of serving can you fry fried eggs?

Question

A recent question asks how to fry eggs on a large scale. That prompts me to ask, can fried eggs be fried in advance and either cooled for later reheating, or alternatively kept warm for a prolonged period? If the latter case is an option, what is the ideal temperature to keep them at?

Answer 1

Surprisingly, an egg is the most difficult thing to cook. McDonalds serves a lot of eggs in their breakfast menus and they haven't found a way yet to mass prefry / prcook these suckers. So I doubt this could be done.

I tried half cooking scrambled eggs before and then finishing them off later, and the result was crap at best.

I doubt you can do that with non-scrambled eggs, as the yolks and whites will change physical properties when heated / cooled / reheated

Answer 2

Fried eggs will keep for a few minutes at best, from my perspective.

If they are kept hot enough for any length of time to keep them palatable, then they will cook further.

If they cool off, they would need to be reheated, with attendant further cooking also done.

I have kept fried eggs cooked in my warning tray of the oven for a couple of minutes while something else finished, kids came downstairs, but no more.

Answer 3

You can keep poached eggs for quite a while as long as you stop the cooking after they get to the desired temp. Basically, you poach the eggs then slip them into a bowl of ice water. They can then be fridged for up to 48 hours. To serve, just rewarm in the poaching liquid.

For all other egg applications, your results are going to be so much better by cooking fresh and cooking eggs takes so little time that you would do much better to just cook to order.