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Earlier this week, my wife told me that, to celebrate a successful business meeting she was going to have with a client, she wanted to have pork chops and fried eggs for lunch. Then she said, “And save the big egg for me. Don’t use it for any other recipes.” I raised an eyebrow, “The big egg?” She smiled and said, “You’ll know it when you see it.”
My father-in-law keeps chickens, you see, so we get all of our eggs from him. They are very “free range” and can roam around a penned area of a junkyard. Sometimes when I go with him to collect the eggs, he has to crawl under scrap metal to search for them, making it crystal clear how the Easter Egg Hunt tradition originated. The eggs from his chickens tend to be tastier, but also considerably more filthy (on the outside of the shell, only, of course), than store bought eggs. Getting food from outside the regulated market means that sometimes you find freak occurrences.
How Spaniards Fry Eggs
There are quite a few expat blog posts and YouTube videos about the unique way eggs are fried in Spain. A frying pan is filled with a considerable amount of oil. The egg is cracked into the oil, and then a spatula or spoon is used to splash hot oil over the top of the egg until a white film forms over the egg yolk. Then the egg is removed and served on the plate, maintaining an oozing liquid yolk – great for bread mopping! – when the yolk sack is broken. The egg is never turned.
Like most odd quirks you find living in a foreign land, it’s not necessarily better or worse…just different.
Other Spain Egg Trivia
In Spanish, the term huevo, for egg, is also used as slang for testicles. Clearly the term was not coined by anyone with any knowledge of reproductive biology. Here are a few interesting phrases using the slang:
| Phrase | Literal | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| tener huevos | to have balls | to have balls |
| estoy hasta los huevos | I’m up to my balls | I’m fed up |
| no me toques los huevos | don’t touch my balls | don’t fuck with me |
| tocarse los huevos | to touch one’s balls | to sit around doing nothing |
| costarse un huevo | to cost a ball | to cost a lot |
| me gusta un huevo | I like it a ball | I like it a lot |
One time I was at the supermarket checkout and the cashier asked me how much of the stuff on the conveyor belt was mine, and I replied, not thinking about the double meaning, “Hasta los huevos“. We both laughed.
I hope you enjoy the video.
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