I was trying to think of something to blog about today and thought I would do the “Is it hot enough for an egg to fry on the sidewalk?” thing.  Definitely it felt hot enough in the DC area as it was supposed to be over 100 degrees.  Should have been a no brainer!

First, I was going to just crack an egg on the sidewalk but then I knew I would not want to clean up the mess.   Also one has to think about how one looks trying to fry an egg on a sidewalk.  I knew the trash had not been picked up yet and was wondering what the guys on the truck would think if they happened to come by and whether they would call the men in the white hats on me.  I decided to use an iron skillet and if the men in the truck came by maybe they could just be part of the photo.  Clever, right?

I grabbed an egg, a little oil, some salt and pepper shakers for photo aesthetics and headed outside.  I decided to place the pan on the street as it was darker and appeared to be hotter than the sidewalk.  My guess was that the preheat process needed about half an hour.  I retreated back inside the house but kept an eye on my project.  Upon return I was surprised at how hot the pan had gotten so I went ahead and cracked the egg and watched for a while.  I stayed  outside watching for about 15 minutes and saw that the egg was beginning to cook.  Good for the egg but the heat from the sun was too much for me and I was soaked with sweat. My interest in finding out the fry ability of an egg on a sidewalk had burned to a crisp and at that point it no longer mattered.  End of experiment!

Bottom line.  An egg may or may not be able to fry on a sidewalk in the Washington, DC area on a day like today.  I was too hot to care and I had a mess to clean up.  Plus, I wasted a good egg.