Bodega Eggs: The Stupid-Easy Way to Make Eggs

There are those things we eat, make, read, and gush over that are just too good to keep to ourselves. Here, we resist the urge to use too many exclamation points and let you in on our latest crushes.

Today: When it comes to breakfast sandwiches, we're on Pete Wells's team: There is no better, quicker, easier way to eat eggs than Bodega Eggs.

I don’t steal recipes, but I do change their names.

Rachel’s Famous Lentils are the filling of Mark Bittman’s stuffed cabbage from How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. Sloppy Dans (named after my husband) are Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Jerk Sloppy Joes With Coconut Creamed Spinach. I’m pretty sure I got the recipe for Kitten Pot Pie from Food Network, but I haven’t been able to fully retrace my steps on that one.

So with that, I’ll be the first to tell you that my favorite breakfast recipe is from a blog post Deb Perelman wrote for Cup of Jo three years ago, but I will never call it A Lazy Egg-and-Cheese Sandwich: To me, the obvious name for this dish is Bodega Eggs. 

If you’re not from a part of the world where corner stores are called bodegas and thus don’t immediately understand everything about this dish, here’s the gist: When you’re too hungover to do anything remotely useful, you walk for about two minutes until you reach your closest corner store. You go to the counter, order an "egg and cheese," grab a Gatorade, and by the time you’ve carried yourself back to the front of the store, your sandwich is finished. It is no more than 3 dollars and it’s perfect and every bite is full of melty cheese and it’s the first time (and maybe last time) during the day that you’re happy to be awake.

Until Deb shared her “recipe” for these eggs, I figured you needed a full grill or a very particular type of bodega cat to make it—there just must be some trick that would keep bodegas cornering the egg sandwich market. I was wrong: It turns out you can make this entirely on your own following Deb’s hilariously low-effort recipe. Here's how it's done: Whisk an egg or two with salt and pepper and a splash of water, spread the mixture out in a pan like a crêpe, and throw in some cheese (Deb uses sliced cheese, but I grate my own just because). Wait a minute, fold the sides of the egg in to fit whatever bread you have on hand, wait another 30 seconds, and you’re done. Deb skips any extra vegetables or meat because this meal is “all about immediacy,” and I agree completely. And if the GIF makes your head hurt, here's the process again:

Now, there are better ways to treat eggs—I understand this. But I’d argue that there is no way to eat eggs this good, this quickly, and with this few ingredients. My husband and I eat this at least once a weekend in the comfort of our homes with our own cats—and usually without the hangover these days. Sometimes.

Photos by Bobbi Lin

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece was originally published in April 2015. We're republishing it today because a Saturday morning is, well, a perfect time to whip up some bodega eggs of your own.