A Maple-Fried Egg Is the Best Way to Welcome Spring

Sugaring season in Vermont is a short but sweet window in the last licks of winter—or, if you’re a glass half full person, the earliest days of spring. The daily temperatures are key for the gathering of maple sap: The nights must be cold enough to freeze and the days warm enough for the sap to run freely.

I am lucky enough to be married to a born-and-raised Vermonter, where visits to our friend’s sugar shack at the Bunker Farm in Putney, Vermont during these precious sugaring weeks are a highlight. The work of sugaring, like all things on a farm, is hard work and requires a great deal of love for the sport, as they say. Sleep schedules are thrown to the wind, other tasks of less immediate importance are saved for another day, because once the sap is running, it’s boiling time. For the hours spent standing near the evaporator in a maple-scented steam cloud, it's hard not to talk food, and dream up the things you’ll eat with the fresh syrup. Or talk about the great meals you’ve concocted with the syrup (or just drink some warm syrup directly from the evaporator).

Enter the maple fried egg. After all the hard work and loss of sleep, what better way to celebrate sugaring season than with a deeply and maybe too-filling breakfast that makes great use of the fresh syrup and her sidekick, maple sugar. This sandwich is adapted from a recipe in Martin Picard’s completely genius and maple-centric book, Au Pied de Cochon: Sugar Shack, based upon the meals served at his “cabane à sucre” outside of Montreal. I have simplified the recipe in places, but the root of it remains the same: the syrup. If the idea of frying an egg in dark sweet liquid turns you off, I will suggest you set your prejudices aside and give it a try. Maple is no longer just for your latte in the fall. Track down Picard’s book, and get experimental with it. After all, winter may finally be over—boiling sap is one of the first signs that we made it through.

---

Do you make anything unexpected with maple syrup? Do tell below!