Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Frying the proverbial egg on the sidewalk


This is why they're called the dog days. It's only supposed to be a chilly 98 degrees here in Amarillo, but it's going to be at least 104 in Canadian, 103 in Perryton, 103 in Childress and 102 in Pampa.

And it's always about this time of the year some enterprising person with too much time on their hands wonders if it's hot enough to fry an egg on a sidewalk. Nope, not yet. And not bacon either.

According to my investigation, a sidewalk needs to be between 144 and 158 degrees for an egg yolk to go from a liquid to a solid. So we got a ways to go yet. A light-colored sidewalk needs to be at least 158 degrees for that to happen. It doesn't have to be quite as hot on asphalt, although you may get grit and pebbles in your egg.

The problem, experts say, is a constant heat source is needed to fry the thing.

Now as far as making a grilled cheese sandwich in your car, you could probably do that right now.

1 comment:

yelvington said...

What the heck? It was just lovely in Amarillo when I was in town last week.

I'll bet that if you put a well blackened cast-iron skillet out in the full sun for a couple of hours, you'll have all the constant heat source you need. :-)