The viral TikTok egg and toast hack actually works pretty well

Don’t trust anything on the internet — until Mashable tries it first. Welcome to the Hype Test, where we review viral trends and tell you what’s really worth millions of likes.

I’ve practically become a short-order egg cook during the pandemic.

I eat two meals most days while working from home. There’s dinner and a meal around 11 a.m., which is typically either a salad or, far more frequently, something with an egg. Some days that’s a couple of crispy fried eggs. Other days, it’s reheated leftovers topped with an over-easy egg, the runny yolk functioning as a sauce. I’ll mix in a scramble every now and again.

That’s to say I enjoy eating eggs and I’m quite practiced at cooking them. So this TikTok hack interested me. Basically, you airfry a piece of bread topped with an egg and, in some cases, other toppings. It promised to make a quick, tasty egg sandwich without much work.

I decided to give it a whirl. I tried out a viral version that had bacon on top as well as a plain egg on toast.

Here’s the main recipe I was working from, via the TikTok account emillyrosax3, although lots of folks have done a version of the egg toast.

All the TikTok showed was airfrying toast with an egg, a slice of bacon, salt, and pepper. Via the comments, I learned it was airfryed at 400 degrees for seven minutes.

Here’s what the egg hack looked like on TikTok.
Credit: TikTok / @emillyrosax3

In my egg toast adventure, I sprayed the grate in my air fryer with Pam, then nestled two slices of plain white bread in the basket. Using a trick I saw in other TikToks, I indented the center of my bread so the yolks would have a small, cupped resting spot. You definitely don’t want the egg to slide off mid cook.

Egg crater.
Credit: mashable / tim marcin

Then, simply enough, I cracked two eggs in my toast, seasoned with salt and pepper, then layered a slice of bacon on top of one of the slices of bread.

Two side notes. One: Both of my eggs were double yolkers. Cool. And two: I layered my slice of bacon more neatly than the TikTok showed, portioning it up for total toast coverage. I recommend this method.

You’ve gotta be yolking me with these eggs.
Credit: Mashable / tim marcin

Neat and orderly bacon is key.
Credit: Mashable / tim marcin

If I’m being honest, I did not have high hopes for this recipe. Part of being a good cook is timing. Different foods take different amounts of time and temperatures to cook properly. Bacon, typically speaking, is going to cook slower than toast or eggs. I expected to have burnt toast, undercooked bacon, and rock-hard eggs. I was wrong, for the most part.

I was pleasantly surprised with my results after blasting the airfryer for seven minutes at 400 degrees.

Notice a bit of egg white ran off the side of one piece of toast.
Credit: mashable / tim marcin

The bread wasn’t burnt, just very, very toasted. The bacon was, for the most part, pretty crispy. It had also rendered a bit of tasty fat on the egg and bread. The eggs cooked to all hell but they looked appetizing enough. Here’s what it looked like it plated up with hot sauce and then cut so you could see a cross section.

If you don’t eat Valentina hot sauce, you should.
Credit: Mashable / tim marcin

Notice the yolk is overcooked and darker in spots.
Credit: mashable / tim marcin

The toast was crunchy. The bacon was crispy and cooked through, though if you had super thick cut bacon that might not be the case. The egg was, in spots, overcooked. The yolk in the non-bacon toast had hardened more than you’d like, turning a shade of orange rather than a pleasant yellow. But the crispy bits of egg white on top of the toast were actually pretty good and reminiscent of egg fried on high heat.

All in all, I’d describe the recipe as pretty good. In a pinch, it’s a decent, fast breakfast. It’s like an egg-in-a-hole without the runny egg, but with almost no effort. If you’re pressed for time, working from home, it’s not a bad option at all.