On the afternoon of 26/5, with outdoor temperatures exceeding 40 degrees C, Thanh Ha, 34, from Hanoi, placed a cast-iron pan outside. After about two hours, noticing the pan surface was hot, she cracked two eggs into it and waited another hour. "I was afraid there wasn't enough sun in the yard, so I moved it to the rooftop," Ha recounted.
The result was that the egg whites only dried at the edges, with the rest remaining gooey and impossible to flip. The next day, she tried a different method, placing the pan directly on a cement surface. After two hours, the eggs were thick and emitted a fishy odor. "I wasted several eggs," Ha stated.
Nguyet's result after more than one hour of frying eggs outdoors. Video provided by the subject.
Nguyen Thi Nguyet from Si Ma Cai commune, Lao Cai, also attempted to follow the "frying eggs with sunlight" videos that are widely circulating on social media.
At exactly 12:30 on 27/5, Nguyet placed a pan on a large steel sheet under the sun, where temperatures exceeded 40 degrees C. After over one hour exposed to the intense sun, the egg yolk and white remained separate, showing no signs of solidifying. She recorded a video and posted it online to warn her friends. "The videos online are just scams," Nguyet commented.
In recent days, as the North and Central regions experienced a peak heatwave, numerous videos surfaced on social media showing eggs being fried outdoors. In these videos, the food appears golden and cooked within minutes of being cracked into a pan, as if cooked on a stove. These contents tap into public curiosity, attracting millions of views and creating a trend that many people are imitating.
Le Van Thanh (name changed), 23, from Hanoi, admitted that his video, which garnered over one million views, was staged. After attempting to expose the pan outdoors for over one hour without success, Thanh brought it inside to a gas stove to cook the eggs, then took them back outside to film the flipping, making viewers believe it was real. "I just wanted to make a fun video to reflect the current intense heat, I didn't think so many people would follow it," Thanh explained.
Thanh's video, which attracted over one million views, shows eggs being fried outdoors. Video provided by the subject.
Doctor of Physics Nguyen Thi Nhuan from the Discovery Academy, Hanoi, explained that when air temperature reaches 40 degrees C, sun-exposed road surfaces and concrete can reach 60-65 degrees C. This temperature can denature and coagulate the protein in egg whites. While a thin, dark metal pan, left under intense sun for an extended period, might gradually thicken very thin eggs, this is unlikely. Outdoor heat transfer is passive, slow, and unstable.
"Food changing consistency from liquid to solid under low heat can easily create the false impression that it is cooked," Nhuan stated.
Chef Pham Van Long, founder of the Duaxcar Kitchen Chef Training Center in Hanoi, noted that the sun's heat for one or two hours only makes eggs stick to the pan. Furthermore, outdoor environments like streets and rooftops contain significant amounts of dust, bacteria, and vehicle emissions. Exposing a protein-rich food like eggs to 40-50 degrees C for several hours essentially incubates pathogens. "People should not consume these experimental eggs to avoid the risk of food poisoning," Long advised.
Pham Nga
