Filling, protein-packed, and delicious, eggs are one of the best things to eat for breakfast, and frying them is one of the most popular ways of cooking them. However, the thing about fried eggs is that they require just a little fat to fry correctly. It's the fat in the pan that keeps the egg from sticking to the surface as it heats.

But the type of fat you use to fry your egg does more than just protect the surface of the egg while it cooks. It can also impact everything from taste to appearance to possible health benefits. While everyone has their own preferred method for frying eggs, in the great fried egg debate, the ultimate question comes down to: should you be frying your eggs in butter or oil? I cooked two fried eggs, one using oil and the other with butter, to see how different the outcome would be.

No matter what way I'm frying eggs, I always have to cook them from room temperature, as I find myself always overcooking the yolk to try to get the whites to set when the eggs are cold.

With one of my eggs at the ready, I start by heating up my pan with two teaspoons of olive oil for one minute on a low to medium heat.

As olive oil is healthy-ish, you don't feel guilty adding it to the pan. Olive oil is what I usually use to fry an egg when I am using some type of fat.

Low heat will gently and evenly cook eggs to perfection. If the pan is too hot, then the bottom cooks quickly while the top remains runny and raw.

I crack the egg into a small ramekin before adding it to the pan. This is just to avoid the yolk breaking and to minimise the risk of eggshells falling into the egg.

I wait until the whites are slightly set before covering the pan with a lid and leaving it cooking for two minutes before plating up. I don't like to flip the egg as I prefer the yolk to be runny.

The results? I found the biggest benefit of frying an egg in oil is the way the egg white gets crispy as the edges take on a crunchy, lacy, deep golden-brown texture - perhaps a little too crispy for my liking.

Olive oil is a pretty neutral oil, so it didn't really add to the flavour of the egg.

Moving on to the far less healthy way of frying an egg, butter comes highly recommended. I've previously spoken to three chefs who all swear by butter for a tastier fried egg, and they were right.

To fry the egg with butter, I heated up the pan on a low to medium heat with some butter. The pan can't be too hot, or you'll burn the butter.

Once the butter turnt almost foamy, I added in the egg. The whites will quickly start to set, and when they do, tilt the pan just far enough so that the butter puddles at the edge. I then put the lid on the pan and let the egg cook for two minutes.

By this time, the butter will have browned and started to give off that toasty, nutty smell

The results? The best thing about frying eggs in butter is, hands down, the taste. Because butter is higher in fat than oil, your eggs will naturally take on that rich butter flavour as they crisp in the pan.

There aren't many health benefits to frying eggs in butter, but you're not adding butter to the pan for the health benefits; you're adding it for the extra flavour.

I also preferred how this egg looked after. The eggs had slightly browned, and they were not overly crispy.

On a regular basis, I would use olive oil; however, I can't deny that the butter made the egg taste better. As an occasional weekend treat, I would definitely opt for the butter method.