This Poll is Crack-a-lackin'

A lifetime of watching food TV has tried to convince me that the way cool folks open eggs is to crack the shell on a flat surface and then use a single hand to bust it open the rest of the way, depositing a shell-free and unbroken egg to the intended receptacle. A life time of experience and practice has convinced me that these are both stupid.

Edge of the bowl, two handed-split. No shell, no broken yolks. Every time. I never used to get shells in my eggs or break the yolk until I started trying to be cool. So now I don't try to be cool any more, and it's a lot less hassle.

Flat surface, two-handed is the way to go.  I always get more little shreds of shell in with the egg when I crack on the edge of a bowl, but I'd be lying if I said I never use that method.  I crack with enthusiasm, so the flat-surface method always leaves a little egg white behind; when I don't want to have to clean up the counter I go bowl-edge and run the risk of trace elements of eggshell in my food.

I have mastered the one-handed crack, but actually prefer to use two hands, because it's a bit neater.  What I aspire to as an egg-cracker is what I saw during my few food-enthusiast courses at the Culinary Institute of America.  One of the student assistants during the pastry course I took was separating a gazillion eggs for us for something, and I noticed that her stack of empty shells were completely, 100% uniform.  Every single egg, of many dozens, was cracked exactly identically.  Evenly right down the middle, perfectly clean breaks, not a shard of eggshell loose anywhere.  I want to be able to do that.  (She was using two hands, I'll add.)  I marveled to her that she was some kind of egg-cracking virtuoso, and she was like, "I certainly should be!  I'm paying an awful lot to be learning how to break eggs."

Always edge of the bowl. When I'm fixing a bunch of eggs, I'll pre-crack them all and put them in little prep bowls ahead of time, so I don't need to worry about it when I'm actually cooking.

If I'm starting with an empty bowl, I use the bottom of the bowl to crack my first egg because it makes me feel cooler.

EDIT: With the bowl turned right-side-up, in case that wasn't clear. So you crack the egg and open it and it's already in the bowl!

Depends why I am cracking open the shell.

For non-hard boiled eggs, I'm always edge/two hands, for cooked hard-boil eggs i'll do the sorta roll/press on a cutting board method (try to temper the egg w/cold water first).

In either case I try to save the shells for composting into a empty can (whose surface I often use as the edge). I have eggs for breakfast 4-6 days a week, so I go through a shitload of them.

I was not aware there was any other way besides “one-handed crack at the edge of bowl you’re going to mix them in”

It's not so much the cracking surface being clean (although that's important) so much as the potentiality of a bacteria-laden shell getting into the egg and contaminating it, which can be hazardous even if cooked completely. I'm very careful about my cracking especially when I'm making the eggs for myself - I don't like them 100% cooked. Ditto when I'm making Caesar dressing or aioli, because those eggs definitely don't get cooked.

throw against wall, lick residue off of wall, regurgitate into bowl, easy as pie

I hoped this thread would be about cracklins, somehow.

At a fine establishment like Captain D's they will serve you a cup of cracklins for free. Sometimes you'll get one with a tiny piece of fish in it. On at least one occasion in high school I was was party to a group of guys killing time by ordering cracklins and water and playing cards in the Captain D's dining room.