To fry means to cook food in hot oil or fat, usually in a pan on the stovetop. When you fry an egg, you crack it into a skillet with butter or oil and cook it until the white turns solid and the edges get a little crispy. French fries get their name because they're potatoes cut into strips and fried until golden and crunchy.

Frying works by surrounding food with very hot oil, which cooks it quickly and creates delicious crispy textures and rich flavors. Different foods need different amounts of oil: you might use just a thin layer to pan-fry chicken, or fill a pot with oil to deep-fry doughnuts. The oil needs to be hot enough that the food sizzles when it touches the pan, but not so hot that it burns.

The word also appears in the phrase small fry, which refers to people or things considered unimportant. An elementary school science fair might seem like small fry compared to a professional research conference. And when something electronic breaks from heat or electricity, people say it's fried, like when a power surge fries a computer.

As a noun, a fry is a young fish, especially one that has just hatched.