Poachers Beware!

Poached Eggs - The Good and the Ugly

I don't know about you, but poached eggs are actually one of my favorite ways to eat eggs. At the same time, poaching them can be a bit of a challenge and, if done improperly, can sometimes turn out looking more like egg drop soup than a beautiful poached egg. I forgot to take a photo of the eggs as they were ready to serve (hey, I was busy cooking) so I've started this post with a photo of the eggs right after they were cooked (see the gallery at the bottom for how I served them this time with a wonderful hollandaise sauce - the sauce will be a different post). You'll notice the difference in the top right and the bottom left eggs, let's talk about that and what Julia taught me.

The freshness of the egg is important. The older the egg, the more the whites will tend to feather out when placed in the water. The top two eggs came out of a newer carton of eggs while the bottom two were from an earlier carton. Hmmmm, next experiment will be to stop by one of our local farms and try this with some freshly laid eggs. I'll let you know how that works! In any case, if you've ever seen an episode of one of Julia Child's cooking shows you know that one of the endearing aspects of the shows was that she'd simply doctor the finished product up for serving when it didn't turn out perfectly. It made her seem like a "normal" person and people learned that things don't always come out exactly as expected. The practical reason for this happening on her show was that they had a very limited budget and the episodes were recorded live without retakes -- just like I'm doing! So, what the photo doesn't show is that the little whispy edges easily brushed off with a fork before serving and all of the eggs were beautiful little balls of poached egg when served!

I've tried several techniques for poaching eggs over the years and the "cheating" ways are the easiest -- use the little metal poaching cups or an egg cooker. Those are by far the simplest and quickest ways but my current adventure is about learning some skills so I'm going to talk about poaching by plopping an egg into hot water. First, here are some of my past experiences and lessons learned, pretty much in the order I've tried:

1. Plopping an egg into boiling water. That pretty much leads to egg drop soup. A rolling boil just stirs up the eggs and it doesn't much resemble a poached egg. Lesson learned - water needs to be as hot as possible without bubbling.

2. Just as in Olympic diving competition, the splash needs to be as small as possible. "Pour" the egg out of the shell into the water from as close to the water as possible.

3. The whirlpool effect. It was better but not all that effective. The idea is that you take a spoon to twirl the hot water around, like you did as a kid, to make a whirlpool in the pan. Then when you put the egg in the water it pulls the egg together in a ball at the center. It helped but you could only do one egg at a time.

4. Apple cider vinegar. This one works and even Julia teaches it. The vinegar in the water causes the egg white to pull together and helps prevent the whispies.

5. Pre-boiling. This is the most awesome trick that Julia taught me. Before poaching the eggs, boil them for exactly 10 seconds in water that's a rolling boil. You can use a pin to poke a small hole in the end of the egg where the air bubble is inside, but I risked it and had no problem. Those 10 seconds in the boiling water slightly cooks the outer layer of egg white in the egg and essentially encapsulates the rest of the egg. Now when you pour the egg into the poaching water, with the vinegar, it holds everything together in the beautiful poached egg shape. The top right egg in the photo was my best example of doing everything right!

6. The whole process: a. Preboil the egg for 10 seconds. b. Add apple cider vinegar to the almost boiling poaching water (use different water than used for the preboiling). c. "Pour" the preboiled egg into the water. d. Poach for 4 minutes. e. Remove and place in cold water to stop the cooking process. f. Reheat in hot water for 1 minute before serving. g. Eat!

I tend to struggle a bit with completing all the elements of a meal at the same time. Poaching eggs, toasting bread, making the sauce, etc. is a lot for a learner to do. The other great trick Julia has taught me about poached eggs is that I can do them in advance and have them ready when needed. Cooking time for the eggs is 4 minutes. As soon as they are poached for 4 minutes, remove them from the hot water with a slotted spoon and put them in a bowl of hot water (that's when the photo was taken). They can be kept for at least a day in the fridge, some people say longer, and then when you need them just put them back into hot water for 1 minute to reheat (but not cook any further). That's what I did and it worked beautifully!!

There are lots of things to do with poached eggs, my favorite is Eggs Benedict (shhhh, it isn't in Julia's book). For this particular breakfast I also made my first successful hollandaise sauce and served it over the poached eggs on toasted bread. It was actually sort of a spur of the moment breakfast adventure to try out on Kathryn and it was scrumptious. The sauce was an adventure by itself and will be a subsequent post. For a teaser you can take a peek at the finished product below.

That's it for now. Bon Appetit!