If you have a little vinegar, and a small pot, you can have the most glorious poached eggs. Do you need silky golden yolk slipping away from a firm white? Don’t get me started!
Poaching away. Happily.
Adorned with a stripe of salt and black pepper.
Digging in!!!
Lately, I have been thinking about lowering my fat intake by just a little bit. Having fried eggs all the time is no path to glory. So I thought I might try poaching eggs instead. Many many ugly eggs later, victims of my experiments, I realized I needed perhaps to actually learn how people do it. I got a serious bee in my bonnet after fixating on …Lisa’s… eat, drink and be a fat bastard photostream on Flickr, where she displays her first proper set of poached eggs. I was totally inspired! After a few more tries, I feel like I have it down to a science!*
Poached Eggs
- 2 eggs; (about $.16)
- water in a pot, enough to cover the eggs by 1/2″ or so – about 2 cups;
- 1 tablespoon of vinegar (the very cheapest distilled or apple cider is fine – mere pennies, if at all).
Bring the water to a boil. Shut off the heat. Wait until the bubbles stop. Add the vinegar. Crack each egg carefully and slip them in. Wait about 5 minutes, if you like them a teensy bit runny (as I do). Fish them out of the pot with a flat spatula. If you have some roasted garlic or garlic butter lying about, drop a teaspoon or two on the eggs. I like my poached eggs with some pita bread (about $.10 per pita) – costs less if you use regular bread (shown above with a toasted white roll). Lot of goodness for less than fifty cents. Enjoy!!!
*With practice, it’s totally multi-tasking friendly. For example, the other day, I started the water, made a short phone call, checked email, plopped in the eggs. I was done with the eggs at the end of the call!
8 Comments
May 3, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Great blog – all you need to know about the Perfect Egg here… http://www.flickr.com/groups/theperfectegg/discuss/72157604460764434/
enjoy
billld
May 3, 2008 at 5:07 pm
So glad you like it!
The discussion (from the URL) is great
!
-Mei
May 7, 2008 at 10:27 am
I cannot imagine that eggs can be so beautiful.
So simple yet so delicious looking!
May 7, 2008 at 10:54 am
Awwwww, thanks for saying that! I think they are pretty too…!
-Mei
May 15, 2008 at 6:51 am
While I’ll pick old eggs for hard boiling, (because they peel better), newer eggs are better for poached. However, since I buy mine in bulk (they last for weeks in the fridge), I use another trick, I use a one minute soft boiled egg to poach with. Soft boiling an egg for one minute still leaves the egg essentially raw, but it starts to fix the colloid enough that the egg sticks together better in the poaching liquid.
May 15, 2008 at 8:17 am
That is very interesting! Are they easy to peel after soft boiling?
May 17, 2008 at 5:26 pm
After a 1 minute soft boil, you just crack them open like normal and poach. They’re just like raw eggs still at that point, only the white is a little thicker and stays together.
The one minute boil is to make your eggs, which are not always perfectly fresh, act more like they were laid that morning.
May 17, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Brilliant, brilliant. I’ll have to try it!