Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Poached Eggs


Been eating many eggs. Busy making poached eggs. Spoilt so many of them before I finally found a consistent way of doing it. Youtubed a ton of videos to try to suss out a pattern or a secret. Googled and read every damn instruction and suggestion. Not going to use those egg poachers or cups. I'll just use plain old ladle and a pot of water on the stove.

The water can't be boiling otherwise the yolk would just spill out in the pot. Could the secret be in how I slip the raw yolks and whites into the water? Finally decided that I won't put vinegar into the boiling water, but on the raw eggs in a bid to control the coagulation of the whites. Although it doesn't really make sense. But whatever, they seem to feather less. It's also not quite accurate to say that only fresh eggs must be used. I've used two-week old eggs and it was fine. That was an experiment. Haven't tried with any older eggs. But in this kitchen, eggs rarely remain in the fridge for more than four days. I don't guarantee the taste of older eggs though. They're not stale. However, I like that crisp of fresh eggs, and the yolks are nicer in color and texture.

Poached a few more eggs over two weeks. There's been about a 90% success rate. That's some level of consistency achieved. And when the poached eggs are left out for an hour or two, the yolk remains runny. Oh good. Perhaps that justifies me turning into an orgre the next time an eatery serves me poached eggs with a hardened yolk. Hurhurhur.

2 comments:

D said...

creative of you to think of trying to put the vinegar on the egg itself. i've never succeeded (just a few attempts) in poaching an egg and have decided it's too much trouble for me to keep trying. i'm happy with soft boiled eggs. :)

imp said...

Trial and error. I probably used up two dozen eggs. I knew vinegar is essential. Yet vinegar in the pot didn't seem to work very well for the techniques I was using. So decided to soak them eggs in vinegar first before meeting hot water.