Easy Poached Eggs

I strain out the loose white and have beautiful poached eggs.

Same issue as Bob- did not cook though and white was all runny.

Try poaching the eggs in milk. Then pour the poached eggs and milk over a bed of toast. Salt to taste. Poor man’s Eggs Benedict.

My favorite way to serve poached eggs is at breakfast atop a scoop of sausage stuffing left over from our Thanksgiving meal!

Method taken from a tv show works for me.
1. Boil a kettle full of water but don’t quite let it boil….I remove the heat when it begins to go quiet!
2. Fill a medium sized saucepan with the almost boiled water and place on minimum heat and add a slug of vinegar (I use white vinegar)
3. Place your whole eggs (still in shell) and roll them around the pan in the water for 15 seconds. This lines the eggs with a film of cooked white which helps the egg slip out cleanly.
4. Stir the water and drop the eggs into the center. I have done three at a time and found that the first will be perfect but the other two will be slightly ‘liver’ shaped as the rotate around the first one.
5. Cook on the low heat for 3 minutes or until moderately firm. The water should never boil and perhaps only ‘fizz’ at most.
6. Remove with slotted spoon and place on kitchen roll to dry before serving.

I enjoyed my first try at poached eggs today, though I wont use the strainer again… Maybe that works better with refrigerated eggs as I used some from the “to wash before going out to the stand” cache (yes it is safe). Thank you for the tutorial with pictures!

I always used milk when making poachd eggs..when bubbles form on the rim of the milk, I dropped the egg in & then ladled the milk over the egg..when done, put egg with a few spoon full of milk over the egg that is placed on a slice of toast. toast..

Make sure you prick holes in your egg yolks if you are going to microwave them. They can explode and cause you severe burns. Also, you can add a little white vinegar to your poaching water and it will help the whites come together better when you swirl the vortex. Boil the water, add vinegar, lower heat to simmer, swirl, pour in egg while the water is swirling and then cover for three minutes. Make toast, butter it, and then use a slotted spoon to remove the egg from the water before placing it on the toast. The egg yolk should be slightly solid on the edges and runny in the middle.

Someone tell me what is the difference in taste of an oven baked egg versus a pouched egg in water? The one in water takes a lot less time….3 minutes vs. 15 minutes.

Linde,

My 1st instinct was exactly what you said. I should know better

I’m glad I asked. I was about to cook them at 350! Thanks Stephen!!

I boil water in a pan and throw in two eggs. I cook them for about 3 minutes then take a slotted spoon and fish them out. I also have a plastic two egg poacher thing that I got at the dollar store. You put the eggs in them and microwave for about 90 seconds or so. They come out perfect. I sometimes have them with a side of cooked spinach (nuked with garlic and a little olive oil) w/salt and pepper and some slice tomatoes OR I put them between homemade bread with some dijon mustard and some turkey bacon. YUM!

read Shirley Corrihers book Cooking Essentials and she explains 12-15 years ago to strain the liquid white from the cracked egg before putting into the water or chicken broth or salsa or what ever is your cooking medium by using a small slotted spatula this is what I teach my kids at high school. ALSO no egg cooked in a cup or holder is truly poached it is coddled and the taste will be different!

My favorite method is to use silicon egg poaching cups. There are a wide variety (I bought mine from Crate and Barrel). Spray the inside of the cup with cooking spray, or apply a thin coating of oil or butter, and crack the egg into the cup. Bring about a half inch of water to a low boil. Put the cup in the pan, cover, reduce heat, and steam till done (7 minutes at altitude, probably 5 minutes at sea level). The egg usually slides right out of the cup.

As a kid, I wasn’t a fan of eggs (still not super enthusiastic). But I love a good poached egg and appreciate the luxuriousness of a running, warm yolk cascading over another lovely object (salad, bread, etc). As a kid, my mom got me to eat this cheap, nutritious food by poaching the egg, crumbling up toast and mixing ’em up together. Half a century (OMG!) later, its still my favorite breakfast. This method of preparation bound me to the ouef in a way no other could.

For the more adventurous gastronome (yes, the faithful Simply Recipes reader), try the classic French dish of an egg poached in red wine (usually a Burgundy) served on a large, garlic crouton…often with a gravy made from the poaching liquid. Oh my.

I tried the Mason jar ring and had several problems. First, I couldn’t get the poached egg out of the ring and broke the yolk. Second, the egg stick to the bottom of the pan. Third, the ring was really had to clean because of all the crevices.

Just saw a great poaching method on masterchef. Poke a small hole in the egg shell and put it in the boiling water for a few seconds. This makes the egg hold it’s shape when you crack it, and also makes it easier to remove the shell.

Then remove it from the water, shell it, and put it in the boiling water. After it’s ready, put it in cold water to stop it from continuing to cook.

Another way to avoid vinegar is to use a little juice from a lemon in the water. Hardly ever taste it & when I do, it is pleasant. Also I put 2 eggs per cup and put them in the water together which works just as well as one at a time, and easier too when you are making a few eggs. So those are my tricks!

Bring the water to the boil then turn right down to almost off. Give the water a small spin and drop in the egg. Dont set a timer, Dont use vinegar. Take out when the albumen is firm. EASY. Practice makes perfect.

Since I prefer non-runny eggs, I set the timer to 7 minutes and at the 5 minute mark, I cut an “x” in the egg yolk and let it finish from there. I still get a soft egg white, as well as a soft-medium boiled yolk (a firm amber with the outer layer just turned yellow). It’s a way to have the fun of egg-poaching and getting a soft-medium boiled egg without having to peel it!

My family has a bit of a ritual when it comes to poaching eggs. When the water is boiling you start the toaster. then, using a whisk you whirl the water in to a vortex and slip the egg into the middle of the whirlpool. The circular force of the water wraps the white around the egg and sets it like that so the white doesn’t spread out. Then, by the time the toast pops up, the eggs are done!

For those of you concerned with the taste of vinegar in the eggs, simply plunk them into a cold water bath after cooking. This washes away the vinegar and keeps the eggs at the perfect consistency until you are ready to use them. If you want to heat them up before use, place them in warm water for one minute.

My mom always just used a round cookie cutter, or biscuit cutter, they’re round, and tall enough to not let the egg whites run out of the top!

I’m not from the US, but where I am(Singapore) we don’t have poached eggs. From the photo given, it looks just like what we call ‘half-boiled eggs’. Is it the same thing?
For half-boild eggs we boil water, pop the egg in, shell and all, for about 5-10minutes, depending on how hard you want it to be. Then if you can’t crack the egg because its too hot, put it under running water. It won’t affect its heat. Same eggs, different method.

These eggs are definitely hard boiled, as in solid all the way through. An easy way to make hard boiled eggs is in an egg poacher, in which case you poach them for about 10 minutes. It’s easy because you don’t have to peel them. ~Elise

I like to put a poached egg on top of yellow rice with salsa and some shredded cheese on top. The yolk oozes into the rice; very yummy and very cheap. When I’m less destitute, I like to add spicy sausage to the rice. Friends always look askance the first time I feed this to them, but they always like it. I call this ranchos heuvos (ranch style eggs) , but I just sort of assigned that name to it.

Posted by Alex: “Problem: My family and I like eggs from hardly cooked to nearly hard. How does one remove the hardly cooked ones, and then the medium cooked ones, and hold them warm without further cooking while finishing the last two nearly hard ones.” First of all, YES! on your tip for swirling the water before adding eggs to poach. We’re taught this in culinary school as the way to keep whites compact and pretty.

To answer your question; when restaurants need to have different “doneness” ie. rare, medium, well-done, of steaks arriving at a table all at the same time they start cooking the steaks that need the longest cooking time first.

You can use this same principal here by dropping the nearly hard eggs into the water first, then followed 30 seconds later with medium done eggs, then following another 30 seconds with the hardly cooked eggs.

Since you started cooking the hard eggs first, they will cook longer than the eggs that are hardly cooked. If you time this right, all the eggs will finish cooking at exactly together AND will all be cooked to their correct doneness.

Try experimenting with times for how long each egg takes to reach perfection and write each cooking time down (or you might just search google for the answer) then you can set a timer for each egg addition to the pot! And I think that cracking each egg into separate cups will facilitate easy additions, no portioning out whites.

I time my poached eggs by the toaster. push the toaster plunger down, crack an egg into boiling slightly-vinegared water in a non-stick frypan, toast pops up, butter real fast, scoop egg from water with slotted spoon, put on toast. It produces an almost perfect poached egg everytime…whites set, yolk runny. you may have to play a bit with the toaster/egg drop to get your timing down pat.

Am amazed at the many interesting ways to attack an egg for poaching. I’ve been poaching eggs for my family for years with no complaints, but for me it’s still a crap shoot. About half the time and I have had to throw one ot two to the dogs.

My Method: Crack 6 eggs in a small bowl and set aside. Put 2 qts. water in a 3 qt. sauce pan and bring to a medium boil. Add 1/4 cup white vinegar and 1 teaspoon salt. With a slotted spoon, while the water is boiling, start the water swiriling around in a clockwise direction (I’ve not tried counter-clockwise) as fast as it will go without slopping out of the pan. While the water is spinning let it coast while pouring the eggs into the center of the spin (vortex). The rest is routine; I time by inspection.

The spinning water draws the egg whites in toward the yokes and the vinegar helps set the whites more compactly. I don’t know what the salt does. This method produces beautiful compact-looking poached eggs.

This works every time. Problem: My family and I like eggs from hardly cooked to nearly hard. How does one remove the hardly cooked ones, and then the medium cooked ones, and hold them warm without further cooking while finishing the last two nearly hard ones. My “solution” is to put the finished eggs in a hot water holding bath until I am done done, but this usually overcooks the first and second batches, or cools them off, depending on the temperature of the holding bath. I think the secret must be in getting the temperature of the water in the holding bath just right because I have seen this holding method used by chefs in cafeteria lines.

Help, please.

Alex Coyle 11/17/07

Great idea! After I fell in love with eggs benedict, I decided that I needed to learn how to poach eggs, now I need to give making Hollandaise a shot. So I googled for a little bit, and I found this great trick:

First, put some water on to boil. Take a piece of saran wrap and lay it over a coffee mug, pushing the plastic down into it a bit. Then, crack an egg into the saran wrap and tie/twist the ends together tightly. Drop the eggbag into the water, continue to boil ~3 minutes, then take your eggs out with a pair of tongs or a slotted spoon.

I was really skeptical at first, thinking the plastic would boil into pieces, but it didn’t and they turned out perfect.

If it’s microwave-safe plastic wrap, it should work fine. The water never gets above 212°F. ~Elise