Thanks to the informative, if quirky book, All About Eggs I discovered a method
for poaching eggs that I haven't tried before.
It is credited to Julia Child.
Fill a large saucepan up to 2 inches high and bring the
water to the boil.
Prick the large end of each egg with a pin. Going right through the shell and not the egg
(no egg should come out).
Lower the egg into the boiling water on a slotted spoon
and leave it there for exactly 10 seconds if your egg was at room temperature,
15 if it came out of the fridge.
Remove the egg.
Then reduce the heat so that the water is gently simmering – just the
tiniest bubbles.
Crack your egg into the water – as close to the water
as possible. I put the egg into a
ramekin first and then gently slide it into the water. (I thought that the
parboiling might have made the egg too hot to handle when cracking it, but it
didn't)
For a runny yolk, poach for 4 minutes. For a just starting to set yolk, try 5
minutes – timing is very sensitive to how hot the water is.
The result of the pinprick and the parboiling is that
the white sets a bit before the egg is cracked in to the water so it is less
likely to go all over the place.
They say that fresher eggs poach better. I tested this by poaching one older and one
newer egg – as you can see, the fresher egg kept its shape much better. I
suspect this had more influence than the pin pricking.
I served this with some store bought Hollandaise sauce,
some smoked salmon and dill.
I'm going to try this! Goodness knows our eggs are fresh! The ones I gathered yesterday were still warm!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, I am so totally going to try this!
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I need to try this.
ReplyDelete