Domestic Conversation

[ann_leckie]

Me, sitting on the couch folding laundry. Mr. Leckie, bringing me another basket up from the laundry room.

Me: You know what I did yesterday? I poached eggs. Like, actually poached them without using any of those floating cup things, or a tray.

Mr Leckie (who is not much into cooking): What? How do you poach eggs?

Me: So, you boil water and then you just crack the egg and dump it in the water and if you’re, like, magic, it comes out as a nice round thing with a dippy yolk in the middle.

Mr. Leckie: (with a “don’t give me that crap, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday” look) That’s impossible.

Me: But I did it! And in theory, I could do it again. Except we’re almost out of eggs.

Mr Leckie: I’ll be right back.

****
Bonus “I should have thought of that while he was still here” line,: “It’s not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they’re not much bigger than poached eggs.”

Mirrored from Ann Leckie.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

There's an Italian restaurant near here that cracks eggs into a bowl, covers them in grated parmesan and then drops the result into a deep fat fryer for [not very long]. The result is deliciously crisp cheese coated poached eggs that they serve with fresh asparagus.

Mmmm.

Now I'm hungry.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

mmmmmmmmm now I am too!

[jazzfish]

if you're, like, magic

Near as I can tell, this is the key. I spent a couple of weeks getting really good at making a terrible eggy mess in the pot before I discovered those little floaty cup things.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

(The actual key is the freshness of the egg; the nearer in time it is to the chicken, the better it'll poach. The cohesiveness of the white disintegrates with age.)

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Ah, the eggs I used were very, very fresh, and that might have been the key! I will experiment further!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. That day's eggs are best, but they're good through a week or so. After that, not so much: as a rule of thumb, if you think they're old enough to peel easily if you hard-boiled them, they're too old to poach.

I played with any number of tricks people recommend for good poached eggs - a spoonful of vinegar in the water, or swirling it into a little whirlpool before you drop the egg into the vortex, or simmering for one minute then turning the heat off and leaving the egg in the water for ten - but now I don't bother with any of that. So long as I know the egg is fresh, three minutes in a bare simmer and it's right every time. If I don't know it's fresh, I don't poach it.

(Talking of which, it's off to the farmers' market for me...)

[jazzfish]

...huh! That's good to know. Eggs are mostly a big mystery to me: I apply heat in various ways, and various kinds of deliciousness result.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

This also mostly describes my own experience of eggs!

[jazzfish]

See also: baking.

Mmmm. This post and comments are making me wish my partner weren't quite so anti-egg for breakfast. Le sigh.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

I was afraid to even try it without the floaty cup things. Until yesterday!

[nwhyte]

When I was a lad we always poached eggs by just chucking them in the boiling water, and now that's my usual breakfast, lifted from the pan with a slotted spoon, placed on buttered toast - makes the commute to Brussels almost bearable!!!

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

See, when I was little my grandma would poach eggs, just like that, chucking them in the water. But, you know, my grandma (like many another grandma before and after) was magic. There's really no question about that. I was never entirely sure it would work for me, and heard many tales of woe and disaster that dissuaded me from attempting it.

[nwhyte]

My aunt Ursula was convinced that you have to do a wee whirlpool in the water - and then that meant you couldn't do more than one egg at a time. But my great-aunt Joan (who is still around, aged 98) knew that if you put enough salt in the water, the white curdles quicker and you can chuck in several at once.

I do not believe in this vinegar theory.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

oooo [takes notes]

edited to ask, how much salt is enough salt?

[nwhyte]

Enough to be yummy!

I mean, if you have salted butter anyway, the amount of salt in the egg water hardly matters for the taste, as long as there's *enough*.

OK, maybe not *totally* helpful...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You definitely should have used the bullseye-womp-rats line on him.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Question for everyone here...?

So, do you still have to wash the pan afterwards, or does the water keep it clean?

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Well, there's still some egg in the water after, so I'd wash it. But it's still really easy to clean.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Mine always turned out messy that way, so you must have magic. Now, I just have an egg poaching pan. :)

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

So the takeaway is, you're magic! :D

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

On Masterchef the other week, one of the contestants revealed his secret (aside from fresh eggs) includes a splash of vinegar in the water, and singing the first verse of "Amazing Grace" three times to get the timing. One day I may try this. (I've never had a complete poached-egg disaster, but I like the yolks cooked solid so my timing is all weird anyway.)