Foolproof poached eggs, every time

Published 10:47 am Friday, March 4, 2011

Camano Island cook Barbara Libby really hits the nail on the head here, asking/answering, “Why is it the simplest tasks in cooking are often the hardest?

“A perfect grilled steak? No problem. A seven-layer torte? Other than time consuming, not an issue.

“But I had to chuckle a bit over Laura Fletcher’s frustration with making the perfect poached egg. Here’s a tip I learned years ago from the incomparable Julia Child. When poaching an egg, first bring a pan of water to a boil. Put the entire egg, shell and all, into the water. Leave it there for one minute. Remove with a spoon, then crack and continue to poach as usual.

“The critical minute the egg spends in the water allows the white closest to the shell to begin cooking gently. That brief cooking helps encapsulate the egg, and makes the poaching process more successful. I’ve found this to be a wonderful help, and an end to my chasing bits of white around in the pan.”

Barbara isn’t the only one who had a good tee-hee — so did I — and maybe you did, too, when Laura recently told us how she’d stumbled across a poaching system that worked like a charm for her (she brought a pot of soup to a simmer, then gently lowered the eggs into the soup, one at a time, and simmered them for about three minutes, and the “poached” eggs were perfect!).

Since my little mother fixed about a million poached eggs for our family whenever we wanted them, it never crossed my mind that it wasn’t a foolproof proposition. It also never dawned on me that I had never actually paid much attention when mom was standing at the stove with a panful.

So one morning early in our marriage, I hauled out my handy-dandy new cookbook, a very popular standby at the time, and a wonderful, thoughtful, surprising bridal shower present from Wayne’s dad.

Read the simple but seemingly correct directions, got the bacon under way, bread in the toaster, butter alongside, set the eggs out and readied the saucepan (as shown in a photo). When the four inches of water was simmering, I stuck a spoon in and gave it a swirl, slipped in an egg, then swirled and slipped in another.

Amazing. I’d call it more of an egg explosion than Laura’s “feathering out” and decided I must have swirled too hard or dumped rather than slipped.

We had scrambled eggs with our bacon and toast that morning.

I tried the cookbook system another time, taking great care with the swirl and slip, with exactly the same results. Then I called the horse’s mouth and Mom and I had a good laugh.

Now, for what it’s worth, which may be practically nothing, here’s how she did them so successfully and how I’ve always done them since then. It worked for her, and it works for me and maybe, if you want to try it, it will work for you, too.

Grab a skillet big enough to hold however many poached eggs you need. Heat it over low heat, then slowly break eggs into the pan, leaving room between them. When you can see the whites have started to set a teeny bit, you can raise the heat a little, gently pour hot tap water down the inside of the pan along the edge (not on top of any of the eggs) until the eggs are barely covered and let them cook until the yolks are set to your taste. Once you’ve made them this way, you’ll have a grip on the amount of heat you need/want and the length of time it takes to have them ready to lift out of the pan.