Anyone have a fail-safe way to poach an egg? I've tried...

I have done it with two eggs-gotta be quick and the 2nd egg suffers a little. It's a fun challenge!

 
So true. I would have a coop but hubby will have none of it. Says the neighbors will picket.

 
Mistral - I did have the misfortune of cracking open a rotten one- OH MY GOD! Ever happend to you?

 
By the way, I saw the fellow on "Ham on the Street" hard boil an egg in the shell>>>>

in the microwave. Use water to cover or it mightexplode.

 
aajay, wow! it is something, isn't it. A bit of practice is needed but.....

that is dexterity, not cooking, that is involved.
I love this for breakfast, topped with dried onions from Indonesia.......veryyyyy good. I like them soft-ish.

 
I do have eggs, fresh from my coop...this is THE best thing ever...but I wait for 3 days before....

using them, if possible, as the whites are "too" fresh if that is an imaginable thing..they are too fluffy????? boiled or poached. Fried we like them warm from the coop.
I have had hens ever since I could remember 'cept for those 18 years of cruising and I am so happy to be back to fresh eggs...the stories I could tell you about eggs from different countries ...!!

 
LOL, way back in Africa time we had chickens and ducks as pets....

this is a story that we dine out on a lot...we also had a turkey called "Issi???" as we did not know what sex it was...
well Issi??? kept squatting down infront of the ugly Drake we had, along with some other ugly looking ducks we had and one day (not going into the story of young children, gardener and horrid underparts of the turkey)as we were about to depart.... late for school..... the youngsters yelled to me to come as Issi?? had a problem...
Suffice to say I closed my eyes and told the gardener to put the turkey in a hessian sack into the back of my car and after I took the children to school I found myself with a sorrowful turkey in a sack in my car...
and
in those days one just DID NOT discuss anything that was not 'correct'
I drove to my local vet!!!!! too shy to go into to him, I carried on down the freeway passing vet. rooms after vet rooms and finally after about 1/2 an hour of driving I finally summoned up enough courage to go into a strange vets.
The thought that this was a built up area of apartments where "pets were taken care of with out any thought of cost etc" pets like little maltese poodles, fat, gorgeous looking cats...not scrawny looking turkeys...etc didn't cross my mind.
The vet here was extremely surprised to be confronted by a distrought young lass with a turkey in a hessisan sack in the back of the car...and sent his assistant to fetch it...
I said I'd call later but could they put the poor thing out of it's missery or something Pleeeease...
Well, when I phoned later they said that infact this turkey had been "done" by another bird but that they had stitched the poor bird up and...... after keeping it quiet for a month and at great expense, I retrieved the turkey which subsequently we called "Isabel".
There after she laid eggs with a dent in the side. She lasted for years and was a prolific layer.
However the ducks and drakes.... well, we had them "done in" by the gardener and I suggested to my housegirl she did what she liked with them meaning that she could give them away or eat them.
Well, it so happened that that long week-end we were away. and late the Monday evening we arrived home and I went to the freezer I found neat little packages with the ducks all labeled with their individual names on them...OH lordy-lordy....what a thing.....

 
I think it would be...lol! I had heard of this method before but somehow could not invision how ...

...it would work with more than 1 egg at a time. With my luck, I would probably scramble the first egg(s), just as Marg said :eek:)

 
Joanie, I'm going to have nightmares tonight, not of named pets in the freezer...

but of wandering the highways in search of a vet who won't recognize me, with a gored turkey in the trunk.

What a story!

 
THIS IS IT. Durwood has the foolproof way. I have used tuna cans...

I've cut off the top and bottom and had a nice-size ring of the tuna can. I also use my big non-stick electric frying pan if I'm doing Eggs-Benedict for a crowd. With my tuna can rings it works perfectly. If I have too many to baste, I just put the top on to steam the eggs on top. As Durwood says, use really fresh grade AA eggs. The white are tight and intact.

 
Lessons Learned...

I tried them again this morning, and taking all of your tips into consideration, tried again. I decided I was boiling the water too much, and using eggs that were about a week old didn't help either. I noticed even when I cracked the newer ones open, the uncooked white part stayed in a little mound better in the bowl!

I had always made them in a microwave-poacher, a little plastic thing that had 2 indentations in them that you cooked as joanie and others suggested. But I LOVE A GOOD food challenge (and found that usually the yolks were too hard, and the whites too rubbery), so I have been trying the conventional way lately.

Well, over the last month and a dozen or so messy poached eggs later, I found:

Put them in a little bowl first, and slide them into the simmering water (one at a time). Then when they roll out, they have a headstart on the shape you want them to have when cooked. When the egg touches the hot water, it sort of immediately gets a white film on it that contains those little "would-be" threads. I needed more water in the pan - 3 inches gives them room to boil and turn as they cook (ah haaaa!). The slow simmer seems to keep them turning slightly. And simmer, don't boil (boiling = foam).

I used to use the "vortex" method, but that's when my little egg white strings turned to a scattering of egg whites. White threads everywhere! And constantly pushing the cooking egg white over the yolk, while it sounded good, just didn't work for me! ;o)

Thanks for the tips!

 
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