Post a Comment On: Stephanie Cake

Tonight was breakfast for dinner. No suprise, I made myself eggs benedict. I have officially mastered hollandaise sauce (although its not really rocket science). However, the egg poaching continues to elude me.

Things that haven't worked:
Ramekins in boiling water: technically not poaching unless you tip them and let some water in. This has actually been semi-sucessful and resulted in the best eggs although I can't get the cooking time right. They end up a little too done.

Microwave egg poacher: yuck. the yolk gets done before the white so there's no way to cook them properly. If you leave the yolk runny, the white is very questionable. The makers of this product should be ashamed of themselves, in no way does this thing poach eggs. Someone recently told me that microwaving eggs is a travesty.

Plastic wrap pouches: I intially thought this was brilliant (because of boiling bag omelets), then I thought about those warnings about how its dangerous to heat plastic wrap... but then I thought it won't kill me to try it once. It might have actually worked if I wasn't using crappy cheap plastic wrap. Unfortunately, the bottoms of the pouches melted and the yolks fell out resulting in a ridiculous mess.

Traditional boiling water: they sprawl and I've been prone to overcooking. I've read up on proper poaching techniques and I think the stockpot and gallon of water is way too much. I plan to try again with a saucepan and three inches of water. I also hear vinegar helps with the sprawl. One thing I want to know, however, regarding every cookbook's suggestion to use "eggs less than four days old"... how the heck am I supposed to know when the eggs that Food Lion is peddling came out of the chicken??? I realize that an expiry date way out in the future is a good indication of new eggs but they don't exactly tell you when the chicken pooped them out.

I think I need new kitchen gadgets. My neighbor suggested using a cookie cutter or something to corral the eggs while using the regular boiling water method. That's an idea altho I suspect that cookie cutters might float around too much. (do you think perhaps I talk about my love of eggs benedict way too much???) Isn't there some kind of heavier ring for eggs? I'm sure I've seen something like that.

I'm also interested in these and these. I already purchased a new whisk and a second tiny saucepan (as a double boiler for the hollandaise). Acquisition of additional poaching paraphenalia may send my family over the edge.