poached egg

A good poached egg is truly and unappreciated food item that is mangled in many restaurants. I just have one question. Why is it so fucking hard to make sure my poached egg doesn't have a hard yolk? So disappointing.

There are "egg poachers" out there in the world, but all they really are is egg steamers, which is different from a poached egg. You don't need no stinkin' egg poacher anyway, all you need is:

a pan
water
egg
spatula

Fill the pan with about 1 inch of water. The pan needs to have a tight lid, I forgot to mention that. Put the lid on and bring the water to a hard boil. Crack your egg into the water, and cover. Now, you have to stand there, do not walk away. This is why restaurants always fuck up poached eggs, they walk away. Not only do you have to get that egg off pretty quick, the water will boil over in your pan. When it does that, lift the lid. When the boiling calms down, put it back on. Repeat. About 3 times. At some point you will look at your egg and realize that it's white all over. Now is the time to rescue your little egg from the pan.

Now this is where it gets tricky and why most people would prefer a fried egg. Very gently ease your spatula under the egg. Wedge it under there, making sure the yolk is supported. Pull it out of the pan, letting the water drain off for a few seconds. Gently ease it off the spatula onto your english muffin, into your soup, or on top of your sauteed spinach. Hmmmmm, sauteed spinach and poached egg...

No matter how careful you are, it's possible you will still break the yolk. At this point, it's an emergency extraction so you can save as much yolk as possible. It's very sad when this happens, but you just have to move on and eat what you get. I usually serve this one to Andrew, because I'm very selfish about yolk, and he does not notice as much.

You will notice that there seems to be a lot of egg white left behind. It's true, there is a lot of egg white left behind. I suppose if you like egg whites and order "egg beaters" in a restaurant then you will be sad that you are missing a significant portion o the egg whites. But trust me, you're missing nothin'.