Saturday, June 23, 2012

Poached Eggs

poached

Carolyn gave me a set of four PoachPods (Crate & Barrel) for Father’s Day, which are floating egg poaching tools, made of silicone. They are simple to use and the results were perfect. This posting does not address how to make poached eggs in the conventional way. You’ll have to Google that.

To start, I began boiling water 3/4” of water in a sauté pan that has tall sides.  You could just a easily use a pot. I sprayed the inside of each pod with canola oil. Next I broke an egg into each pod, set them aside and turned the heat to simmer. Then I floated the pods in the water and covered the pan.  I cooked them for 5 minutes and they were perfectly done. Note, however, that you must remove the eggs immediately and serve them quickly because they continue to cook, even out of the water. Nevertheless, the eggs were nice and runny. Perhaps 15 or 30 seconds less in the water would have bought some extra time to serve everything.

Clean-up is simple. You merely “hang” the pods on one of the holes in the middle tray of your dishwasher. Or just wash by hand. The remaining bits of egg come off the silicone easily.

Next time I will try beaten eggs and see how they turn out. Perhaps something like an omelet consistency, I’m guessing.

poachpods at work

Above, PoachPods at work.

pods in the dishwasher

Above, PoachPods “hanging” on the dishwasher rack, ready for a carnival ride.