Teresa, I'm not showing Moe your picture or he will be asking for coddled eggs. He loves them cooked that way. I have a couple of coddlers, just not sure what cupboard they ended up in after the last move. I just find traditional poaching easier and quicker.

Ann

I read somewhere (I think in one of Jacques Pepin's books) about how to cook the perfect hard boiled egg, minus the green yolks or sulfer smell.

Get a bowl full of ice and water ready. Poke a tiny hole in the wider end of the egg with a pushpin. Put the eggs in a saucepan and cover them with water. Bring the water to a boil, and boil the eggs for 8 minutes. Remove the pan from the stove, drain all the water out, put the lid on and shake the pan to crack the eggs. Then dump the eggs into the ice water to stop the cooking process. This is apparently what keeps the yolks from going green. I haven't had an icky looking yolk since I started doing it this way.

However, since I moved to the Central Valley from the Coast, I have had real problems peeling boiled eggs. People around here tell me that the eggs are too fresh, and that's why the shell sticks so to the egg. Does anyone know if this is true? It seems odd, because in the Bay Area, our eggs came from Petaluma/Santa Rosa area, which wasn't very far away at all, and around here, they come from Lathrop, which is probably about the same distance. Why would we get them fresher here?

Why do you poke holes in the eggs? Waaay too much work for me! I can't figure out why you'd do it - to prevent cracking? You have to crack 'em anyway to eat them. Besides, I doubt they'd crack with your method, which is essentially the way I do it, less the poke and the ice, and I've never had one crack. To prevent the green? No. The sulfer smell? What's that? Eggs smell like eggs to me.

My mom always said fresh eggs are harder to peel; I haven't been able to prove or disprove it, but all I buy are supermarket eggs, so who knows? Where's grainlady, I bet she knows, and why they sometimes get green rings, too. Although, I haven't seen a green ring in years since I started cooking them this way. Easy to peel, too.

I buy lots of eggs and let them sit in the fridge for a year or so before throwing them out for the garden 'possums. Dolly gets some of them now. Wish they would date stamp the year on egg cartons. LOL... being single ain't all parties and easy living.

Made a tiny fortune selling egg cups on ebay back when ebay was still fun. One left that I store cat whiskers in... magical little things they are. Tuna was always shedding whiskers and I have many fond memories when I see the egg cup sitting on my bookshelf.

Pretty much eat my eggs all ways. Sunny side up is my least favorite. Use over medium in my egg sandwiches... smear the yolk around with lots of salt, pepper, and butter.

Sometimes if I can find an ounce of energy I'll hard boil eggs that are about to expire. For me expire is up to three months past the box date.

Save all my egg shells for the garden compost. Half my garden dirt is now coffee grounds and egg shells.

What Ann made looks really really REALLY GOOD! Asparagus and mushrooms with some runny egg yolk... oh goodness it almost gives me the big O. Change them to morels and I think it would do it. Think I have a major mission this spring...

: )
lyra

Yes, I LOVE poached eggs, especially on top of either pancakes or corned beef hash.

rachelellen and sherrmann, I can tell you from experience that fresh eggs are harder to peel. Almost impossible sometimes, LOL. Very fresh eggs tend to be more difficult to peel because they are more acidic. The more acidic the eggÂs contents are, the harder the egg is to peel. As an egg ages, carbon dioxide (which is a weak acid) leaks out through pores in the eggÂs shell, making the egg white less acidic and less likely to stick to the shell. Or so says Michigan State University's Extension Service!

I've had chickens since I was a tiny girl, Grandma always had a dozen big red Rhode Island Reds. Now I have my own chickens (big fat, red Rhode Island Reds!) and the girls give me nice fresh eggs daily, but if I'm going to make egg salad or potato salad I either break down and buy those pale imitators from the store or I keep a dozen in the fridge for a month or so.

I guess I don't know why the yolks turn green, but Grandma told me it came from overcooking them. She was seldom wrong. (grin)

I cook my hardboiled eggs just like CI does, although Grandma told me to leave them sit 5 minutes and CI does 8. Then into the ice bath they go!

Annie

Like I said I didn't read CI's dissertation this time, but I do recall having read it before and them saying my mom's green eggs were due to overcooking. So once again Annie's Grandma seems to be right.

Another egg lover here. Here's an unusual (for y'all), easy and delicious dish -- serve fried or poached eggs over hot rice. Drizzle with soy sauce and a bit of Asian sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds. Black pepper to taste. Cut up the eggs so the warm yolks run into the hot rice - mix it all up - yummmm...

#@*%&@#&!!!! Gina I have an hour to kill between 1:00 and 2:00 today you are making me want to go to L&L Hawaiian and get a loco moco for lunch YOU ENABLER YOU

With all this talk of eggs, I've got fried rice and nasi goreng with egg omelette on the brain. Nasi goreng is the Indonesian version of fried rice. I had it for breakfast almost every day when I visited Malaysia. I need to get some deli ham to dice and add to the dish.

I just finished testing my new old vintage 50's egg poacher / cooker and not only does it look great it poached my egg to perfection. No muss, no fuss, a perfect little igloo. Thank goodness the instructions are part of the bottom base because I'd have put a lot of water in there when in fact it only calls for, get this, 5 teaspoons!!! That's right, 5 little teaspoons of water to make 6 poached or hard/soft boiled eggs. It took about 15 minutes and shut itself off too.
Then while it was eating it with toast I thought to myself, geeze I should have dug out my old blender cookbook for making quick hollandaise . Maybe tomorrow

pkguy, your going make me want to go out and hunt up an egg poacher like you got. We love poached eggs and used to do it in the boiling water method like my GM taught me, but with a radiant cooktop you don't get the rolling ring like boil that works best like we did on our old stove.
Mindy

I just checked Ebay and here is the eggsact egg poacher I got. I only paid $2.50 for mine though LOL

Here is a link that might be useful: Ebay egg poacher

Oooo, I bet I can get DH the egg freak to bid on that.

Fresh eggs STEAMED for 10 minutes will peel instantly and easily. Mine aren't as fresh as Annie's ever will be but when they come from the Farmers' Market chickens they're fresher than store bought.

I just did a dozen today...some DH eats for breakfast cold with a dab of mayonnaise (yuck) and toast. I do something that he finds as revolting...I put mine in pickle juice to ..pickle, or in pickled red beat juice.

I still make poached but in the microwave with the little cooker. I used to do them at work when I wanted something simple but hot. I used to do the egg cups with the children and still have the ones with their names burned into the wood. While I lived in England I used the egg coddlers and they were good for keeping the eggs hot while you ate.

ah, Maureen, my sister at heart! I loved pickled eggs, in that pickled beet juice for a week or so.

Annie

This is a timely thread for me. My grandchildren enjoy eggs sunny side up, which surprises me. I didn't think kids liked them because I didn't when I was a kid.

Discussing eggs with my grand daughter last Sunday, I discovered she knew nothing about poached eggs, so I showed her how to cook them.

I used the standard method -- water with a little vinegar added, barely boiling, eggs slipped gently into the water from a small dish, then removed with a slotted spoon when done. She had them on buttered toast. I think she will be making these frequently.

BTW, any streamers which form can be folded back onto the egg with the spoon early in the cooking process and will adhere as they cook, making a neater package.

Jim

Sherry, you poke a hole into the wide end of the egg to keep them from breaking while boiling. And for some reason, the yolk is always nicely centered. Must have something to do withthe air getting our and drop of water coming in.

I have a gizmo similar to this one.

Here is a link that might be useful: Egg Pricker/poker

My husband chops hard boiled eggs up, makes a cream gravy/sauce in the frypan he cooked his breakfast meat in, and mixes them together to eat over toast, grits or potatoes.

Erk. :P

The pullet egg is the little white one next to the jumbo brown egg. Somewhat local, one county over.

{{gwi:1493310}}

Rachelellen - THAT is a good question! I had the same experiecne. In Santa Rosa, the eggs shelled lovely, in Los Banos, I had to fight with them. I don't know if there was a differenc in anything else, but I do know the water in Santa Rosa had a lot of copper sulfites in it where we had a filter/softening system in LB. I always chalkced it up to the difference in the water rather than the eggs.

I used to make scrambled eggs using the extra steam wand (the one we didn't often use) on the espresso machine. :) Some of the fluffiest eggs ever.

Omigosh, I never realized until reading this thread how many wonderful 'egg' memories I have! My mother's egg salad sandwiches were just TDF...almost as messy as the BLT's with tomatoes fresh from the garden because she made it runny, but sooo good. Sometimes she'd slice pimiento-stuffed olives to make egg-and-olive sandwiches. My brother thought it was totally gross, but my father and I adored it. It's been years since I've even thought of it, but I must make some tomorrow!

When she did scrambled eggs (for some reason, that cooking method was usually reserved for 'breakfast for dinner' nights rather than mornings), she always added slivers of cream cheese. Oh, yum! To this day, it's how all my children love eggs best.

But most memorably of all, when we were recuperating from an illness, we were served 'milk toast'. Did anyone else have this? She'd toast a piece of bread, poach an egg (a child of the Depression, she didn't believe in 'gadgets', she just managed to do it perfectly using a saucer and a spoon), then pour hot milk over all, add butter and season with salt and pepper. It was the best part of getting sick!! Under any other circumstances, the thought of hot milk would trigger my gag reflex -- but milk toast remains the ultimate comfort food for me.

When I was 17, my best friend's dad took 5 of us girls to New Orleans for a graduation trip. (Everybody else had to stay home with younger siblings, but all our parents were determined that we wouldn't hit the Florida beaches. Back in the day, parents were in charge. lol) Brennan's was the first world-famous restaurant I'd ever been to. There is no way to describe what it was like when I took my first bite of Eggs Benedict.... A new world just opened!

And then, when I met my future husband, he wanted to go camping. CAMPING??? Hey, I'm a city gurl! But once I tasted corned beef hash cooked over an open fire and topped with an egg over-easy, I decided maybe I could live with this way of life.

Thanks for the memories, guys. I'm thinkin' after the egg salad sandwich for lunch, I'll do Shrimp Louie for dinner.

sm

P.S. Soft-boiled? Yuk! Only way I don't love them.

Does anyone else use egg scissors/topper for cutting open their boiled eggs? -Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Egg Scissors/Topper

Grainlady - Yup, if I'm at my parents' house I do. I always loved that thing as a young child for some reason, even when I wasn't topping eggs! (Looks very close to the top one on that list.)

I love soft boiled and poached.

Soft boiled eggs and toast are pure comfort food to me - instantly bringing me to staying home from school sick and hanging out on the coach all day and my mother making them for me. Never made them but I will soon!

Poached eggs I also do with a drop of vinegar in the water.

Grainlady I have one of those egg top snippers but it sits in the bottom of the cutlery drawer unused but it's such a neat gadget isn't it!

We sometimes have soft boiled eggs as our supper in the evenings but I have always loved poached as well. I use a knife and slice off the top of the shell of the soft boiled eggs while Wolf gently taps the top of the shell all around with the back of his spoon until it's in crumbles, then he scoops it off.

I have some bone china egg coddlers, similar to those teresa posted but in a white and floral pattern. I have them in storage though with some other dishes. I really love the taste of a coddled egg, cooked with a pat of butter inside. Mmmm. Must get those out of their boxes.

SharonCb

I adore poached eggs, they are my first choice. But the whites have to be cooked all the way. It's tough timing it so that they're perfect, but I excel at them :-) I never order them out though because nobody but my mom and I can make them the way I like.

Love hard-boiled eggs too. Not so fond of soft-boiled, due to the running egg whites. But my mom eats them every day, and she has the little egg top snippers as well.

I love soft-boiled or poached in a bowl with crushed crackers. My grandma used to make them for me that way, and that's still the way I eat them when I have eggs that way.

The cute little Egg Cups I picked up at an Ace Hardware

I always have hard boiled eggs in the refrigerator for a quick snack....I always made poached eggs for Huevos Rancheros..

Linda

All this egg talk just forced me to make an egg salad sandwich today! LOL! It was really good.

I never had poached, but from all the pictures posted, I'd definitely try it now. I remember really disliking soft boiled when my mother made us eat them for dinner when I was a kid. I've never ever made them for my kids. I'd probably like them now, tastes change!

I love sunny side eggs. Best eggs I ever had were the ones Annie sent straight from her chickens
{{gwi:1493314}}

I can't believe the number of posts this thread has garnered. I also can't believe so many people love poached eggs. I absolutely cannot eat a poached egg. I like hard boiled eggs okay. Other than that I have to have my eggs cooked in butter, over medium. Over medium because I like a runny yellow, but the white must be fully cooked. Even for Eggs Benedict, my eggs are done in butter over medium.

beverlyal, in my opinion, the only yolk that shouldn't be served runny is that of a hard boiled egg. The only white that should be runny is that of an egg you're using raw for a recipe.

I would venture to surmise that your antipathy towards poached eggs is a result of encounters with poorly poached eggs.

Because if you like eggs cooked in butter...I can't imagine that a properly cooked poached egg, slathered in buttery hollandaise, wouldn't hit your yum-button.

One of the best restaurants in Philadelphia is Osteria. They make a Lombarda pizza that has an egg on it. It is out of this world good. Some call it poached, others say it's fried and the restaurant calls it baked. Whatever -- it is fabulous.

Here is a description of the pizza:

"a blistering crust, impossibly thin yet still substantial; a luscious, barely quivering baked egg; and crumbles of cotechino sausage fragrant with clove layered over a bed of mild mozzarella and tangy bitto (an Italian cheese from Lombardy)."

Here's a picture I got from the eGullet forum, posted by "Philadining".

Since we are big into giving attributes, the quote is a review on Osteria's web site. If you get to Philadelphia, be sure to try this restaurant.

I can't eat a fried egg. They make me ill. I like poached smooshed up with toast. I really can't eat eggs for breakfast at all, but have scrambled eggs for dinner pretty often.

I eat and enjoy poached just about every Sunday, and hard boiled less often, but I do enjoy them!

My son-in-law makes a great eggs benedict with Hollandaise sauce every Sunday so I've had a chance to try it when I've been there for holidays. He splits and toasts an English muffin, tops it with a slice of back bacon, adds the eggs and covers them with sauce.
Oh they were so good!

SharonCb

Here's another great use of an egg, the Spanglish Sandwich. I couldn't even pay attention to the movie, I was so obsessed with the sandwich. It turned out to be a tragedy because no sooner was Adam ready to bite into it than he was interrupted. Boo hoo. Notice the calorie and fat count of this baby.

Here is a link that might be useful: Spanglish Sandwich

Notes from trying the microwaved egg method recommended above:

- Just put them in a ramekin and nuke 'em, right? No need to log onto GW. I think she uses Pam, but I like butter with my eggs. I'm hungry, so I'll use two eggs.
- What's that popping sound? Great, now I have to clean the microwave. Oh well, it needed it anyway.
- Those yolks are getting pretty set, but the white is still runny. Hmmm, maybe I should have used one egg at a time.
- Ok, the whites are set. Let's eat!
- Well the yolks are almost hardboiled, and yuck - there's still some runny white. Let's log onto to GW.
- Oops, she definitely said one egg, and she said to cover with saran wrap. Good idea! Let's try again.
- That's looking a lot better, but she must have a much stronger microwave because I'm at 30 seconds and just starting to see the whites begin to set.
- Ok, so it took a full minute but it looks good. Let's eat!
- Not bad! I overcooked them just a little bit; the yolk has hardened around the edges.
- Oh no! Uncooked white down there!!!

I'm not knocking this method at all. I think I've just learned that it doesn't work too well in an old microwave whose magnatrons are probably well past their half-life. Just one more excuse to get moving on that kitchen remodel! But for now, I'm off to go clean that microwave...

For you microwave fans, you can also make a Ziploc Omelette.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Ziploc Omelette

ROFL James

We do! A supermarket nearby sells eggs that are pasteurized in the shell. So we eat runny yellow without worrying about salmonella. I am delighted with the eggs. Now, when I make a cake ... I can scrape the bowl, and lick the beaters!! And enjoy it!

Rachelellen, it doesn't take a genius to properly poach an egg. It's good that people have different tastes becaue if we were all alike it would be a boring world. That does not make one persons taste superior to anothers. And yes if it's covered with hollandaise I can eat it.

Dedtired, I can't eat eggs for breakfast either.

I just skimmed this thread - I didn't open it before because I absolutely hate poached eggs and always have. I don't particularly like eggs either for that matter, but I do find a use for hard boiled eggs, although I only steam them now. I had steamed (HB) eggs in my Crab Louis yesterday, but I would not go near a poached egg or an over easy egg. I don't like fried eggs either for that matter, although I will eat (and make) scrambled eggs, omelets, and migas. I like eggs in custards and meringues, but much less when they are the star ingredient. They've always had somewhat of a gag response from me when on their own. I never liked the flavor and I like the texture even less. I do like HB eggs in salads, however, but that is the exception. I guess I can get over the memories of Edie in Pink Flamingoes.

Lars

Beverlyal...goodness, I hope I didn't come across as one who thinks anyone's taste in food is superior to that of anyone else. Jeepers, I have a secret penchant for Chef Boyardee's Beef-a-Roni (which amuses my husband no end), so who am I to take on airs! :D

I was simply puzzled at your expressed distaste for poached eggs, since you and I are in complete agreement regarding cooked-white, runny-yolk, and if the poached egg in question meets those criteria, it just tastes like an over-medium or a properly soft-boiled egg to me...the butter for the poached being provided by the hollandaise, and for the soft boiled, by the toast I eat it on.

But, it may well be that you taste something I do not, or perhaps the texture difference turns you off. As you say, it would be boring if everyone had the same tastes...there would be more competition for favorite foods as well! :D

By the way, there are many things that I'm lukewarm on that I could eat with pleasure if they were smothered in hollandaise....mmmmm!

I adore poached eggs. As I'm one of those poach-challenged cooks, I usually have them at restaurants. This works well since my firm belief is that breakfast is actually more trouble to cook than dinner, so I try to convince my DH to take me out for the best breakfast restaurants I can find, as often as possible.

Much as I love to cook, going out for an Eggs Benedict Florentine, or even better, a Crabcake Benedict, gets me running for the car keys every time.

Another outstanding poached egg dish which some of the French-inspired bistros have, is Frisee salad with Hot Bacon Dressing. A poached egg is served with it. You break the egg open, and the yolk beautifully emulsifies the dressing. It's the only time I like frisee greens - divine!

I just bought some of these silicon egg poachers, but haven't tried them yet.

Here is a link that might be useful: Silicon egg cups

I love hard boiled and poached eggs, but I have never made a poached egg. I get poached eggs when we go out to breakfast. I did recently purchase a egg poacher, but after looking through this thread I would guess it is more of an egg coddler? It did not come with instructions. It is a pan with a glass lid, a wire holder, and 5 ceramic ramekins with lids. I might try following the instructions on the site for egg coddlers that Teresa posted (thank you!). Does anyone have an egg cooker like this and know how to use it? Sorry if I spelled your name wrong!

Joanne

LOL Rachellen, I don't think that it's me tasting something in poached eggs that you and other's don't. I think it's you all tasting something that I don't. I'm not a fan of anything poached. Some say poach chicken to make chicken salad. I prefer it roasted. Just tastes better to me.

I don't care for poached chicken either, as a general rule,and neither do my cats who absolutely adore roast chicken, but when given chicken fished out of a simmering pot of stock only deign to eat it when it becomes apparent that it's all there is.

I do like cold poached salmon...although again, it must be slathered in hollandaise. Hmm. Now that I think about it, I'd really rather have the salmon broiled as well, as long as it has the hollandaise.

You know, it's never occurred to me to put hollandaise on fried eggs...only poached. I wonder why?

I had two poached eggs for lunch today after reading all this egg talk ! I used the microwave method in custard cups and that is the method I will use from now on. I overcooked somewhat and the yolks were hard but that is just fine as I don't eat yolks and they just popped right out. The yolks are helping feed the stray cats. Most of them have a regular route in checking the menu of the day.
Lois