One power point, 300 perfectly poached eggs!

March 28, 2011

Do you poach a lot of eggs?

It is so hard and time consuming to poach the perfect egg every time.  No matter how good you are at this time old art, distractions will cause at least one or two fully set yolks.

Fresh eggs, perfect acidulated water just simmering, not to deep, not to shallow, constantly skimming out loose albumin, there has to be an easier cleaner way.

I was struggling with this the other day.  The perfect breakfast scenario would be an egg perfectly poached in its shell.  How good would it be if every time you needed that next poached egg for the two hundredth time in a morning, it was just sitting there at the perfect temperature, waiting to be cracked straight on to the piping hot toast.  Just add a rash of bacon and a confit tomato and “table 52 away!”

How hard could it be to soft cook an egg in its shell and hold it hot, accurate temperature would have to be the key.

I put it to the test with my Polyscience Chef Series circulator 63°Celcius for 45 minutes, see below, WOW!  It looks perfect, and the yolk, ahh soft and creamy and just runs when you cut it with a knife.

The real test was one hour later, half of my eggs were still in the water bath.  How would they be after one hour forty-five?

I cracked one out on to a piece of toast, it was exactly the same.  It had a set white and a soft just runny yolk and was warm all the way through.  Just to be sure I cracked another, and another, and another.  They all slipped straight out of the shell as identical soft cooked eggs.

I used my Chef series by Polyscience for this trial as it has very low water movement even though it is a circulated bath.  The water is circulated constantly, this moves the water around the temperature probe and the heating element with very little disturbance of the cooking food.  I used two deep fryer baskets to hold the eggs so that I could lift them out without putting my hand in to the bath all the time.  63°C is a little hot for my precious fingers.  The two baskets held so many eggs I lost count but I think it was around 120 to 150 and everyone came out just like the others, again and again and again.  When the first basket is empty I simply slide the back one to the front refill the empty basket, place it in the back half of the bath and reset my timer.

No wounder Phillip Preston from Polyscience keeps harping on about ” Perfect repeatable results every time with sous vide”