Poached Eggs

Eggs are something that my small person has had an issue with for  a long time - it is a texture thing from what I can make out.  We worried for a while that it was an allergy, but if it is then repeated exposure seems to have limited its effects and he now eats them if they are scrambled or poached. 

Poached eggs are a new thing for B.  It is something he seems to struggle a little with, but he enjoys the taste, so we persist.   

I am one of those people who struggle to cook good poached eggs.  I've tried quite a few of the tools and tricks and up until recently the only way I have been able to consistently cook nice poached eggs is using an old fashioned poaching pan.  We don't have one now so I needed to find another method.  Yes I know that you can cook them in hot water that you have created a vortex in but I can't - not if I actually want to eat them.

Eventually we ended up with 2 options, some reusable egg baskets that you hung into a pan of water poach, and some poaching bags that you put in the pan.  The baskets had 2 issues, (1) They were an utter pain to clean due to all the holes.  (2) The results varied dramatically every time you used them and my OH is super funny about how his eggs are cooked so if you could not guarantee how the eggs came out he was not going to eat them.

So we ended up with the pouches, and they worked , really well. We worked through all 20 and always had reliable eggs but at $5 a pack of 20 (and we use 5 for most meals) they were not super expensive but we were generating more compostable waste. Today I discovered we were out of the blighters and of course I had planned eggs for lunch - so after a bit of pondering I decided that we could probably get the same effect using a coffee filter.  Turns out I was right- so here is how we cook our poached eggs.

Equipment:

Pan large enough for all your eggs with a a bit of space between them

Egg poaching pouches (coffee filters in our case)

Kid safe activities (if you want your kiddo to participate)

Counting the egg poach pockets

Counting the eggs

Cracking the eggs (make sure they wash their hands after)

Ingredients

Enough eggs for each person 

Water

Method

Fill your pan with cold water and put on the stove top to bring to a fast boil - you can't do anything else until it is

Turn your pan down to a simmer or light boil

Put your poaching pouch into a coffee cup and make sure its open and crack an egg into it.  Immediately transfer to your pan of water, and lower it in 

Repeat for each egg - work at a good pace as you need them all in within a minute or so

Set your timer for 5 minutes (at this stage for me they are slightly runny in the yolk)

Fish them out at time and place the pouch onto kitchen paper and leave for a minute to cool before you open the pouch and gently put it onto your plate

I use eggs from the fridge, if you use at room temp you will probably want to take a minute off the cooking time 

We love these on a plane tortilla with some home made ketchup (hidden veggie sauce) for B and salsa for the grownups 

Mini Quiche/Pies

Tell either male in this household that it is quiche for a meal and they will wrinkle up their nose.  Pies however are acceptable.  These mini ones are made in muffin tins.  You can also use mini muffin tins for smaller ones and I would think it would work well as a single large one

Equipement:

Muffin tin/pie tin

Whisk

Grater

Kid safe activities (if you want your kiddo to participate)

Cutting the puff pastry and putting it in the tin

Putting non wet ingredients into the tin

Ingredients

1 x pack of shop bought puff pastry

4 x eggs (you may need more)

1/4 cup of milk

1 cup of tasty cheese

meat of your choice

veg of your choice (I usually use 1 carrot or some spinach)

 Method

Heat  your oven to 180C and get a muffin tin (like we used for the meatloaf)

Cut circles from your puff pastry to go into each muffin cup.  Generally you need a cutter thats slightly larger in size than the top of the hole

Put the pastry into each muffin cup (you don’t need to grease before doing this)

Add your meat, veg and cheese into each cup.  Sometimes we don’t do meat but chicken, hot dog, meatballs etc all work well Beck loves Bacon in his - just a sprinkle of pre cooked rasher works well

Whisk the milk and eggs and some seasoning together in a jug and pour the egg mixture slowly into each case to just below the top - I always make a mess but they still taste ok

Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden

The can be eaten hot or cold if you want them warm just micro for 30 seconds

If you want to make these for smaller appetites I use a mini muffin tin which makes bite size ones.  Depending on your filling you may need to make up more egg mixture