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