Recipe: Poached eggs - vinegar drop method

 

crack the egg into the vinegar

This is not so much a recipe than a different approach to poaching eggs, but it has some distinct advantages.  To run through the basics (just because), regular poached eggs are dropped into simmering salted water with vinegar added, and scooped out when they have cooked to your liking.  Classically, you use the edge of the slotted spoon to trim the trailing white as you remove the egg from the pot.  It's the vinegar that keeps the egg white from spilling everywhere in the pot, and it's that knowledge that makes this technique better.  

drop into the water

Rather than adding vinegar to the water, you crack the egg into a small bowl with vinegar in it, swirl it around, then drop it into the water.  The effect is that by cracking the egg into vinegar, you seal the egg better and it actually cooks almost in it's natural shape.  There's also next to no need to trim any white away after cooking.  This technique is especially good for quail eggs, which are a bit of a pain to crack into water one at a time, then try to keep track which one went in first.  you can actually crack a few eggs into the same dish with vinegar, then drop them in one by one and get fantastic results.  

poach

As with regular poaching, you want to season the water and avoid boiling it.  Also, if you are getting ready to serve a lot of people, you can cook the eggs very soft and transfer to ice water, then heat the whole lot up again when you need them by dunking in hot water or even steaming.  If you are poaching a lot of eggs, taste the water once in a while to make sure it doesn't get too acidic - you may need to change it.  Play around with different vinegars too - malt vinegar when cooking an English breakfast can be nice.  Rice vinegar will have a milder effect - if you are careful, mirin can work too.  One of my favorites is using white balsamic with eggs florentine and a tomato sauce.