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From "McGee On Food and Cooking", Harold McGee, ISBN 0-340-83149-9: *Poached Eggs* A poached egg is a containerless, soft-cooked egg that generates its own skin of coagulated protein in the first moments of cooking. Slid raw into a pan of already simmering water--or cream, milik, wine, stock, soup, sauce, or butter--it cooks for three to five minutes, until the white has set, but before the yolk does. _The Problem of Untidy Whites_ The tricky thing about poached eggs is getting them to set into a smooth, compact shape. Usually the outer layer of thin white spreads irregularly before it solidifies. It's helpful to use fresh Grade AA eggs shelled just before cooking, which have the largest proportion of thick white and will spready the least, and water close to but not at the boil, which will coagulate the outer white as quickly as possible without turbulence that would tease the thin albumen all over the pan. Other conventional cookbook tips are not very effective. Adding salt and vinegar to the cooking water, for example, does speed coagulation, but it also produces shreds and an irregular film over the egg surface. An unconvenional but effective way to improve the appearance of poached eggs is simply to remove the runny white from the egg _before_ poaching. Crack the egg into a dish, then slide it into a large perforated spoon and let the thin white drain away for a few seconds before sliding the egg into the pan. _Timing Poached Eggs by Levitation_ There's a professional method for poaching eggs that also makes great amateur entertainment. This is the restaurant technique in which eggs are cracked into boiling water in a tall stockpot, disappear into the depths, and--as if by magic!--bob up to the surface again just when they're done: a handy way indeed to keep track of many eggs being cooked at once. The trick is the use of vinegar and salt (at about 1/2 and 1 tablespoon respectively for each quart of cooking water, 8 and 15g per liter) and keeping the water at the boil. The vinegar reacts with bicarbonate in the thin white to form tny buoyant bubbles of carbon dioxide, which get trapped at the egg surface as the proteins coagulate. The salt increases the density of the cooking liquid just enough that the egg and three minutes' worth of bubbles will float. -- Rev Simon Rumble <simon@xxxxxx.xxx> www.rumble.net The Tourist Engineer Nerds need vacations too. http://engineer.openguides.org/ "Why do we have to hide from the police, Daddy?" "Because we use emacs, son. They use vi."
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