Guess what I just found? How to poach 30 eggs at once. Normally I’d ignore it, but look
who the author is. It’s Kenji, so I’ve got to take it seriously. Well, this throws
a monkey in the wrench for me. You see -- I was almost done editing my eggs benedict video.
If Kenji’s method works, my video is obsolete before I even post it.
Let me backup a little. Both Kenji and I like the jelly white, but not the runny white,
so we strain it out before putting the eggs into the water. Harold McGee mentioned this
concept in his book On Food and Cooking, and you’ll see this method used by many cooks.
Here is Andrew doing it on Binging with Babish and Kenji doing it on seriouseats. So it looks
like Kenji and I both realized that doing one egg at a time is a pain in the ass. So
we do it with lots of eggs. The difference is that I use a Chinese colander to strain
the runny white and to get my eggs in and out of the water and Kenji uses a fine mesh
strainer. The Chinese colander is an amazing tool for the job. Because it’s flat on the
bottom, and has no feet, I can poach my eggs right in it. But most people don’t have
it. That’s the fatal flaw of my method. Even though it’s only 15 bucks on amazon,
who wants to buy another gadget? But a fine mesh strainer is a tool that most people do
have, so it’s a huge win for Kenji’s method.
The other difference between our methods is the number of eggs. With my method you are
limited to 8 to 9 eggs, and with Kenji’s you could do 30.
Well, ignore the number 30. I mean no one needs 30 eggs at home, and they might not
even fit into your strainer, but if you can even do say 12 to 16 eggs, that would already
be great. Ok, so, painful as it is, I might have to scrap everything I’ve already filmed,
and try Kenji’s method.
Here we go -- I’ve got a dozen eggs in my strainer and a big pot of salted water. Let’s
drop them in.
Oh, come on eggs. Somehow I thought that they would slip right in, but they didn’t.
It felt like my top eggs went in easily, but the bottom eggs got stuck to the strainer.
Kenji’s instructions said to stir the pot gently to prevent the eggs from settling on
the bottom. This is a bit easier said than done because I can’t see where the eggs
are, but I’ll do my best.
It’s been about 4 minutes and they look done to me. Let’s get them all out and see
what we’ve got. Looks like I got 5 perfect eggs and 7 that lost their whites.
I suspected that I made a mistake by submerging the strainer into the pot. That might have
cooked the whites that were touching the strainer and got my eggs stuck. I want to give this
another try. This time, I’ll bring the strainer close to the water, but I’ll try not to
submerge it.
Hmm, the bottom ones still felt a bit stuck,
but the water is not as murky as the first time, so maybe it was better. You know what
I am realizing, you don’t need to submerge the spoon all the way to the bottom of the
pot. If you stir the top half of the pot, the eggs will start floating and moving. This
is definitely looking better the second time around. Let’s see how I did this time. Ok…
I got 8 perfect eggs and 4 broken ones.
So I have 2 concerns with this method. One is that the fine mesh strainer is not the
best tool for the job. It pulls the whites and breaks up some of the eggs. And my second
concern is the big pot. I poach my eggs in a skillet and here is why. The less the egg
travels, the fewer opportunities it has to fall apart. When you poach in a skillet you
can even crack the egg straight into the water without straining at all.
I mean, it will look a bit worse in the beginning -- for example -- this one was strained and
this one wasn’t.
But you can trim all that runny white after poaching in just a few seconds. See, I won’t
tell if you won’t tell.
By the way, any skillet material works for this. It doesn’t need to be non-stick. It
works just fine in stainless. The key here is to bring the egg to the very surface of
the water when you are cracking it. The less it travels, the more intact it will stay.
But I can explain why most chefs use pots instead of skillets? If you work in a high
end restaurant and you need your eggs to look like a ball of fresh mozzarella -- you know
that perfectly oval wraparound look -- a pot is your friend. You stir it to create a vortex
and drop the egg in. Here is my video from 9 years ago where I did that. But that method
relies on doing it one egg at a time which is ridiculous for home cooks unless you only
need a couple of eggs. As soon as you are doing more than one egg, I think the pot loses
its advantage and becomes a liability.
Wait, I am starting to get an idea. Although Kenji’s method did not work well for me
as is, I’ve learned something very interesting from it. Even if your eggs are all cracked
into the same strainer, they will separate once they go into the water. If that’s the
case, I might not need the chinese colander to keep them in a single layer. What if I
try using a regular colander to strain the runny white and then just pour them into the
skillet?
Ok, this is looking worse than I hoped. I was hoping they’d separate a bit more. Now,
it’s been 2 minutes and they are starting to set. You know what -- I am going to try
to separate them.
This one is good.
This one doesn’t really want to go yet. It seems too loose.
This one is good.
It seems like once they set, they separate pretty easily.
You know -- they are starting to look like nice poached eggs.
Are they done?
Almost. Maybe another 30 seconds.
Yeah -- now they feel good. Ok, let’s get them out and we’ll see what we’ve got.
You have to be quick here so that they don’t overcook.
Well, my friends, we did it! A dozen eggs poached at once with equipment everyone has.
11 of them are perfect and the last one is acceptable if you cover it with hollandaise.
You know what this means? This means that the 8 egg limit I was imposing on myself with
the chinese colander, is not necessary. When the eggs go into the water, their whites pull
up and they don’t take nearly as much space as they did when they were raw. So you could
easily fit a dozen eggs into the chinese colander. I still think it’s the best tool for the
job because it allows you to get a lot of eggs in and out of the water quickly and easily.
But a regular colander works just fine.
So… can you really poach 30 eggs at once? Not that I know of. But, can you do a dozen?
Yes. I’ll go finish editing my eggs benedict video and I’ll see you next week with the
hollandaise sauce and all that jazz.
Here are more thought provoking culinary videos for you to check out, and if you are ever
in the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.