Ask The Sous #1: Eggstacy and Eggscellence

Hey, you didn’t really think I’d pass up the chance at a bad, bad, pun, didn’t you? It’s all about eggs in this one, poached and over-easy to be precise. Aaah, the humble yet noble egg. A veritable source of all things delicious, a true allrounder, and one of the really hard things to master. Not one savory or sweet dish that can’t, somehow, incorporate parts of it, there would be no consomme without it, and no one would have to wash their windows after a frat party gone awry (by-the-by, did you know that eggs are the only non-regulated food to have a voluntary but strongly recommended advisory to card “suspicious buyers” and an age restriction in California? Guess some Judge’s house got egged in the 70s.).

Be it as it may, I often turn to egg when evaluating new cooks and externs (another by-the-by: externs are interns in any other job, I can only assume they’re called that way because their main goal will be to get out of proof boxes and walk-in freezers where over-zealous line cooks like to lock them in). In another, soon to come, installation I’ll give away the secret to my omelet test, guess I have to devise a new one. But offer is offer, can’t renege now.

Alas, let us start with @CookingStudent. She tasks her Sous (me) with a job better left to culinary gods (not me). The over-easy egg. I shall oblige.

I can only guess as to why one of your eggs tends to break. I have a pretty good idea why I always wound up with one of mine broken, and here is the answer: clocks. Let me explain my approach first, and then get back to this.

To flip an over-easy egg, I do three things. First, I get the pan nice and moist using a 3:2 mixture of clarified butter (for the browning) and canola oil (cheaper). I crack my eggs into the pan when it’s really, really, hot. The idea here is to coagulate the very bottom of my egg before it has a chance to touch the surface of the pan. Clarified butter, which is butter stripped of the milk solids and water, has a very high smoke point as does canola oil. Do not, I repeat: do not, ever, use Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Only Rachael Ray does that, and no one has to eat what she’s cooking. In fact, I want you to go to the kitchen, right now, take that bottle of EVOO, and tell it: “you are for salad dressing, back into the back of the shelf with you.”

So we have a hot pan. Eggs in there, sizzle, fizz, zish, browning starts on the edges. Now is the time to take a spoon (do not do what I did today and use a plastic tasting spoon, much scrubbing and cleaning your pan will ensue) and ladle that hot butter/oil mix on top of your eggs (you did season them, right?). You will see a slight “clouding” of the surface. That’s what you want. Now use your fish spatula ($15 in most shops, an investment you can not avoid) and flip the egg along its long axis. That means much less movement for the egg and less breakage. If you ladled enough hot butter/oil over your egg, nothing will ever happen to it.

How to flip an egg :)

Back to the breakage. If you make, say, three eggs in a pan, you’ll likely have yolk centers at 2 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 10 o’clock respectively. Our instinct is, to slide the spatula under them from 6 o’clock or sideways from our dominant side (lefties, righties, etc.), which would result in, whichever egg is not on our dominant side, flipping it along the short axis, leading to a much longer travel for the yolk and likelier breakage. If you’re using a pan flip (practice this with skittles in a cold pan: pull the pan sharply towards you, stop abruptly, and push it sharply outwards. This would be the motion chefs use when mixing things in a pan, flipping pancakes, or eggs in that case) this is even more of an issue.

Flipping Eggs! I love saying that :)

Did that help, CulinaryStudent? If not, I’ll take another stab at it, just let me know.

Now on to poaching eggs. Don wants to know. (If this isn’t clear, yet, you should follow @cookingstudent and @foodieprints on Twitter. Yes, you should). Boy, oh boy. Thousands of chefs have been driven to alcohol, drugs, or contemplations of ritual disembowelment by them. Here’s a few things:

• I never break my eggs into the water directly. Bad eggs are easier spotted that way (crack them individually into ramekins), you can remove any splinter egg shell, and it just flows much easier.
• Make sure you water is between 165 and 175 degrees F. Anything below and nothing congeals, anything above and the proteins will congeal too fast, causing the egg to break up.
• Personally, I cheat. See below.

Well, let’s cheat. You’ll need a generously sized piece of cling-film and a ramekin. Push the center of the cling-film into the ramekin, then crack your egg into this setup. Lift it out by the sides of the film, form a pouch, tie it shut with itself and make sure it’s simply an almost airless bag around the egg. Now drop that into your hot water. Voila, instant poached egg without the hassle (and without having to use vinegar which alters the texture and taste of eggs).

Of course clingfilm is a) expensive, and b) a strain on the environment. As cooks, we should be cognizant of Mother Nature whose fruits we transform into delectable yummyness. So once you mastered above technique, move on to better ways:

• The ladle-method. Use a ladle, grease it up with some butter, crack egg into it, then submerge, wait for some congealing, and tip.
• The die-cut method. Use an adequately sized metal ring and a high-walled sautiere instead of your 2qt sauce pan. The ring should be barely above water and filled with water. Crack your egg into a ramekin, then pour it into the ring.
• If money is short, use a tuna can instead of a cutter ring.

I’ll make videos or take pictures of all that on the weekend and post it.