Making Beautiful Poached Eggs

Not long ago, I took on the mission of learning to make a mean poached egg. After making attempts too numerous to count, I was at long last able poach an egg that would rival the best in a blind tasting. That's just the problem--they were delectable (who knew that the humble egg could be so grand?), but they weren't pretty.

Though I was using the freshest eggs I could get from the local egg lady, half of the whites still managed to coagulate into a disconnected and jumbled mess, and wound up in the garbage disposal. There had to be a better way. That's where Julia Child comes in. I had the good fortune of borrowing The French Chef series from the library, and after she has a similar experience as the one I just described, she proceeds to poke a hole in the egg with a thumbtack, plop the whole thing in the poaching water for a moment, and poaching the little beasties as normal. Her eggs were nothing short of perfection, and given that this was taped during the 1960s, I figured that there weren't any camera tricks at play. So, I subjected my husband to yet another dinner of eggs benedict in order to provide myself with a final opportunity to make the perfectly poached egg. Folks, I'm here to tell you that J.C. is brilliant! Enough said...

Here's how to pull it off. Bring your poaching water to a simmer. You can add a bit of vinegar or salt to the water--different respectable cooks claim that doing one or the other will absolutely destroy the egg. Bullshit. I've tried it both ways, and they both work. Just don't use Real Salt like I do unless you want people to think that you've put sand in your poaching water. Anyway, take a regular (clean!) thumbtack and poke a hole in one end of your egg. Don't worry--the thing's not a little bomb waiting to explode! It'll be fine. Then place the egg carefully in the simmering water, count to 10 (one-onethousand, two-onethousand, etc.) and remove from the water. Immediately crack the egg open into the same water and simmer lightly for EXACTLY 4 minutes. The cookbooks all tell you to push the whites over on top of the yolks, but this makes an ugly mess and is now unnecessary because of the whole thumbtack deal. The result is a perfectly poached, beautiful egg that will leave your readers on Facebook posting comments like, "Kristi, you're so weird." Bon appetit!