I recently poached my first egg; sounds simple enough. And yet the amount of time I spent looking up how to do it, fretting over the steps and stressing over my inevitable failure almost made the whole thing not worth it. But when I posted a photo of that sucker on social media, the hefty number of virtual back-slaps I received made it clear that I am not alone in my fear of screwing up eggs.
Friends needed to know: Had I used egg poaching cups or pan inserts? I proudly said no, feeling like Jacques Pepin standing tall on a mountain of gloriously poached eggs. I’d done it all by myself, with no gadgets or gizmos (though I’ve got whozits and whatzits galore, I must admit).
Right around that time, a link to a Kickstarter campaign featuring an egg contraption called the “Goose That Lays Golden Eggs” was making its rounds on the Internet, promising to “magically” scramble an egg inside its shell without without breaking or penetrating that shell.
Wait, aren’t scrambled eggs supposed to be simple? This gadget is sort of complicated. First you place your egg in a capsule and seal it, then pull on the handles on either end — sort of like a Victorian-era toy. The egg pops out, et voila!, it’s scrambled inside its shell. Then you can crack it and cook it as is, or boil it for a solid, golden egg with no white and no yolk. Cute, but it doesn’t fit nicely in the fork slot of your silverware caddy.
That didn’t seem to bother the people who opened their wallets to successfully fund the Kickstarter campaign, meaning the eggy gadget is now scheduled for a November 2014 delivery for backers and pre-orders.
Do people just love spending money on kitchen thingamajigs, or are so many of us just afraid of being one of those people who can’t cook a perfect egg? Why would anyone need a “Goose” — or any gadget, for that matter?
Many Ways To Cook An Egg; Even More Gadgets
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EGG GADGETS YOU’D BE BETTER OFF AVOIDING
Our colleagues at Consumer Reports have put these devices to the test and found them lacking…
Hamilton Beach Breakfast Sandwich Maker
The $25 gizmo promises to cook “every layer of your breakfast sandwich to perfection.” But the folks at CR say the resulting sandwiches were no better than what you’d get without the aid of monotasking device that requires 9 minutes to thoroughly cook a single sandwich.
Rollie EggMaster
This $30 warm cylinder into which one is supposed to pour a cracked egg calls itself “the fast, easy, pan-free way to make perfect eggs every time!” According to CR, the only fun to be had with the EggMaster was watching the tube of semi-cooked egg rise out of it. Another time-consuming device, this infomercial fave required 10 minutes to cook a single egg. That means it could take upwards of an hour to make enough eggs to feed a family, by which time the first eggs would have long turned ice cold.
A quick search on Amazon reveals countless devices that claim to be the perfect gizmo to fry, hard-boil, soft-boil, and poach.
There are egg crackers, toppers, shapers, slicers, rings, knockers, cutters, piercers, blowers, liquid egg pumps to pump eggs, yolk extractors to extract yolks, white separators to separate the whites, cups, carriers, trays and even holders to cradle the parade of eggs you have just prepared using the above contraptions. There is also something called an egg skelter, which is like a spiral staircase for eggs. It looks awesome, but is probably incompatible with cat-ownership. Yes, the “Goose” has company for sure.
Are these products a response to our collective egg anxiety, or have we, as a society, grown anxious of cooking eggs simply because of the sheer number of these devices?
Pretty heavy stuff, I know.
Maybe it’s just the fact that there are just so many ways to cook (and therefore potentially fail at cooking…) an egg. Check any diner’s breakfast menu and you will almost always find a list of egg dishes that is longer than any other category on the menu; from the humble scramble to that snobbiest of preparations, the “Benedict”.
While it would appear that yes, maybe we are a bit obsessed with eggs — one of the most basic of food items — perhaps some of this need for contraptions, this egg fear (or maybe it’s closer to eggi-tation? Oh hush; don’t look at me like that…) is born out of an unspoken acknowledgement that many of us don’t even know what makes a (literally) good egg.
Do We Really Have Anything To Fear?
Image courtesy of nathanmac87
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To find out, Consumerist spoke with Chef Jansen Chan, Director of Pastry Operations (real job title!) at the International Culinary Center. Eggs play a big part in the training of any chef, so we wanted to check with someone who regularly helps people through the harrowing ordeal that is egg preparation.
Chan tells us he hopes people aren’t terrified to make eggs without the crutch of contraptions, but admits that if your kitchen is full of these things you’re not alone in your lack of egg-related confidence.
“Eggs are actually one of the hardest things to cook,” he explains, adding that in many classic French restaurants, the test for prospective cooks is to make the perfect French omelet.
“It’s very difficult to make a perfect omelet; not to overcook it, not to undercook it, and to get the shape just right,” says Chan.
Chef Chan’s Scrambled Egg Tips
Heat butter and olive oil on medium heat before adding scrambled eggs — hot enough so the eggs start to cook immediately when they hit the pan, “but not so hot where the eggs start browning and frying immediately.”
Add eggs to the heated oil and butter and let them sit a little bit while the temperature drops slightly, then slowly stir the eggs with a steady scrape back-and-forth across the bottom of the pan, giving them a chance to cook and make fluffy curds.
Undercook the eggs a little bit to allow for carryover heat. Because eggs cook at such a low temperature, it’s very easy to overcook them, Chan adds. “By the time you get it out of the pan, it’s going to be just perfect.”
Chef Chan tells his students to that the key to perfecting their skills when working with this basic, yet complex ingredient, is practice.
“It’s technique and establishing criteria as a success,” Chan advises, by which he means the things you can measure: What color is it? Is that right? Should it be creamy or runny, brown or white? (See our definitive guide to ideal eggs below.)
“We demonstrate the technique, then we show our finished product, then they try it,” he says. “These are things that measure it so that when you actually go and do it, you can then use those criteria and say, ‘Well, did I successfully make the egg?’”
And just like anyone learning to do something, if at first you don’t succeed — you know where this is going — do it again.
“It’s a good thing that eggs are cheap so you can try it over and over again,” Chan says.
The most important thing to keep in mind when starting a kitchen showdown with your very own eggs?
Eggs cook quickly, so be prepared. Have everything laid out and ready to go, even the plate.
“While your eggs are cooking, you don’t want to go get a plate,” Chan explains. “You should have everything ready so that you set yourself up for success.”
What About My Fear Of Ordering Eggs?
Image courtesy of Mark Turnauckas
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Eggxiety (sorry, sorry) doesn’t just rear its eggly head (last one, I promise) when you’re making a mess instead of making brunch in your kitchen on a Sunday morning. Many people get flustered by dizzying number of ways eggs can be ordered at a restaurant. You may not even be aware of all the options.
Cook’s Illustrated’s Method for Pre-Cooked Poached Eggs
“A lot of people like doing poached eggs for brunch, and you don’t really want to do those made to order,” explains Bishop. “So it’s a pretty nice way to be able to do it.”
• Poach the desired number of eggs, whether with a contraption or by sliding eggs gently from a bowl held close over softly simmering water with a little bit of white vinegar to keep the edges from fraying.
• When they’re done, drop the poached eggs into ice water and refrigerate for up to three days.
• To reheat, bring 3 inches of water to a simmer in a large saucepan, remove pan from the heat, add the eggs, and let stand for 1 to 1-1/2 minutes before serving.
It’s a lovely weekend morning and you’re sitting down to eat. The menu is staring at you. It wants you to order eggs. You want to order eggs, and you want them to be good. But what should the perfect scrambled egg look like? How will you know when you are experiencing eggy perfection?!
For advice on egg-ordering, we went to one of our favorite sources, the fine folks at America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Illustrated.
We told ATK’s editorial director Jack Bishop to act like we’d never ordered or cooked an egg before, and tell us what we should expect when we order or prepare common egg dishes.
“Basically whenever you’re cooking an egg, it’s transitioning from a liquid to a solid,” Bishop explains. “And depending on how you cook it, you end up with something that’s closer to a liquid or closer to a solid.”
A Primer On Common Egg Orders & What You Should Expect
• FRIED OR “SUNNY SIDE UP”: A fried egg is simply an egg that is cooked on one side until the white sets up and is fully cooked and the yolk is not. Generally, the yolk should still be runny.
• OVER EASY: You’ve done a fried egg, and you’ve flipped it and cooked it on the second side briefly, so that the yolk is still runny.
• OVER MEDIUM: Cooked so the yolk is still not fully set, and not runny, but somewhere in between.
• OVER HARD: A fully cooked yolk, so it’s not runny at all anymore. It’s gone solid.
• SCRAMBLED: Scrambled should be fluffy and tender. They shouldn’t be browned, and they shouldn’t be dry. They should be moist, but there shouldn’t be pockets of raw egg, either. And they shouldn’t be runny.
And that scrambling should be done with a fork before it ever hits that pan. “You should be pretty gentle with them in the pan, you don’t break them up into these teeny curds.” When that happens, Bishops said, “that’s a sign of bad scrambled eggs.”
• POACHED: The white is completely set and encasing the yolk with clean edges, and the yolk should be slightly runny when it’s perfectly cooked. Note if your poached eggs don’t have perfect edges: Clean edges are an aesthetic thing, but also if the edges are more frayed there are more chances that the yolk is exposed directly to the water, rather than being protected by the white. Frayed edges can often translate to an overcooked yolk, because the white spread out too much rather than wrapping itself around the yolk.
• HARD-BOILED: The egg is cooked long enough so that the yolk is completely set and cooked through. Not so long that it turns green because that means it’s been overcooked. The white is fully-cooked.
• SOFT-BOILED: The yolk isn’t really runny anymore, but it’s not fully firm — it’s somewhere in between. It’s not like a runny, poached egg, but it’s not firm and fully-cooked. The white is fully-cooked — maybe a little less than in a hard-boiled egg — “but it’s not like the white in a fried egg,” Bishop points out. “It’s firm and opaque.”
• FOLDED/AMERICAN OMELET: Classic, American diner style omelets, where the eggs are cooked until mostly set on top, the toppings are added and then it’s folded over into a half moon. The advantage of a folded omelet is that “you can stuff it with a hell of a lot of stuff”. Browned on the bottom.
• ROLLED/FRENCH OMELETTE: More like a French style, it starts out with fewer eggs and very light toppings. When the top is partly set, the omelette is rolled into a cylinder, “kind of like a jelly roll cake.” There might be herbs and a little cheese, but you likely won’t see big, bulky ingredients because it would bust through the eggs. More delicate, not browned on the bottom. Not runny — but should be slightly loose.
But You’re Still Going To Keep Buying Those Contraptions, Aren’t You?
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Oddly enough, for Geraint Krumpe, the man behind the in-the-shell-scrambling Goose gadget, it wasn’t a personal fear of eggs that drove him to invent the device. He tells Consumerist that he got the idea after watching a popular YouTube video of guy using a shirtsleeve and rubber bands to scramble an egg without piercing the shell.
“I tried to do it and I couldn’t get it to work, so I made a better prototype,” Krumpe said with a laugh. “I was able to get it to work and thought that was pretty neat — I’m in the business of designing consumer products, so I thought I’d give it a shot and try to be entrepreneurial with it and see if people liked it.”
But as for whether or not the Goose can serve as a palliative for some greater egg fear, Krumpe says he doesn’t think we necessarily have a problem with cooking eggs without these contraptions — we just like curiosities.
“A poached egg is a poached egg,” Krumpe explains. “An egg scrambled inside the shell was just something that didn’t exist. And there wasn’t really a good way to do it, so why not make a tool for it?”
Why not, indeed? But it’s not like we’re scared or anything. Not anymore. And remember, it’s okay if you mess up — you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, after all. Or crack a lot of them because you’re just practicing.