How to Poach an Egg. My Way.

Do you mind if I take a moment to brag? To show off, if you will.

My husband is the “techy” one in the family. So while I’m focused on pretty pictures and yummy food, he goes on and on about things like Google bots, keyword density, duplicate content, blah, blah, blahhhh.

He is a self-proclaimed expert in SEO (search engine optimization) and he tries to tell me how to make my blog desirable to Google. Most of it is over my head and the rest of it just sounds like a lot of work. Boring, boring work. I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m just not going to do it. I don’t make my post titles keyword rich, I don’t give my photos any special names, and half the time I don’t bother typing up a meta description (whatever that is).

I just checked my Google page rank and here it is:

I had to Google what this even means, and apparently it’s just average. The thing is, this blog is only about three months old. He said it would take at least a year to achieve a page rank of 3 the way I am going about things. Also, his two-year-old website has a page rank of 3.

Neener, neener.

I think I’ll just keep doing things my own way.

One thing that did take me years to accomplish is the perfect poached egg. I could poach an egg, but it never looked very pretty. The white part would ooze all throughout the cooking water and I’d end up with some kind of alien egg. After watching many cooking shows and adding my own little spin on things I finally mastered the perfect poach.

First, you need to crack the eggs into individual cups. I have little 6 ounce Ikea cups that work nicely.

Bring about two inches of water almost to the boiling point in a shallow pan. You don’t want the water actually simmering and you definitely don’t want it boiling. Just bring it to that point where little bubbles have formed all along the bottom of the pan and try to keep it there.

Add about a teaspoon of vinegar to the water. Your egg won’t taste like vinegar, but your house might smell like cooked vinegar. Do it anyway. It helps tighten up the egg white and prevents ooze.

Next, lower each cup into the water sideways, simultaneously tipping the egg into the water and allowing some hot water to enter the cup. This will help the egg form a nice round shape before it (eww) oozes all over the pan.

For some reason, my eggs always sink to the bottom of the pan and want to stick. If this happens to you, gently slide a spatula under the eggs to release them from the pan.

Give your eggs about 2-3 minutes to cook and then do something crazy. Flip them.

Cook for another 1-2 minutes or until they are done to your liking. Remove the eggs from the water with a slotted spoon and place them on a paper towel for a few moments to absorb the extra water.

I’m sure there are some other nutty people out there who flip their poached eggs. Right? Helloooo…

Well, you’re probably not supposed to flip them but it just works. I will almost guarantee this method will work for you if you’ve ever had trouble creating a beautiful poached egg. Try it, you’ll like it!