Prepare to do some funky poaching

For some reason, tonight, I got the wild idea to try to poach an egg for the first time. Well, okay, I tried it before. About four years ago. It didn't work. But tonight I wanted it to *work* for the first time. I hadn't even *eaten* a poached egg... it just isn't something that came up in our busy household.

To start with, I watched several videos on YouTube. Like you do. This one was the first I saw, and the most helpful:


To start, I put 2-3 tablespoons of vinegar (my mom's homemade) in a pot of about 3" of water and brought it to a simmer. The vinegar isn't suggested in the above video, but just about everything else I saw said it helped, so I went for it. I chose a deep but narrow ladle as my egg-to-water delivery device, which worked well, and helped me slide the egg into the swirling water with ease. I watched in angst.

Hey! That egg's a-poaching!

My first eggs was perfectly poached. I thought "What did Julie Powell have so much trouble for? This is a breeze!" So of course my second attempt was not as fruitful... in that it pretty much went everywhere as soon as it hit the water... but I was able to salvage the yolk and used it in some hollandaise sauce. The third one came out better. The eggs, then the sauce, went on top of a couple of scratch drop biscuits:


My verdict on the poached eggs? Super delicious! I didn't even use salt or pepper on these... though come to think of it, a little fresh ground pepper wouldn't've been out of place (not that I'm obsessed with fresh ground pepper or anything... I promise...), but I didn't miss it. I liked having the flavor of the egg without it being bogged down with butter or grease. I don't think I'll be doing this often, as that pot isn't very happy with having had boiled egg white all in it, but it's nice for a change.