I have egg cups. I have teeny tiny spoons. I also have an electric kettle.
The egg cups are only good for soft boiled eggs, which I think are disgusting, but which my children and husband like.
I’m sorry…did everyone miss this? LOL, good show old chap.
I’m not saying you need an electric kettle, but for people who do use them:
(1) They’re not off somewhere. They’re always right there on the counter.
(2) Wash them? They’re washed when you pour the boiling water out of them.
I find biscuits and gravy to be more of a Southern thing. Also, grits. And chicken and waffles - which I find confusing and I’m American.
The non-American breakfast food I love is the way Germans do muesli. Yogurt, fruit, oats - its so yummy. Its not unknown in the U.S., but its uncommon - much like soft boiled eggs or electric kettles.
It’s odd how a daft, light-hearted thread can go really.
A thing I’ve learned: there’s someone out there who thinks electric kettles - which are only used to boil water- need to go in a dishwasher, and perhaps not uncoincidentally thinks that British people make soup in them.
It’s been a voyage of discovery, I can tell you.
I vaguely remember seeing them when I saw the picture, but have never had one. I view having the yolk runny as a flaw, that maybe can be tolerated if it’s more gel-like, but I’d rather have it hard. That goes for any way of cooking eggs.
I also agree that, if you’re eating hard-boiled eggs mashed, it’s no different than poached. Or, at least, microwave poached. That became my go-to way to make that meal quickly. The issue was actually figuring out the right timing so they wouldn’t be soft-poached.
I have that, or peanut butter on toast, waaaaay more often than eggs for breakfast (or supper, come to think of it)
He’s talking about “Cup O’ Soup” packets, or those ramen bowls and things like that. Nobody actually cooks soup in an electric kettle. My parents do have an electric kettle. It really is a great device, but I don’t drink enough tea or coffee to make it worth my while to have around. (Instant soup isn’t even an option for me. I am done with those days.) I’m fine with the stovetop kettle. I do recall them being fairly popular during college, though. Lots of students had electric kettles in their dorms to cook up late-night ramen or tea/coffee/hot chocolate.
If I don’t use it at least once a week, it doesn’t stay on the counter. And I’ve already stated that my frequency of needing boiling water is less than once a week.
Have you ever actually poured soup - it doesn’t magically remove itself from the sides of the pot, there’s always some residue. Or is the ‘soup’ people are talking about just ramen and cup-o-noodles and stuff like that, which don’t even qualify as ‘soup’ to me? And what about cooking rice or pasta, which is my main use for boiling water - do you seriously heat the water in a kettle, pour it into a pot, then cook the rice/pasta in the pot? This sounds really bizarre.
People trying to convince me that I need a device that is not any better at making tea than my microwave on the rare occasions I drink tea, and that is really good for making ramen noodles which I eat even more rarely, and that I need it so much that I should devote permanent counter space to it so that every month or two it’s there when I need it are… interesting.
(a) I’m not a Brit, though I would much rather have been born in the UK instead of Minnesota.
(b) Only a complete idiot would try to boil soup in an electric kettle. I was referring to the instant soup you dump into a cup and add boiling water to. You don’t boil anything in an electric kettle except water.
It boils the water more quickly and efficiently than on the stovetop. Pour the water over the pasta and then put the pot on top of the stove to finish cooking. DUH! :smack:
That they’re not me and so my standards don’t apply to them. I haven’t said that other people shouldn’t eat them, or expressed incredulity towards them, what I find hilarious is the people insisting that soft-boiled eggs are great and that the vast majority of Americans are crazy for not only not eating them but not owning special cups for eating them.
All of those are for broad categories of food that are commonly eaten, not one specific preparation of one very specific item (soft-boiled chicken eggs). Having knives that cut bread well is not the same thing as having a small special cup for one specific preparation of eggs. Also my coffee cups get used for tea, eggs, and cakes in addition to coffee, so that’s not really a great example.
(Oh, and you don’t need special serrated knives for eggs. That would be weird.
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I’m just going by what people say in this thread, that there’s an egg knife that goes with the egg cup. Since I’m not a member of the soft-boiled-egg-equipment-culture I don’t know what the normal paraphanelia is.
I’m convinced the British national pastime has become “criticize everything Americans do.”
You’d probably be amazed at how many others do it too.
I already prefaced my comment with “For people who use kettles.” If you don’t use them, it doesn’t apply to you. Why do I get the feeling that you think someone here is trying to force you to buy an electric kettle?
The only thing an electric kettle ever does is boil water. That’s it. The reference to soup was about instant soups. I don’t know why you need to specify that they “don’t even qualify as ‘soup’” to you. That seems unnecessarily hostile in a thread about breakfast.
Yes, you boil the water in the kettle and pour it into the pot. The reason it’s not bizarre is that an electric kettle will boil a gallon of water in a fraction of the time that it takes to boil water in a pot on a stove. The kettle is a time-saving device.
It’s also better than a microwave for several other reasons for people who frequently need to boil water quickly. If that’s not you, that’s not you. If you really need to know why, folks can list the reasons, but I’ll avoid that, because I get the feeling you will think I’m trying to force you to stop boiling water in the microwave.
Seriously, who is doing that? Can you quote someone here who says you must get an electric kettle.
No, it’s this strange hostility that is “… interesting.”
There are several people in this thread listing the advantages of eating soft-boiled eggs from egg cups. I don’t agree with them—I just scoop my soft-boiled egg from the shell into a small bowl, stir it up and dip whole pieces of toast into them.
I don’t want to have to deal with the little tasks associated with egg cups—like fiddling with cutting a cap off and using a tiny spoon to scoop out tiny bits of egg without breaking the shell further, or cutting toast into little strips, or washing tiny egg cups. But I am not chiding people for trying force me to use egg cups. Who’s doing that here?
Wait. I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not. Do people actually do this? Besides, don’t you usually start your rice with cold water?
(ETA: Huh. Reading the reply above my post, it does seem people do this. I had no idea. I’ve never seen them used that way.)
Seriously, why all the hostility just from someone else expressing his or her preferences?
Before I got married, if I served wine, I served it in juice glasses or mugs.
I use my mugs for coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and any other beverage that I want to drink in a small amount. They’re basically interchangeable with juice glasses or small water glasses.
They cut any tough food, particularly meats.
Well, okay, if you’re going to slice bread instead of tearing it (which I sometimes do), you do need a long, straight serrated knife for it. So there’s one.
I don’t have any of those. I eat my soup with the regular spoons that come in the cutlery set.
I think that was just the result of a misunderstanding in this thread.
I don’t think anyone said they were, did they? Maybe I missed it.
But I love eating soft-boiled eggs and I don’t use egg cups. For me, they make eating soft-boiled eggs more difficult and create additional chores.
Yes, I start my rice with cold water, so I don’t use the electric kettle for rice.
But, yes, definitely for spaghetti, etc., I boil water in the kettle first. It significantly cuts down on preparation time. I don’t pour it into a cold pot, though. That’s dangerous. I put a tiny bit of water in the bottom of the pot, set it on the heat, and let it come to a boil while the kettle boils the rest of the water. They generally are both boiling by about the same time. So I pour boiling water into boiling water.
Hell, why choose? One of my favorite weekend brunch places makes a version of eggs benedict that uses biscuits and gravy instead of English muffin and hollandaise. It’s great.
Egg and bean is good too. Nothing wrong with that.
But a well-made biscuit really is great stuff. I would never take the time to make one at home, though. That’s crazy talk.
EBCB is a standard breakfast around Casa Silenus. Nothing wrong with that at all. But the eggs have to be fried hard. As in “there had better not be a hint of fluidity about the yolk or heads will roll. I mean it!” hard. I even serve it with proper back bacon instead of the usual American kind.
I’d do biscuits & gravy more often but my doctor keeps making these “tsk, tsk” noises…