No Hollandaise for me. I wouldn’t want to ruin the wonderful taste of an egg by pouring a heavy sauce on it.
gaffa: So, the vinegar is supposed to keep the egg together? I do have very hard water where I live.
Taomist: When I have eggs, I like to have 3. I can’t see doing the swirly-gig without using 3 pans or letting the first egg get cold.
I use an egg poacher pan like this.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SALADMASTER-STAINLESS-STEEL-18-8-TRI-CLAD-1-5-QT-9-PAN-SKILLET-W-4-EGG-POACHER-/260864657974?pt=Cookware&hash=item3cbcbeca36
squirt some Pam in each cup to avoid sticking. Break eggs and put one in each cup. Set the poacher insert aside.
Put about 3/4 inch of water in the pan and bring to a boil.
Put the egg poacher insert into the pan. reduce heat to warm.
Cover and cook 2 to 3 min depending on how done you want the yolk.
I find that 2 min 45 sec is just about right. Yolk is still moist but not real runny.
That’s not a real poached egg, though.
I make mine using gaffa’s approach more-or-less. I don’t bother with swirling. I’ve done it with and without vinegar, and the vinegar does seem to help, but the biggest factor in keeping the eggs together, by far, is the freshness of the eggs.
When a restaurant makes poached eggs, say for Eggs Benedict, they use something like what aceplace57 linked to, right?
pulykamell: Just curious how you know that. BTW, I specifically went to the supermarket this AM to buy eggs for my test. This is a high end type store, and I can’t really do much more to ensure freshness than buy them on the day I cook them. Maybe I should try the local farmer’s market.
I’ve seen bigger egg poacher pans that have six or even eight egg cups. The bigger ones might be used in a cafe or small restaurant. The one I use at home is a three cup. They are uncommon. The four cup ones are the most common I see.
Cooking the eggs directly in water is pretty cool, but I’m not that fancy a cook. I’m too busy zapping my bacon in the microwave, making toast, and pouring coffee while my eggs cook in the poacher. A digital kitchen timer helps a lot so the eggs don’t over cook while I’m busy buttering toast.
The trick is to have everything ready at once. You don’t want the eggs getting cold waiting on toast.
Just from experience. But I’m talking the difference between an egg I just bought and one that’s been sitting around in the fridge for a couple of weeks. Freshly bought eggs from the store with high turnover shouldn’t be a problem, but I can usually tell from cracking an egg how well it will poach. Some eggs have a real tight white, others are just soupy and runny.
Most poached eggs I’ve ordered in a restaurant have been actually poached. You can tell because those little “poaching” pans impart a distinctive shape to the egg, and they cook the bottom more than the rest.
Same here. The few times I’ve had poached eggs at a restaurant, they’ve always been poached, looking like this.
I used to soft boil eggs for toast…
Tried poach pan…wasn’t non-stick as implied.
Just tried the water w/vinegar n salt…works fine no stirring with 2 eggs. not picture perfect…but taste like poached eggs the same.
I steam em on taters also. 
I’ve done a combo–they’re poached, but in little cups.
What I do is get a big pot of water, get it to a low boil, crack the eggs into individual rammekins (something like these) and using tongs, lower the rammekins until they’re totally immersed in the water. The water pours into (and under) the eggs, so they’re completely immersed, but the bowls keep the whites together better, stops the tendrils from getting everywhere, but also gives you the real “poached” texture (since the eggs are completely immersed in the water.
At some point, I’m going to try just taking a big ladle-ful of boiling water and pouring it over the eggs in a rammikin.
(And yeah, I recall that the vinegar does something to firm up the egg whites)
That’s what I use as well, I used to go to all the trouble of really poaching them, but as long as you are careful not to overcook them, the microwave version works just fine.
Exactly. Real poaching cooks by surrounding the egg with heat on all sides. The whites cook towards the yolk. “Poaching pans” give you a fried egg with a curved bottom.
And the eggs pulykamell posted look amazing.
