One kitchen gadget you CAN live without…

Yesterday I talked about one kitchen gadget I can’t live without. Today I’m going to tell you about one kitchen gadget you CAN live without. Don’t waste your money (like I did) on a non-stick, individual egg poacher like this one from Crate and Barrel:

It’s been sitting in my gadget drawer forever and I’ve been having this ridiculous craving for eggs lately, runny eggs specifically, so I decided to dig it out and break it in. I started with a poached egg on toast last week, for a little afternoon snack.

I put a few inches of water in the pot, turned the heat on and once the water was hot (but not boiling) I broke an egg into the cup:

Hmmm… this works pretty good (I thought at the time). It was forming nicely, appeared to be cooking evenly and alleviated the need for me to fish the egg out of the water. I let the egg cook for about 2 minutes or so before I used a pair of tongs to grab the little hook… draining the water from the egg.

I buttered some sprouted grain toast and easily slipped the egg out of the cup directly onto the toast:

Mmmm… egg yolk…. (this is making me hungry)…. You just gotta love poached eggs.

SO… that was last week. This week, last night to be specific, I decided to make a salad topped with a poached egg (recipe post to follow). I did the same exact thing as last week, but this time, look what happened…

After using and washing the cup only ONE time, the non-stick coating stopped working! I couldn’t even get the first egg out of it. I wound up scraping it into the garbage disposal. Then I carefully washed the cup, made sure there was no left over residue and tried again. Failure. Just look at this egg… AWFUL!

It still tasted fine (obviously), though it was sort of watery b/c I couldn’t get the cup to drain since all the little holes got plugged up with egg white. So annoying… For next time, I am going back to the old fashioned way and will try to just cook my egg directly in the water. Sure, they have those cool 4-egg cups you can buy… but why dirty something for only one egg at a time?

I read online that vinegar helps keep the white together… but I also read it can cause the egg to take on an acidic taste. Another blogger mentioned how she uses a spoon or a whisk to create a “whirlpool” in the pot before she pours the egg in… the centrifugal force keeps the egg in the middle of the pot and causes the white to swirl around the yolk. Pretty clever! I will be trying that next.