Today’s experiment was inspired by one of my favorite chefs and cookbook authors, Carla Lalli, who was an editor at large at Bon Appetite, and who now has her own Substack, Food Processing (look it up, it’s fun and full of personality). She recently wrote an article involving greens, pasta , and poached eggs.
Well, poached eggs have a reputation of being more of a pain in the ass than they’re worth. (Let’s not talk about kale’s reputation.) And I eat two eggs almost every morning, but I never poach them, because… well, I usually make breakfast tacos of some type, and you can’t put a poached egg in a folded tortilla because as soon as you bite into it, the yolks runs out. And anyhow I think poaching eggs is a pain in the ass.
But what if they weren’t? And what if I could figure out a way to make breakfast tacos using poached eggs?
Hehe. Let’s run this experiment.
I figured I needed something to trap the yolk. I decided on hash browns. I made them with habaneros and serranos, but you make them how you want them.
Carla says the easy way to poached eggs is to barely simmer the water. Then add the eggs, push them around a little to set their shape, turn off the heat/cover/set timer for 3 minutes. This works. You don’t need to create a vortex, nor add vinegar. She has a short video here that shows how to do one egg with a vortex, or two without.
Those wispy strings in the water? They always bugged me, because I felt like I’m wasting egg. So I strained them out, intending to add them back at the end. They’re actually insignificant, and I discarded them without bothering to snap a pic.
Then we build tacos. I will never get tired of taking pix of tortillas puffing. The smell is intoxicating!
You know I’m gonna frico these.
A note about fricoing: it doesn’t work with dry cheeses. So, no aged cheddars or goudas, no queso fresco or blanco, no cotija. Stick to mild cheddar, Jack, Colby, etc.
Hash browns and eggs. This did exactly what I wanted: I cut the egg, the yolk ran down into the hash browns and congealed slightly. Add tomatillo chipotle salsa.
And, the money shot. A half eaten taco, with no yolk-y drip.
Remember: SCIENCE. Any time you get a useable answer, the experiment is a success! So if I got egg yolk all over my fingers and chin, that would mean the experiment just gave me a different answer than what I was hoping for, and I would have had to search for a different method. As it stands, though, I believe you could use any loose filling under the poached eggs. Chorizo would probably work well!
