My Poached Eggs Education and Country-Style Scrambled Eggs

Maybe you didn't know this but I eat a lot of fried eggs for breakfast and very few poached ones – don’t worry, I’m not starting a series on poached eggs.  I don’t do poached eggs very often for a few reasons:

1. They take longer while waiting for the water to boil.

2. I don’t like losing the egg that turns into the wispy whites.

3. I haven’t had much luck cooking them correctly and without sticking.

I recently tried them twice in my new non-stick skillet and both times they stuck to the bottom of the pan.  So I decided I could solve all three issues by buying a nonstick egg poacher insert which doesn’t take much time for the little bit of water to boil, captures all of the egg in the cup and is non-stick.  So I tried it one time and while it did okay with reasons one and two but they stuck terribly so obviously not non-stick.  I washed it up and sent it back while looking for a better one.

In the meantime, I did a web search on how to poach an egg and found an excellent video from Downshiftology that told me everything I needed to know, beginning with using about four inches of water which explained why mine stuck in a skillet with about an inch and half of water.  It didn’t help with the time or wispy white egg loss but I solved that by scooping them out and eating them too - not as pretty with them though.  I’ll just have to start earlier to solve the time issue but it’s only about five minutes or so.

I put them on a piece of cheese toast using Tellico Grains Bakery Olive Bread (my favorite of theirs) and Creamy Cheddar Cheese from Dietz & Watson.

The Verdict:

It was an absolutely awesome breakfast and my main reason for wanting to use poached eggs is that you can see what’s under them as they are not as flat as fried eggs.  The 3 minute time might have been a bit long so I'll try 2¾ minutes next time.

Country-Style Scrambled Eggs

This is the kind of scramble I really like because it contains most of the ingredients that I like for breakfast.  The recipe for Country-Style Scrambled Eggs makes four servings so I cut it in half and made a couple of other changes.

 Country-Style Scrambled Eggs – Adapted from Taste Of Home

Instructions:

2 patties of breakfast sausage (original was bacon)

1 cup diced red Yukon gold potatoes (I had 1 1/4 cups)

¼ cup chopped onion

¼ cup chopped green sweet pepper

4 large eggs (I used 5)

2 tbsp. half and half

S&P to taste

½ cup shredded cheddar

Directions:

Cut the sausage patties into small pieces.

In a 9-10” non-stick skillet over medium heat, cook sausage until no longer pink.

Remove to paper towels to drain.

Add the potatoes to the pan with the sausage drippings over medium heat and cook until almost tender.

Add onion and green pepper and cook until crisp-tender and remove any excess grease (I had to add more oil).

Stir in sausage.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, dairy, salt and pepper (Larry used the immersion blender.

Add to skillet along with the cheese and push into large curds as they cook allowing the raw egg to run underneath.

Cook to the way you like them – moist for us.

I had mine with a slice of lightly toasted sourdough.

The Verdict:

I thought it was delicious and I liked that it was a one pan meal - I'd make it again with one change - more sausage.

During the course of this series on scrambled eggs, I’ve mentioned cooking them into large soft curds like this:

But to many folks, the pic below represents scrambled eggs which is the way my mom made them – Grandma showed me how to cook them as I have been doing since I was a teenager.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

4/30 & 5/11/24 meal dates