Poached Eggs the Easy Way: Calphalon Egg Poacher

There are two ways to poach an egg: the hard way, by dropping the egg into boiling water and magically making it come out in one piece, and the easy way, by using an egg poacher. The hard way actually is easy, you just have to have the touch, and to get the touch you need a lot of practice and a lot of eggs.

This weekend is Mothers' Day, and mothers, for some reason, like poached eggs. I am no exception. My man Maxwell doesn't quite have the touch, nor the time to get it, for poaching eggs the hard way, so we decided to try out an egg poacher made by Calphalon.

Maxwell's Calphalon poached eggs (left) and my messy, traditionally poached egg (right).

The Calphalon Egg Poacher allows you to poach six eggs at once, which is a plus if you're poaching up a storm for, say, a Mother's Day brunch. Maxwell watched the demonstration video on the Williams-Sonoma site and then got down to business. He nailed it on the first try. My only critique was that going on the suggested three-minute cooking time, the eggs turned out a little rubbery for my taste. I would caution those who like the yolk runny to reduce the cooking time to two and a half minutes.

For contrast, I poached an egg afterward "the hard way" and realized how out of practice I was. I still prefer the less uniform shape of a traditionally poached egg (even one as messy as the one above), but realize for most home-cooks, it's sometimes better to just go the easy route.

Pluses: Makes poaching eggs incredibly simple. You can poach six just as easily as one. You can monitor progress and remove the eggs at different points of done-ness (for those who like them runny, or not so).

Minuses: Although the cups are removable leaving you with a nice 10" skillet, it's still another gadget in your kitchen and I worry about keeping the whole apparatus intact . The poached eggs are so uniform in shape that you lose some of the character of the poached egg. The eggs can be difficult to remove from the cups (we had to slice off the cooked leaked egg whites, see photo above)

The Calphalon One Egg Poacher is available at Williams-Sonoma ($49.95)

Comments (14)

I just use a pot of water and add some vinegar to convince the white to hold together. Works great and no extra gadgets needed.

This is one unitasker that I love - I think the perfect circular eggs are very appealing, and they look so neat and tidy when I make egg on toast. I always make such a mess when I poach eggs the old way that one of these pans was a necessity. I find that buttering the cups (or using cooking spray) keeps the eggs from sticking.

What about those little silicon cups? Seems like you'd get the lovely uniform eggs without the bulky kitchen gadget. Has anyone tried them?

I only started poaching eggs a short while ago (to add some protein to the lovely spring green salads we ate during a recent heat wave) and they weren't difficult to make at all. Just oil the pan a little and add oil and vinegar, drop the eggs in with a measuring cup and wait...They hold well and scoop up nicely with a slotted spoon. I really don't understand why you'd need this unitasker, that is, unless you "need" your eggs to be a certain shape, I suppose.

Why does their need to be a gadget for everything these days? GAH! :P

I must say, no one NEEDS an egg poacher, and I don't currently have one, but that photo does bring back fond memories from my childhood. My mom had a much cheaper-looking version and she'd always make poached eggs on really special occasions. Now when I make them at home and want them to look pretty, I just oil a small ramekin and crack the egg right in there. Lower it into a small saucepan with a little simmering water and a few minutes later, voila!

I like eggs this way. But I think that when you use the little cups, they don't quite come out poached. It's almost more like making a soft- or hard-cooked egg, texture-wise. So at our house, we either poach them properly or just hard-cook them.

I love my egg poacher! I use it several times a week to make egg mcmuffins. I prefer these to donig them the old fashioned way ebcasue I always find that the old fashioned way yields soggy eggs.

I have a Calphalon style one but my egg cups are just stainless steel. They're crazy hard to clean because the egg sticks to it.

I use my little pyrex custard bowls, submerged in boiling water, to hold the eggs in shape.

I like the silicone cups. I know people always say the skillet with vinegar tip but I don't do it often enough to perfect it and the silicone cups help. The pan probably works great too if you have room for another pan.

Poach Pods

i love poached eggs, and i hadn't heard the vinegar tip, so thanks. i'll add the one tip i do know (maybe everyone does), which is to break the egg into a bowl and pour it gently from the bowl into the pan, rather than just dropping it in. i find it helps it hold together a little better.

the pan is cute, but i don't have the space -- if they sold just the top part, sized to fit on a standard pan, i'd consider it, though.

I love poached eggs, and have a smaller version of this pan (4 cups, not 6). I find that when I poach eggs directly in water, even with vinegar, I lose too much of the white. I do love a properly poached egg, so this is a bit of a compromise for the ease.

I always considered these "coddled" eggs. I only consider the wet cooked eggs poached. I love the taste of both but the expertise involved in making a wet poached egg separates the mice from the men.

I borrowed my brother's fancy Egg poacher that is it's own little appliance. It did an okay job, but it was more like steaming the eggs instead of poaching them. I'd rather have a soft boiled egg or poach them in a pan. I bought a slotted spoon specifically for this reason!

Mmmm poached eggs...